In the domestic American debate, such minor forms of coercion as keeping in an interrogation subject awake or making him stand for extended periods have been commonly referred to as “torture.”

Controversial methods of coercive interrogation employed by US Counterterrorism agencies have included at the most extreme a technique called “waterboarding.”

The customary description of which reads: “The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.”

Waterboarding sounds unpleasant, but the discomfort it inflicts is clearly primarily psychological. There is no genuine physical injury. There is no real threat to life.

US forces in a recent raid on an Al Qaeda safe house found instruments of real torture and and Al Qaeda manual illustrating a variety of techniques. See the story and pictures at the Smoking Gun.

Compare sleep deprivation, standing in the corner, a few face slaps, and even waterboarding to this.

ABC reports that US air marshals are currently “flooding” flights from Germany and Britain.

As many as five or six U.S. air marshals are now assigned to each U.S.-bound flight from airports in Frankfurt, London and Manchester, England, because of fears terrorists might attempt a coordinated series of mid-air explosions, law enforcement officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

“We’re afraid someone in the back is going to mix something or light something up, so air marshals are being placed strategically through the plane,” said one senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the stepped-up security.

The stepped-up security on flights out of Britain’s Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports began about two weeks ago, based on intelligence reports that another al Qaeda hijacking plot was in the making, the officials said.

The London Times reports that not only democrats are looking forward to an American withdrawal from Iraq.

A radical plan by Al-Qaeda to take over the Sunni heartland of Iraq and turn it into a militant Islamic state once American troops have withdrawn is causing alarm among US intelligence officials.

A power struggle has emerged between the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, an organisation with ambitions to become a state which has been set up by Al-Qaeda, and more moderate Sunni groups. They are battling for the long-term control of central and western areas which they believe could break away from Kurdish and Shi’ite-dominated provinces once the coalition forces depart.

According to an analysis compiled by US intelligence agencies, the Islamic State has ambitions to create a terrorist enclave in the Iraqi provinces of Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Salah al-Din, Nineveh and parts of Babil.

“Al-Qaeda are on the way to establish their first stronghold in the Middle East,” warned an American official. “If they succeed, it will be a catastrophe and an imminent danger to Saudi Arabia and Jordan.”

The US conviction that the Islamic State could seize power is based on its use of classic Al-Qaeda tactics and its adoption last October of a draft constitution. This was entitled Notifying Mankind of the Birth of the Islamic State and was posted on a website based in Britain. The group named 10 ministers under its emir, Abu Amer Al-Baghdadi. They included a war minister, Abu Hamza Al-Muhajer who is also known as Abu Ayub al-Masri and is Al-Qaeda’s commander in Iraq.

Greg Sheridan, in The Australian, describes how Al Qaeda is winning, not by battlefield success, but via propaganda.

the awesome power of what the boffins call al-Qa’ida’s “single narrative” for Muslims everywhere. The single narrative is the most powerful propaganda tool yet devised. It presents all of Muslim experience worldwide as a story of Western and Zionist persecution of Muslims. This embraces obvious cases such as Palestinians, Kashmiris and Bosnians, but also the experience of Muslims in the Middle East under corrupt governments, the experience of Muslims in India, the marginalised status of Muslims in western Europe, the conflict in Iraq and everything else. The beauty of the single narrative is that any grievance at all, real or imagined, whether based in fact or fantasy or conspiracy, can be fitted into it.

(Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer observes) “In terms of their PR, I give full marks to al-Qa’ida. They’ve been very successful.”

“Every time there’s a terrorist attack in Iraq there’s a Western reaction not of how horrible these people are but that we must pull out, we should give up. I give full credit to al-Qa’ida for their excellent public relations.”

Downer is right in this withering analysis. Al-Qa’ida in a sense wins whether it wins or loses. If it kills a large number of innocents, the chief reaction among most commentators is that this is somehow the fault of the US or its coalition allies.

The Western commentariat, not least in Australia, has embraced the pro-terrorist proposition that almost the only people not morally responsible for terrorism are the terrorists.

whole article

George Tenet’s new book, At the Center of the Storm, which justifies himself and attacks the Bush Administration, and particularly its Neocon members, has provoked some highly devastating replies from (no particular friend of the Neocons) Michael Scheuer, Tyler Drumheller, and most delightfully of all, last Friday in the Wall Street Journal from every liberal’s favorite Neocon whipping boy Douglas Feith himself.

Mr. Feith provides an alternative link on his own web-site to the demolition.

Mr. Tenet resents that the CIA was criticized for its work on Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, in particular, Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda. On this score he is especially angry at Vice President Dick Cheney, at Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, at Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and at me — I was the head of the Defense Department’s policy organization. Mr. Tenet devotes a chapter to the matter of Iraq and al Qaeda, giving it the title: “No Authority, Direction or Control.” The phrase implies that we argued that Saddam exercised such powers — authority, direction and control — over al Qaeda. We made no such argument.

