Aug
30
2013
When It Comes to State Violence, Too Much Is Never Enough
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U.S. warship firing one of 110 cruise missiles at Libyan forces (photo: DoD)
Time magazine's Michael Crowley(9/9/13) offers an analysis of how the Syrian situation reflects on Barack Obama's presidency:
Whatever comes of Obama's confrontation with Assad, an even more dangerous confrontation lies in wait–the one with Iran. If another round of negotiations with Tehran should fail, Obama may soon be obliged to make good on his vow to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. "I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests," Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2012.But to his critics, Obama does hesitate, and trouble follows as a result. With more than three years left in his presidency, he has the opportunity to reverse that impression. Success in Syria and then Iran could vindicate him, and failure could be crushing. "The risk is that, if things in the Middle East continue to spiral, that will become his legacy," says Brian Katulis, a former Obama campaign adviser now with the Center for American Progress.
Obama does "hesitate to use force"–is that his problem? Since 2009, US drone strikes have killed more than 2000 people in Pakistan, including 240 civilians, 62 of them children. Since Obama took office, they've killed more than 400 in Yemen; drone deaths in Somalia are harder to quantify.
Obama roughly tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, from 33,000 to 98,000 (Think Progress, 6/22/11). In 2011, he sent naval and air forces into battle to overthrow the government of Libya's Moammar Gaddafi. In Iraq, Obama tried and failed to keep tens of thousands of troops in the country beyond the withdrawal deadline negotiated by the Bush administration (New York Times, 10/22/11).
This is a record that would not seem to indicate a particular hesitancy to use force. Oddly, Crowley acknowledges much of this: "Obama …sent more troops to Afghanistan, escalated drone strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorists," he writes. But his military actions are presented as a sign of his unwillingness to take military action: "In Libya, he at first stood by as rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi's forces found themselves outgunned and on the run."
No matter how many wars you engage in–Obama has had six so far–there are always wars you could have started but didn't. Crowley seems to be suggesting that those unfought wars ought to take the blame for any problems Obama leaves behind.
Sep
01
2013
Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account Is More Credible?
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Let's compare a couple of accounts of the mass deaths apparently caused by chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21. One account comes from the U.S. government (8/30/13), introduced by Secretary of State John Kerry. The other was published by a Minnesota-based news site called Mint Press News (8/29/13).
The government account expresses "high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack" on August 21. The Mintreport bore the headline "Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack." Which of these two versions should we find more credible?
The U.S. government, of course, has a track record that will incline informed observers to approach its claims with skepticism–particularly when it's making charges about the proscribed weapons of official enemies. Kerry said in hisaddress that "our intelligence community" has been "more than mindful of the Iraq experience"–as should be anyone listening to Kerry's presentation, because the Iraq experience informs us that secretaries of State can express great confidence about matters that they are completely wrong about, and that U.S. intelligence assessments can be based on distortion of evidence and deliberate suppression of contradictory facts.
Secretary of State John Kerry making the case that Damascus has used chemical weapons (US State Department)
Comparing Kerry's presentation on Syria and its accompanying document to Colin Powell'sspeech to the UN on Iraq, though, one is struck by how little specific evidence was included in the case for the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons. It gives the strong impression of being pieced together from drone surveillance and NSA intercepts, supplemented by Twittermessages and YouTube videos, rather than from on-the-ground reporting or human intelligence. Much of what is offered tries to establish that the victims in Ghouta had been exposed to chemical weapons–a question that indeed had been in some doubt, but had already largely been settled by a report by Doctors Without Borders that reported that thousands of people in the Damascus area had been treated for "neurotoxic symptoms."
On the critical question of who might be responsible for such a chemical attack, Kerry's presentation was much more vague and circumstantial. A key point in the government's white paper is "the detection of rocket launches from regime-controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media." It's unclear why this is supposed to be persuasive. Do rockets take 90 minutes to reach their targets? Does nerve gas escape from rockets 90 minutes after impact, or, once released, take 90 minutes to cause symptoms?
In a conflict as conscious of the importance of communication as the Syrian Civil War, do citizen journalists wait an hour and a half before reporting an enormous development–the point at which, as Kerry put it, "all hell broke loose in the social media"? Unless there's some reason to expect this kind of a delay, it's very unclear why we should think there's any connection at all between the allegedly observed rocket launches and the later reports of mass poisoning.
