Letters to the Editor
bostonMA
Published Letters: 36 Editor's Choice: 22
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Black Sites and Black Lists
[Read the article: Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is no doubt that anyone with even a sliver of empathy would be outraged by the inhumanity of this physical and psychological mistreatment of an individual in the custody of our government.
Somehow, the fact that this Yemeni man is seemingly an unfortunate victim of circumstance allows the reader to rationalize away the growing threat of assertive and unchecked executive government power to our own communities and persons. In other words, even this detailed accounting won't make it real to most of us. Many here will read the article, shake our heads, and go about our daily business. Many will conclude that this will really only be serious and threatening when it could directly affect our lives, and perhaps find comfort in a belief that such a scenario is unlikely to happen. After all, we all have regular sounding names and would never conceivably cross paths with counterterrorism efforts in Jordan, would we? Isn't the government really just doing this to protect us from future terrorist attacks, even if the effort is a bit rough around the edges?
In October 2006, George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law. This grants our President the power to declare individuals "enemy combatants", and to set conditions of detainment, including permissible interrogation tactics and the final decision on the definition of torture. The enemy combatant classification can include a US citizen who is "engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States", a broad context. This act does not require that individuals be charged with any crime and sets no maximum duration to imprisonment. Most see the MCA as allowing the President to detain individuals at will for an indefinite duration, subject to interrogation methods of his choosing.
The full real world application of the MCA remains to be seen, although some have speculated that it might first be applied to anti-war activists, animal rights activists (some of whom have already been classified as terrorists by the administration), and environmental activists. A further step could extend the classification to thought leaders among government opposition groups, and yet further into dissenting media voices. Should such detainments begin on any scale, fear alone would likely silence and subdue broad segments of our society.
Let us hope that this administration applies these powers with tremendous restraint, lest some voices among us wind up like Mr. Bashmilah.
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The Next Impossible War
[Read the article: The fallout for Bush on Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Blix states flatly: "The most recent U.S. intelligence report now makes war an impossibility."
This statement is an optimists view of an administration dedicated to pursuit neoconservative goals worldwide, which certainly include U.S. dominance of Iran and the broader region. It also discounts the tremendous influence of Israel on U.S. policy. Israel may hold their own key to start a U.S.-Iran military engagement that is independent of the politics and merits of any U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran. After the latest NIE was released:
- President Bush sought to underscore potential future risks noted in the report, and the administration continues to talk up Iran's evil intentions, noting continued work on uranium enrichment and Iran's recent long range missile testing
- Israel strongly reaffirmed their own intelligence findings warning of Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Israel's Public Security Minister stated that "Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat"
- Israel has sent an unscheduled intelligence delegation to the United States, and the United States has sent the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to Tel Aviv to review the US position on Iran
- The recent uranium shipment from Russia to Iran has led Bush to claim that Iran must stop all enrichment activities, introducing a new stricter construct in which Iran's program would be seen as legitimate in U.S. eyes: "If the Iranians accept that [Russian] uranium for a civilian power plant, then there's no need for them to learn how to enrich"
- Just this week, the White House announced that Bush would be visiting Israel in early January
U.S. military action against Iran is still possible, and perhaps likely:
- If Israel's intelligence conclusions drive it to make a pre-emptive strike against Iran, any Iranian counter-strike would allow Bush the opportunity to justify U.S. involvement in the name of protecting Israel from further Iranian retaliation
- Bush has declared Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be a global terrorist organization. As such, new claims of the Revolutionary Guard involvement in supporting Shia actions in Iraq that harm U.S. military interests could be cause for action against Iran's military
- Newly discovered evidence against Iran could be used to reopen the case for U.S. action or bolster the legitimacy of U.S. involvement in any conflict between Iran and Israel. Like the runup to the Iraq war, selective use of intelligence or findings of uncertain quality may not be fully known until after action is initiated
We should not discount the possibility of highly motivated interests making a 2008 war between the US and Iran a reality.