Rather we said that the CIA’s analysts were not giving serious, professional attention to information about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. The CIA’s assessments were incomplete, nonrigorous and shaped around the dubious assumption that secular Iraqi Baathists would be unwilling to cooperate with al Qaeda religious fanatics, even when they shared strategic interests. This assumption was disproved when Baathists and jihadists became allies against us in the post-Saddam insurgency, but before the war it was the foundation of much CIA analysis.

Mr. Tenet’s account of all this gives the reader no idea of the substance of our critique, which was that the CIA’s analysts were suppressing information. They were not showing policy makers reports that justified concern about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Mr. Tenet does tell us that the CIA briefed Mr. Cheney on Iraq and al Qaeda in September 2002 and that the “briefing was a disaster” because “Libby and the vice president arrived with such detailed knowledge on people, sources, and timelines that the senior CIA analytic manager doing the briefing that day simply could not compete.” He implies that there was improper bullying but then adds: “We weren’t ready for this discussion.”

This is an abject admission. He is talking about September 2002 — a year after 9/11! This was the month that the president brought the Iraq threat before the United Nations General Assembly. This was several weeks after I took my staff to meet with Mr. Tenet and two-dozen or so CIA analysts to challenge the quality of the agency’s work on Iraq and al Qaeda. …

Mr. Tenet hosted our briefing because my boss, Donald Rumsfeld, personally suggested he do so. Mr. Tenet knew that the Agency’s dismissive view of Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda was controversial — and of importance to the nation. So there was no excuse, weeks later, for senior CIA officials to be so thoroughly un-ready to brief Mr. Cheney on the subject. The September 2002 meeting was not a surprise bed-check, after all; it was a scheduled visit by the vice president. …

Fairness, evidently, was not Mr. Tenet’s motivating impulse as an author. His book is defensive. It aims low — to settle scores. The prose is humdrum. Mr. Tenet includes no citations that would let the reader check the accuracy of his account. He offers no explanation of why we went to war in Iraq. So, is the book useless? No.

What it does offer is insight into Mr. Tenet. It allows you to hear the way he talked — fast, loose, blustery, emotional, imprecise, from the “gut.” Mr. Tenet proudly refers to the guidance of his “gut” several times in the book — a strange boast from someone whose stock-in-trade should be accuracy and precision. “At the Center of the Storm” also allows you to see the way he reasoned — unimaginatively and inconsistently. And it gives a glimpse of how he operated: He picked sides; he played favorites. The people he liked got his attention and understanding, their judgments his approval; the people he disliked he treated harshly and smeared. His loyalty is to tribe rather than truth.

Mr. Tenet makes a peculiar claim of detachment, as if he had not been a top official in the Bush administration. He wants readers not to blame him for the president’s decision to invade Iraq. He implies that he never supported it and never even heard it debated. Mr. Tenet writes: “In many cases, we were not aware of what our own government was trying to do. The one thing we were certain of was that our warnings were falling on deaf ears.”

Mr. Tenet’s point here builds on the book’s much-publicized statements that the author never heard the president and his national-security team debate “the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” whether or not it was “wise to go to war” or when the war should start. He paints a distorted picture here.

But even if it were true that he never heard any such debate and was seriously dissatisfied with the dialogue in the White House Situation Room, he had hundreds of opportunities to improve the discussion by asking questions or making comments. I sat with him in many of the meetings, and no one prevented him from talking. It is noteworthy that Mr. Tenet met with the president for an intelligence briefing six days every week for years. Why didn’t he speak up if he thought that the president was dangerously wrong or inadequately informed?

One of Mr. Tenet’s main arguments is that he was somehow disconnected from the decision to go to war. Under the circumstances, it seems odd that he would call his book “At the Center of the Storm.” He should have called it “At the Periphery of the Storm” or maybe: “Was That a Storm That Just Went By?”

Read the whole thing.

Reuters is reporting:

U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed the head of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-led militant group that has claimed many major attacks in the country, Iraq’s deputy interior minister said on Thursday.

Hussein Kamal said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had been killed in a battle north of Baghdad. He declined to say when but said authorities had recovered Baghdadi’s body.

“Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was killed north of Baghdad by Iraqi and American forces. He died as a result of wounds sustained in clashes. The Interior Ministry has his body to carry out further checks,” Kamal told Reuters by telephone.

Baghdadi was erroneously reported to have been captured in early March.

Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page notes that Al Qaeda isn’t doing particularly well in Iraq, and is on the run in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, North Africa, Somalia, and Europe. Its only victories are to be found in media coverage.

