MoveOn.org owes General Petraeus an Apology

Remember this?

Unfortunately, since the ad is copyrighted material, I can't quote it in full here. But here are the key passages:

GENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US?

Cooking the Books for the White House

. . . .

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence.

The ad then goes on to explain why it believes the General's claim is false.


In evaluating this claim, one needs to be aware that the General has an information advantage over MoveOn.org. That's because the General is in Iraq most of the time, and he has access to up-to-the-minute reports from his troops. MoveOn.org is in the USA and has to make do with second-hand information.

However, if you are going to call someone a liar, you had better have your facts straight. So before making its claim, MoveOn.org had a responsibility to make sure it was correct in its belief that the Surge was not reducing violence.

Today, it is beyond dispute that the Surge did greatly reduce violence in Iraq. To prove this, here are data from two liberal organizations which track civillian casualties there:

Iraq Body Count
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

Both datasets show that during and shortly after the Surge, civillian casualties dropped dramatically.

Now, you might object that as of September 10, 2007, when the ad appeared, the data were much more ambiguous. And this is true. But . . .

* As of September 10, 2007, the General would have had much better information than the general public.
* As of September 10, 2007, even publically available data (in particular Iraq Body Count data, as they work a bit faster than ICCC) suggested that violence was declining. Here is a September, 2007 Iraq Body Count report which admits as much.
* If you are going to call someone a liar based on incomplete information, you had better be sure that your information is true. If you aren't, you need to either investigate more, or wait for someone else to come up with more complege information, before you make your accusation.

MoveOn called Petraeus a liar based on its own belief of fragmentary and incomplete information about what was happening. And even at the time, a liberal organization with a careful and consistent methodology (namely IBC) had noticed what was really happening.

As of September 10, 2007, it was not crazy to believe that it had not been publically proven that the Surge was reducing violence. But it was crazy to believe that it had been publically proven that the Surge was not reducing violence. And that's what the ad claimed.

The upshot is that Petraeus was right and MoveOn was wrong, pure and simple.

Is waterboarding a violation of United States international obligations?

As a personal matter, I don't really care what the US does to the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mahommed or other high-level Al Qaeda detainees. However, it is an interesting intellectual exercise to look at the question of whether waterboarding is a violation of US international obligations or not.

The United States is a signatory to the Convention against Torture. Among other things, this treaty commits signatories not to torture people in their custody. It defines torture as follows:

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.



According to that definition, it appears that waterboarding a detainee (who does not know that they are not being drowned) is torture, as it is severe mental suffering.



However, the when signing the treaty, several countries, including the United States, made certain reservations. And in its reservations, the United States says:



. . . in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm . . . . (emphasis added)



Allegedly, the US has never waterboarded anyone for a long time. It "broke" Khalid Sheikh Mahommed within a couple of minutes. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), the US is in compliance with its commitments under the Convention against Torture.



Torture is also banned under the Geneva Conventions. However, they make no effort to define the term. So it is unclear whether waterboarding is banned under the Geneva Conventions or not.

Judges are typically very reluctant to find that someone has violated something (a law, treaty, or contract, for example) when it is not clear that they have done so. Since the Geneva Conventions do not define the word "torture", it is likely that a court, if one were to consider the question, would say that grey-area techniques such as waterboarding are not in violation of the Conventions. This is particularly true for a US court, since the US made clear in its signing statement to the Convention against Torture that for purposes of that document, it does not consider waterboarding to be torture.

The Reagan campaign against the Soviet empire

This post will examine some of the indisputable, contemporaneous evidence of actions taken by the Reagan administration to hasten the overthrow of the Soviet empire. The record of this is enormous, and it is unquestionable that this was a real campaign. While this post can only scratch the surface, there will be enough to make it clear that there was an explicit Reagan campaign to get rid of the Soviet empire, that this campaign found several strategies which could have an impact, and that the impact included great strain on the Soviets.

National Security Directive 32, which has since been declassified, stated the goal:

To contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence throughout the world . . . (emphasis added).

Pursuant to this, National Security Directive 45 laid out the plans for the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and similar efforts. For example:

Allocation of budgetary and other resources [to broadcasting] . . . shall be accorded the same priority as . . . other programs deemed vital to national security.

Particularly in view of the recent renewal of jamming of VOA by the Soviet Union, it is essential that the US take all possible steps to overcome jamming . . . and to ameliorate its effects.

Similarly, National Security Directive 54 laid out policy towards Eastern Europe:

The long-term US goal in Eastern Europe is to . . . [blacked out] facilitate its eventual reintigration into the European community of nations.