When the evidence isn't circumstantial, it's strikingly vague: "We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the UN inspectors obtaining evidence," the report asserts. Taken at face value, it's one of the most damning claims in the government's report–a veritable confession. But how was the identity of this official established? And what exactly did they say that "confirmed" chemical weapons use? Recall that Powell played tapes of Iraqi officials supposedly talking about concealing evidence of banned weapons from inspectors–which turned out to show nothing of the kind. But Powell at least played tapes of the intercepted communication, even as he spun and misrepresented their contents–allowing for the possibility of an independent interpretation of these messages. Perhaps "mindful of the Iraq experience," Kerry allows for no such interpretation.
Colin Powell making the case that Iraq possessed proscribed weaponry
Another key claim is asserted without substantiation: "Syrian chemical weapons personnel were operating in the Damascus suburb of 'Adra from Sunday, August 18 until early in the morning on Wednesday, August 21, near an area that the regime uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin." How were these personnel identified, and what were the signs of their operations? How was this place identified as an area used to mix sarin? Here again the information provided was far less detailed than what Powell gave to the UN: Powell's presentation included satellite photographs of sites where proscribed weapons were being made, with an explanation of what they revealed to "experts with years and years of experience": "The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions," he said, pointing to an annotated photograph of bunkers that turned out to be storing no such thing. Powell's presentation graphically demonstrated that US intelligence analysts are fallible, which is part of why presenting bare assertions without any of the raw materials used to derive those conclusions should not be very convincing.
Kerry did offer an explanation for why the report was so cursory: "In order to protect sources and methods, some of what we know will only be released to members of Congress, the representatives of the American people. That means that some things we do know, we can't talk about publicly." It is not clear, however, why intelligence methods that produced visual and audible evidence that could be shared with the public 10 years ago cannot be similarly utilized today. It does point to why the $52 billion the United States spends on surveillance annually, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (Washington Post, 8/29/13), provides relatively little information that's of value to American democracy: The collection of information is considered so much more valuable than the information collected that it rarely if ever can be used to inform a public debate. Instead, as we discuss the dreadful question of whether to launch a military attack on another country, we are offered an undemocratic "trust us" from the most secretive parts of our government–an offer that history warns us to be extremely wary of.
Mnar Muhawesh
Unlike the U.S. government, Mint does not have much of a track record, having been founded only about a year and a half ago (CJR, 3/28/12). The founder of the for-profit startup is Mnar Muhawesh, a 24-year-old Palestinian-American woman who believes, reasonably enough, that "our media has absolutely failed our country" (MinnPost, 1/18/12). One of its two reporters on its Syrian chemical weapons piece, Dale Gavlak, is a longtime Associated Press Mideast stringer who has also done work for NPR and the BBC. AP was one of the few US corporate media outlets to question official assertions about Iraqi WMDs, contrasting Powell's assertions with what could be discerned from on-the-ground reporting (Extra!, 3-4/06).
Mint takes a similar approach to the Syrian story, with a reporter in Ghouta–not Gavlak but Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian freelancer and journalism grad student–who "spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents." The article reports that "many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out" the chemical attack. The recipients of the chemical weapons are said to be Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda-linked rebel faction that was caught possessing sarin nerve gas in Turkey, according to Turkish press reports (OE Watch,7/13).
Mint quotes Abu Abdel-Moneim, described as the father of a rebel killed in the chemical weapons attacks, as saying that his son had described carrying unconventional weapons provided by Saudi Arabia to underground storage tunnels–a "tubelike structure" and a "huge gas bottle." A rebel leader identified as J describes the release of toxic weaponry as accidental, saying, "Some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions." Another rebel referred to as K complains, "When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them."
Dale Gavlak
Of course, independent media accounts are not necessarily more credible than official reports–or vice versa. As with the government white paper, there are gaps in the Mint account; while Abdel-Moneim cites his late son's account of carrying chemical weapons, the rebels quoted do not indicate how they came to know what they say they know about the origin of the weapons. But unlike the government, Mint is honest about the limits of its knowledge: "Some information in this article could not be independently verified," the story admits. "Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates."