Qaeda is having a bad year so far. While many media pundits like to paint the Islamic terrorists as on a winning streak, it doesn’t look that way from the other side. In Iraq, al Qaeda continues to bomb Shia “heretics” and Sunni “apostates”. Most of the victims are unarmed Moslem civilians, and this is regularly condemned throughout the Islamic world. Al Qaeda believes that all this carnage will somehow arouse the Sunni Arab world to make war on the Iraqi government, and get the Iraqi Sunni Arabs back in power. As absurd as that sounds, remember that al Qaedas ultimate goal is to establish a religious dictatorship in Iraq, and throughout the Islamic world. World conquest and all that.

The Al Qaeda leadership knows that they are dealing from a position of weakness. So the emphasis is on playing the media, and the impact the media has on the political and military situation. In that respect, al Qaeda takes heart from efforts in the American Congress to force U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. Again, we have a perception problem here. While al Qaeda would count that as a major victory, the outcome would be disastrous for them. Without U.S. troops to restrain them, Shia militias would be able to go after the remaining Sunni Arab community in Iraq and destroy it. …

Al Qaeda is still enormously popular among some segments of the Islamic population. Young, unemployed men remain eager al Qaeda supporters, as do educated men frustrated at the sorry state of their government and economy. Saudi Arabia turns out far more college grads with degrees in Islamic Studies, than in things like math, finance or engineering. There aren’t enough jobs for all those religion majors, and foreigners have to be imported to do the math, finance and engineering jobs. It’s a self inflicted wound that Saudi Arabia, and many other Moslem nations, are trying to address. It’s hard, though, as old habits are hard to change in a hurry.

So al Qaeda, lacking any concrete achievements, tries to at least gather more mentions in the media. Google is keeping score for the terrorists, and that may be good for the soul, but it won’t take you anywhere else.

Depkafile reports:

The US Pentagon states that the senior al Qaeda operative was captured by the CIA at an undisclosed location while attempting to reach his native Iraq after meeting al Qaeda operatives in Iran. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources say this disclosure points to four significant developments:

1. Iran is again providing al Qaeda members with a path to Iraq from Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2002, the Islamic Republic afforded defeated al Qaeda groups an escape route from Afghanistan.

2. Iran is allowing al Qaeda terrorists operating in Iraq to strike from within its borders. Evidence of this, if confirmed by al Hadi ,would further exacerbate the military tensions between Washington and Tehran.

3. DEBKAfile’s sources surmise that he was picked up crossing the Iranian border into Iraq.

4. Word is awaited to clarify if the CIA’s capture of al Hadi’s capture was a fluke or the result of a tip-off by an Iraqi informant, whether in Kurdistan or from inside Iran.

The London Times quotes an MI5 report.

Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.

It follows revelations last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of Al-Qaeda’s “foreign legion”. A number are thought to have returned to the UK, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells.

The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) – based at MI5’s London headquarters – and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.

Read the whole thing.

A recent USMC Challenge Coin

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

Reuters grudgingly admires the Bush Administration’s success in preventing any successful mass terrorism attack on US since 9/11, but finds downsides of “huge security costs, strains on the U.S. military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and resentment of the United States abroad.”

President George W. Bush’s administration has crippled al Qaeda’s ability to carry out major attacks on U.S. soil but at a political and economic cost that could leave the country more vulnerable in years to come, experts say.

Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.

“If the question is why al Qaeda hasn’t carried out another 9/11 attack, the answer I think is that if they could have, they would have,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tighter U.S. airport security, greater scrutiny of people entering the United States and better coordination between the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security also have made it harder for extremists to enter the country, experts said.

Home-grown extremists in the United States are believed to be isolated and lacking the will or ability to carry out large-scale operations.

“Make no mistake about it, however, our enemy is resilient and determined to strike us again,” said Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer at the Department of Homeland Security.

Some experts warn that the successes of Bush’s war on terrorism have been undercut by huge security costs, strains on the U.S. military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and resentment of the United States abroad.

“Huge costs?”

AP just recently (3/18) noted that the war is proving relatively inexpensive.

After four years, America’s cost for the war in Iraq has reached nearly $500 billion — more than the total for the Korean War and nearly as much as 12 years in Vietnam, adjusting for inflation. The ultimate cost could reach $1 trillion or more.

A lot of money? No question.

But even though the war has turned out to be much more expensive than Bush administration officials predicted on the eve of the March 2003 invasion, it is relatively affordable — at least in historical terms.

Iraq eats up less than 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, compared with as much as 14 percent for Vietnam and 9 percent for Korea.

“I think it’s hard to argue it’s not affordable,” said Steven M. Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank in Washington, D.C.

A lot of us on the Right think Bush should have expanded the US military, too, but doubtless this administration’s policy of fighting the war on the cheap has a great deal to do with its comparatively modest costs.