Directive 54 then went into detail about how the US would use trade, credit, and high-level visitation policy to encourage the governments of Eastern Europe to liberalize, and to lessen their dependence on the USSR.

And National Security Directive 75 laid out policy towards the USSR:

To contain and reverse Soviet expansionism (emphasis added) . . . .

The directive then goes on with a long list of ways in which this could be accomplished, such as:

-- Expose at all available fora the double standards employed by the Soviet Union . . . (e.g. treatment of labor, policies toward ethinc minorities . . .)

-- Prevent the Soviet propaganda machine from siezing the semantic high-ground . . . through the appropriation of such terms as "peace".

-- Sustaining Steady, long-term growth in U.S. defense spending and capabilities (emphasis in the original)

Afghanistan: ensure that the Soviets' political, military, and other costs remain high while the occupation continues.

According to "The Crusader", Paul Kengor's book about Reagan's campaign against the Soviets, an internal document stated that the goal of the Reagan military buildup was to develop weapons that

are difficult for the Soviets to counter, impose disproportionate costs, open up new areas of major military competition, and obscelesce previous Soviet investment."

The Soviets had a long-term plan to steal Western technology which they were unable to develop on their own. The Reagan Administration's answer was to put hidden flaws into the technology the Soviets were going to steal.

As we said at the beginning, this only scratches the surface of the ways in which the Reagan Administration worked to bring down the Soviet Union.

Impact
What was the impact of these efforts?

Afghanistan
The Soviets were eventually defeated in Afghanistan, forced to withdraw after suffering more troop and aircraft losses than they were willing to sustain. They have never released formal statistics. However, this incomplete list of Soviet aircraft losses in Afghanistan in Wikipedia shows increasing numbers of aircraft shot down (as opposed to lost due to mechanical problems) during the Reagan years. One of the Reagan initiatives was to deliver shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to the Afghan resistance.

Stolen Technology
US-inspired flaws in pipeline control technology stolen by the Sovets led to an enormous gas pipeline explosion in Siberia, and to Soviet uncertainty about which stolen technology could be trusted.

Economy
The collapse of the USSR is frequently attributed in part to the collapse of its economy.

Conclusion
The Reagan Administration had an explicit campaign to bring an end to the Soviet Empire. This campaign imposed great costs on the Soviet Union, which collapsed shortly after Reagan left office.

Trying to sort out the Bhutto murder

Any attempt to sort out the Bhutto murder has got to start with the evidence.

Here is a photo of a gunman who shot at Bhutto.
Here is a video of the assassination.
Here is a video of the Musharraf government's treatment of the evidence at the scene.

Musharraf's government claims that Bhutto was killed by the suicide bomb, and that Al Qaeda was responsible.

According to news reports, Bhutto's people who were in with the car with her say she died from gunshots.

The head of Pakistan's internal security service claimed that his service had given the public the "absolute facts", as backed up by the "evidence we collected." However, it is difficult to reconcile this claim about the collection of evidence at the scene with the above video of a fire truck washing away such evidence, as well as news reports stating that no autopsy was done. Additionally, the claim that the Musharraf government has given the public "absolute facts" about the murder is difficult to credit, since the Government has given at least three different accounts of the cause of her death.

According to this Daily Telegraph article,

The footage clearly shows Ms Bhutto collapsing into her armoured-vehicle before the suicide blast, contradicting official government claims that she ducked to avoid the shots and cracked her skull on the sunroof.

I can't personally see that in the video, but I can see no reason why the Daily Telegraph would lie, so I am inclined to accept that the Daily Telegraph's statement is correct. Additionally, it is backed up by the accounts of Bhutto's friends that she was killed by gunfire.

This was not the first attempt on Bhutto's life. She blamed Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the previous attempt last October.

Now, in light of this evidence, let's look at some hypotheses.

1) Musharraf ordered her murder.
Seems difficult to credit. First of all, why would he invite her back to the country, only to kill her? Surely he realized that such a course of action would lead to an explosion of violenced aimed at his government, similar to the one Pakistan is suffering right now. No matter what problems Bhutto created for Musharraf while alive, her death causes much worse problems for her.

2) Al Qaeda ordered her murder.
Seems highly plausible. As Engram over at Back Talk points out, Al Qaeda has frequently used suicide bombs in the past. Additionally, if they tried to kill her in October, it makes sense that they tried again in December.