This humility about the difficulty of reporting on a covert, invisible attack in the midst of a chaotic civil war actually adds to the credibility of the Mint account. It's those who are most certain about matters of which they clearly lack firsthand knowledge who should make us most skeptical.
Sep
03
2013
U.S. Missiles and 'Pinpoint Accuracy'
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Whenever war is near, you can count on U.S. media to tout thelethal efficiency of U.S. weapons. Now is no different.
CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin (8/30/13) declared:
Syria now is staring down the barrel of five U.S. warships…. The U.S. is believed to have submarines out there as well. All those vessels can carry cruise missiles able to strike targets more than 1,000 miles away with pinpoint accuracy.
On September 2, also on CNN, correspondent Tom Foreman told viewers:
Let's talk about cruise missiles for a minute here. Cruise missiles are extraordinary weapons. They're very reliable. They have pinpoint accuracy. They can carry 1,000 pound warheads and we might be talking about 100, 200, 300 of them being launched.
This kind of thing hasn't been seen on CNN since… well, the last time the U.S. was precisely bombing a country. That time it was Libya, and a CNN military reporter (FAIR Blog, 3/21/11) was explaining that "American Tomahawk missiles can be reprogrammed in flight. If there was a risk of civilian casualties, operators could change the target after launch. But the Navy did not use that ability, confident it was aiming at military targets."
Sep
03
2013
John Kerry's Very Precise Death Toll: Where Does It Come From?
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When the PBS NewsHour covered John Kerry's dramatic presentation on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21, reporter Jeffrey Brown (8/30/13) zeroed in on the death toll:KERRY: The United States government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children.BROWN: The chilling numbers stood out from the U.S. intelligence assessment released this afternoon. And, lest anyone doubt, the secretary of State insisted, its findings are as clear as they are compelling.
On ABC World News (8/30/13), Martha Raddatz emphasized the numbers as well:
It is the images and the stories from the survivors that are clearly the most compelling. And that number 1,429–1,429 killed, including those 426 children.
On NBC Nightly News (8/30/13), anchor Lester Holt said that Kerry had "revealed that more than 1,400 people had been killed in the chemical attack, including more than 400 children." Note: "revealed," not "said" or "claimed" or "alleged."
And the New York Times editorial page (8/31/13), in a piece about the need for stronger legal justification for launching an attack on Syria, wrote definitively that such action would be "in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed more than 1,400 people."
But where does that number come from–and why is substantially higher than other estimates? As the AP (8/31/13) reported:
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that monitors casualties in the country, said it has confirmed 502 deaths, nearly 1,000 fewer than the American intelligence assessment claimed.Rami Abdel-Rahman, the head of the organization, said he was not contacted by U.S. officials about his efforts to collect information about the death toll."America works only with one part of the opposition that is deep in propaganda," he said, and urged the Obama administration to release the information its estimate is based on.
And Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel of the McClatchy news service (9/2/13) noted that substantially lower death tolls were released by Britain (more than 350) and France (281).
Much of the case the U.S. is making against Syria is based on intelligence that the government is so far unwilling to make public (Washington Post,9/2/13)–and some of what is available is not terribly convincing (Truthout.org, 9/3/13).
So journalists should, at a minimum, attribute these estimates to the government–and note that they are not in line with other reputable estimates of the death toll in Syria. Ideally, reporters should ask John Kerry to explain the discrepancy. He just made the rounds on all the major Sunday chat shows, and no one who was interviewing him thought to bring it up.
Sep
04
2013
Asking Kerry Questions–but Which Ones?
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Last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry made a dramatic presentation of U.S. intelligence findings regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21. That intelligence provides the basis for the U.S. assertion that the Syrian government carried out an attack that killed over 1,400 people, and it is the rationale for an expected U.S. military strike on Syria.
Kerry appeared on all of the Sunday talkshows. But he was mostly not asked about the case for war with Syria.
Instead, the questioning was overwhelmingly concerned with Barack Obama's decision to seek congressional approval for an attack on Syria–a notion that many of the Sunday show journalists seemed to find remarkably troubling.
On Fox News Sunday (9/1/13), host Chris Wallace asked Kerry seven questions–all of them about the decision to go to Congress, which clearly seemed to bother Wallace: "Haven't you handed Syria and Iran at least a temporary victory, sir?"