Foreign opinion? Well, the treasonous clerisy is what it is. Any visible and effective US policy will inevitably stimulate the left’s condemnation and outrage.

———————-

This Reuters article does, however, contain one particularly interesting detail.

IntelCenter chief executive Ben Venzke said the chance of an al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil has grown based on the militant network’s increasing references to the American homeland in public messages.

“Our leading thinking is that we are closer now to an attempt at a major attack in the United States than at any point since 9/11,” Venzke said.

The Department of Defense’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal today released the transcript of the hearing of detainee Waleed Mohammed bin Attash, mastermind of the October 12, 2000 bomb attack on the American Destroyer USS Cole, which took the lives of seventeen US sailors and wounded 39.

ABC News

New York Times

DOD Transcript

RECORDER: …the following facts support the determination that the detainee is an enemy combatant:

a. On 7 August 1998, near simultaneous truck bombs were detonated at the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The explosion at the United States embassy in Nairobi resulted in the death of 213 people, including 12 Americans. More than 4,500 people were wounded,

b. Mohammad Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali Al-Owhali stated that in approximately June or July 1998, the detainee told him that his mission was a martyrdom mission, where he would be driving a vehicle filled with explosives into a target which would result in his death. The detainee told Al-Owhali the target was a United States embassy in East Africa, but he was not told the exact country,

c. In 1998, Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali was indicted in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, for his involvement in the 7 August 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Charges included conspiracy to kill United States nationals, conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim at places outside the United States, conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against nationals of the United States, conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and conspiracy to attack defense utilities,

d During the latter part of 1999, the detainee facilitated and participated in close-combat training which was held in the Lowgar training camp in Afghanistan. The graduates of the class then met with Usama bin Laden who lectured about the operational details of the East Africa bombings,

e. On 12 October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked during refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden by operatives of the al Qaida network. Al Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. Seventeen United States sailors were killed and 39 other sailors were wounded,

f. Stamps utilized on a forged Yemeni merchant’s registration card, which was utilized by the detainee, were forged by a suspect of the USS Cole bombing,

g. A participant in the USS Cole bombing identified the detainee as someone he knew from an al Qaida training camp. The participant in the USS Cole bombing that identified the detainee stated an individual approached him with a letter from the detainee requesting assistance in facilitation of the USS Cole bombing. The participant in the USS Cole bombing claimed the only reason he agreed to visit the individual was due to the letter from the detainee,

h. The detainee went to an al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in December 2000.

i. An al Qaida cell associated with a senior al Qaida operative used the code name, father of the leg, which was a reference to the detainee and the fact that he was missing a leg.

j. A notebook that was seized during the capture of a senior al Qaida operative contained a phone number that was also found in the stored memory of a phone belonging to the detainee,

k. The detainee’s University of Islamic Studies identification card was found at an alleged al Qaida residence in Karachi, Pakistan.

l. The detainee was implicated in a notebook containing account ledgers for payments made to various al Qaida operatives which was found during a raid of anal Qaida safe house,

m. A source that met the detainee in Afghanistan stated he also saw the detainee at al Farouq training camp. The source stated the detainee worked for an important person in al Qaida and the detainee was a body guard for Usama bin Laden.

Sir, this concludes the summary of unclassified evidence…

PRESIDENT: Tribunal members, do you have any questions for the detainee?

TRIBUNAL: I do.

PRESIDENT: Proceed.

TRIBUNAL: What exactly was his role as the – both the USS Cole and the -ah- embassy thing?

DETAINEE: Many roles, I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives. I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation. Buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation. Buying the explosives.
…

PRESIDENT: Where were you, physically, at the time of the Cole attacks?

DETAINEE: He was with Sheik Usama bin Laden in Kandahar.

PRESIDENT: And at the time of the embassy attacks?

DETAINEE: I was in Karachi meeting the operator, the guy that basically did the operation a few hours before the operation took place. These are statements that are not in the evidence that you have. These are additions to the questions that you have asked.

PRESIDENT: What can you tell us about the -ah- item contained in paragraph, in item 3a? (US Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, 7 August 1998 -JDZ)…

DETAINEE: I was the link between Usama bin Laden and his deputy Sheikh Abu Hafs Al Masri and the cell chief in Nairobi. I was the link that was available in Pakistan. I used to supply the cell with what ever documents they need from fake stamps to visas, whatever. Sending them from Afghanistan to Pakistan and individuals, cell members.

Why, I wonder, has it taken close to four years to undertake this simple process? And, now that it is perfectly clear that various persons in US custody are illegal combatants guilty of grave and horrible crimes, are we going to proceed promptly and without further ado to the delivery of justice, i.e., to the executions of these villains? Or are we going to dither, and shilly shally, and debate, and litigate some more?