Furthermore, following the links from Engram's post, you can see that Al Qaeda has declared war on Musharraf. So Al Qaeda wants to cause problems for Musharraf, and Bhutto's murder has done exactly that.

However, the fly in the ointment with this explanation is the Musharraf government attemtps to hide the truth. If they want the public to know the facts, why are they having a fire truck wash away evidence, denying doctors' request for an autopsy, and giving multiple, inconsistent explanations of what happened?

3) Al Qaeda ordered her murder, and elements in Musharraf's security services helped.

Also plausible. This would not be the first time Al Qaeda has infiltrated another organization. And Bhutto has promised that if she came to power, she would get rid of some elements of the security services; those elements would natural have taken exception to this.

At this point, I don't know which explanation I believe, except that I'm sure it's not number 1. It is possible that the Musharraf Government's bungling is just sheer stupidity. It is also possible that it is something more sinister.

Mike Huckabee is not telling the truth about Wayne Dumond

Wayne Dumond was a convicted rapist who was paroled while Mike Huckabee was Governor of Arkansas. After he was paroled, Dumond raped and murdered two more women. Huckabee insists he did not influence the parole board's decision to parole Dumond. Several parole board members insist that he did. The decision to parole Dumond was a disaster, so each party has motive to blame the other. The question becomes -- who is telling the truth?

Both sides have a motive to lie -- so the question is not as simple as some news reports make it seem. What the interested viewer has to do is look at what the various parties did and said at the time. Their retrospective claims are only mildly valuable. But contemporaneous evidence, when neither side had a motive to lie, will allow one to get to the truth of the matter. In this case, there is plenty of contemporaneous evidence. This evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Huckabee is lying.

So what is the contemporaneous evidence? First of all, in August, 1996, the board voted 4-1 to deny Dumond parole. Then, on September 20, Huckabee announced his intention to grant executive clemency. He faced a firestorm of protest from the victim, and from Dumond's other rape victims. Huckabee met with the board in a closed session, and, on January 16, 2007, the board changed its mind and voted 4-1 to grant parole to Dumond. So between August and January, something happened to cause three board members to change their minds.

To believe Huckabee's story, one would have to believe all of the following:

(1) The four board members who say Huckabee wanted them to grant parole are lying.
(2) Three board members just happened to change their minds between August and January, without any pressure from the Governor.
(3) Although Huckabee had announced his intention to grant executive clemency, and faced a firestorm of protest over that announcement, and had, by law, to announce whether or not he was going through with clemency by January 20, it is just a coincidence that the Parole Board relieved him of that responsibility by voting to grant parole on January 16.

But that's not all. Shortly before the January 16 meeting, Dumond was transferred to a different prison in the Arkansas system. If that hadn't happened, his case could not have been considered at the January 16 meeting, and Huckabee would have had been forced to make a decision regarding clemency. So was this transfer a mysterious coincidence?

Still not convinced? According to the Huffington Post, Huckabee's former top Butch Reeves, who personally attended the fateful Parole Board meeting, had this to say: The clear impression that I came away with from the meeting was that [Huckabee] favored Dumond's release. And if you don't want to take the left-wing Huffington Post's word for that, here is a similar account on ABC News.

But wait, there's more. In 2004, after Dumond had been convicted of murder in Missouri, Huckabee announced his intention to grant clemency to convicted murderers Denver Witham, Dennis Lewis, and Glen Martin Green, and Don Jeffers.

So, to the above three points, we have to add three more. If one believes Huckabee's story, one also has to believe that:

(4) The conveniently timed transfer of Dumond to a different prison was just a coincidence.
(5) Either Butch Reeves is a liar, or both ABC News and the Huffington Post are lying about what Reeves said, and
(6) Huckabee, who in 2004 had a habit of trying to get murderers released from prison, didn't try to do the same thing with the Parole Board in 1996-7.

Perhaps that's not enough for you? There is also the fact that contrary to standard Parole Board practice, the Board did not keep notes of the fateful meeting with Huckabee shortly before Dumond's release.

Need more evidence? The Board also had a standard policy of not reconsidering parole denials for at least a year -- but it made an exception in Dumond's case.

Regardless of your political persuasion, if your powers of deductive reasoning have not deserted you, you can only come to one conclusion about the Dumond case: Mike Huckabee did ask the Parole Board to parole Wayne Dumond.

New Blog

In politics, it frequently happens that both sides have an incentive to lie. The purpose of this blog is to decide which side is telling the truth.

To the best of my ability, I will attempt to do this without ideological bias. I will read many points of view, and use the evidence to decide who is correct, and who is not.