On CBS's Face the Nation (9/1/13), guest host Major Garrett asked Kerry five questions, all of them about Congress. He wondered if the debate would lead to a different type of war:
Are you suggesting that if Congress goes ahead and authorizes this, this will be a more forceful, memorable military strike than it would have been had the president acted alone?
On NBC's Meet the Press (9/1/13), David Gregory asked Kerry eight questions, five of which concerned the Congressional approval. "Do you think the United States has undermined its leverage in the world, its credibility?" was how he posed one of the questions. The only time Gregory brought up the intelligence that forms the case for war, it was not really a question at all, but an opportunity for Kerry to repeat a talking point:
Mr. Secretary, I just want to underline the news you made this morning. This is a sarin gas attack perpetrated by the Assad regime. This is a slam dunk case that he did it.
And on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked Kerry 10 questions, seven of which dealt with congressional approval. Unlike the others, he posed a question about the strength of the U.S. case for war:
You say that the evidence is clear, but President Putin of Russia calling it utter nonsense that President Assad would authorize this kind of a chemical strike…. Your response to President Putin?
Of course, putting the skepticism in the mouth of a world leader generally antagonistic to U.S. policy is a way of saying that questioning the evidence is something that "official enemies" do.
But there are plenty of people who think the White House could, at the very least, reveal more of the intelligence they claim is so convincing–that's whatWashington Post columnist Walter Pincus, who spent most of his career reporting on intelligence, argued in his September 2 column. And investigative journalist Gareth Porter (Truthout, 9/3/13 ) offered a thorough challenge to the intelligence, and veteran reporter Robert Parry (ConsortiumNews.com,8/30/13) raised the kinds of questions that TV reporters should have posed directly to Kerry.
It's understandable that some interviewers would ask questions about the White House's seemingly sudden decision to take their case for war to Congress. But obsessing over it so thoroughly–it was the focus of 80 percent of the questions Kerry was asked–serves two functions: It crowds out space that should be reserved for skeptical coverage of the U.S. intelligence presentation, and it treats the normal, constitutionally mandated business of seeking congressional approval for war as if it were an exotic and nearly unprecedented maneuver. Both are, in different ways, helpful to the White House–and dodge the essential question of whether they have really made a credible case for war.
Sep
05
2013
The Strange Thing About Cluster Bombs
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These are not the bad kind of cluster bomb, because they are dropped on and not by official enemies. (photo: US Air Force)
The New York Times has an article today (9/5/13) about a Human Rights Watch reportcharging Syria's government with the use of cluster bombs, a "widely prohibited weapon." Cluster bombs are munitions that release hundreds of miniature explosives; as the Times' Rick Gladstonewrites, "Each bomblet detonates on impact, spraying shrapnel in all directions and killing, maiming and destroying indiscriminately."
Gladstone quotes a Human Rights Watch spokesperson calling cluster bombs "insidious weapons that remain on the ground, causing death and destruction for decades." The reporter goes on to cite the Cluster Munitions Coalition peace group on the deadly effects of these weapons:
The coalition said that children make up one-third of all casualties caused by cluster munitions. It said 60 percent of the total casualties caused by the weapons are civilians going about normal activities.
There's a Convention on Cluster Munitions signed by 112 countries who have agreed not to use or possess these weapons. Who wouldn't agree to such a thing? Well, aside from Syria, the article does mention:
There are 85 countries that have not signed the convention, including three permanent members of the Security Council–China, Russia and the United States. Most countries in the Middle East have not signed, including Syria, Israel and Jordan.
Huh–so the country that the New York Times is based in, where most of its readers live, is one of the countries that refuses to sign the treaty banning these horrific weapons? Maybe that's worth a mention before the eighth of 11 paragraphs.
In fact, readers might be interested to know that not only does the U.S. not ban cluster bombs, it actually uses them–they've been used by US forces in Serbia,Afghanistan and Iraq, with the most recent target being Yemen. As the Human Rights Watch report notes in a portion not quoted by the Times:
The last reported US use of a cluster munition was in Yemen on December 17, 2009, when one or more TLAM-D cruise missiles loaded with BLU-97 bomblets struck the hamlet of al-Majala in southern Abyan province, causing more than 40 civilian casualties.
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