Books reviews, current events, and other musings

Rolling Stone has a graphic, disturbing description of the torture and chaos at Abu Ghraib (from This Modern World). The story has disappeared from the headlines, even though the abuse must continue to outrage Iraqis and the Muslim world. And the higher-level officials who were clearly behind the torture still haven't been publicly charged or punished.

posted by Julian at 10:30 PM

William Falk lists the news that occurred while everyone was mesmerized by the Democratic Convention (from TAPPED). However, he left out one important development: more American soldiers died in Iraq during July, the month following the power handoff, than died the previous month.

Meanwhile, John Kerry and John Edwards, in their abundant free time, have written Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World (from Daily Kos). You can read the overview or download the 263-page PDF here.

My main complaint, after reading the overview, is that they seem no more serious about facing budget realities than the Republicans are. You can't reconcile the tax cuts, spending increases, and deficit reduction. Plus, the 5% corporate tax cut is obnoxious, considering the diminishing fraction of the tax revenue that corporations pay.

While I agree with the other goals, the whole package has a pie-in-the-sky feel. For example, considering that localities and states provide most education funding, the education objectives are ridiculous. The tactic of promising the world is unwise. After all, once they're in office they're bound to fall short.

posted by Julian at 8:50 PM

James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, the first expose of the NSA, has a new book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies. He reveals how the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA and NSA, mishandled intelligence gather and analysis relating to a terrorist threats to the US and Iraqi WMD.

He starts by retelling the events of 9/11 from perspectives I hadn’t seen elsewhere, such as the first air traffic controller to notice something was wrong and a guy from the highest floor of WTC Tower 1 with any survivors. You can read that first chapter here. He goes on to describe the immediate responses of the federal government, such as high-level officials retreating to Cold War-era secure facilities.

Then he delves into the pressing question explored in the recent 9/11 commission report: why didn’t the US detect the al Qaeda plot? It boils down to incompetence and organizational limitations of the intelligence agencies. The CIA and NSA were slow to respond to the end of the Cold War, which dramatically transformed the nation’s intelligence priorities, and the arrival of new communication technologies. The CIA’s human intelligence resources in Afghanistan and the Arab world were basically worthless.

The most shocking aspect is the Keystone Cops performance of intelligence operatives tracking the future 9/11 hijackers. Signal intelligence picked up the names and travel plans of a couple of the plotters long before the attacks. Due to sloppy tracking – one guy switched to a different flight – they slipped through the cracks. And the CIA didn’t inform the INS or FBI, who could have tracked down those individuals in the US, where they frequently used their real names. The personality conflicts and turf wars between the CIA and FBI were so intense the CIA was reluctant to share information.

After the 9/11 attacks, the CIA beefed up their counterterrorism efforts massively. However, mismanagement continued to plague those efforts. For example, CIA agents who didn’t speak Arabic were told to search hard drives captured in Afghanistan for useful information. Whatever other reforms the US implements, it’s clear that the intelligence agencies won’t function until management gets their act together.

The last third of the book deals with the efforts to justify invading Iraq. Bamford describes the neoconservatives (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.) who long sought the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, for reasons unrelated to terrorism and WMD. They immediately viewed 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq. The White House pressured the CIA and other agencies to prove Iraqi ties to the terrorist attacks and that Iraq possessed WMD.

No such evidence existed, but the CIA eventually caved to the immense pressure from the administration regarding WMD. Clearly, intelligence becomes hopelessly compromised, and agency morale plummets, when forced to support a false conclusion. Also, this unprecedented manipulation of the intelligence agencies is a major abuse of power.

Though the high-level conclusions may be familiar, A Pretext for War provides a broader context and lots of interesting details.

posted by Julian at 2:15 PM