“President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Neither assertion is wholly accurate.“ Update: Slate‘s Fred Kaplan parses Dubya’s speech further.
Category: The Middle East
Adding Insult to Intelligence Failures.
As McCain calls for changes in Dubya’s Iraq strategy, White House National Security advisor Stephen Hadley inaugurates Dubya’s comeback plan, which will get more run in a presidential speech today. Step One: Call the Dems out on their pro-war votes. “‘Some of the critics today,’ Hadley added, ‘believed themselves in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American people.‘” Well, yes, but if Dems were relying on faulty and doctored intelligence to come to that supposition in 2002, that only brings us back to the $64,000 question: What exactly happened to our prewar intelligence once it reached the White House?
Grey Lady Down.
“Even before I went to jail, I had become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war…I believed then, and still do, that the answer to bad information is more reporting.” To no one’s surprise, Judy Miller “retires” from the New York Times, but not before getting in one last word (and setting up her own website.) Well, she was way wrong on WMD, but she’s right about this: The best thing the NYT can do to restore its credibility after Judy and Jayson Blair would be to lead an investigatory charge into the pre-war Iraq intelligence, and pronto.
Horror in Jordan.
Another terror strike: This time, a series of bombs in Amman kill 67 and wound 150, many of them guests at a wedding celebration. No one’s claimed responsibility yet, but Al Qaeda is obviously a good bet…word is they’ve tried to hit Jordan before. Update: Al Qaeda it is.
A Murder Most Foul.
“Two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner in [C.I.A. officer Mark] Swanner’s custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated…Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.” So, as the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer reports, “we do not torture“…we just crucify. Sweet merciful Jesus, what have we become? (Via Malice Aforethought.)
The Hell Jar.
Generally well-made and well-acted, and at times beautifully shot (particularly in the oil-fire sequence late in the film), Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, alas, doesn’t really work. One marine recruit’s account of his time in “the suck” and his service in Gulf War I, which involved a lot of waiting around in the Saudi desert with nary an enemy combatant in sight, the film is strangely flat and uninvolving for most of its run. It must’ve been hard to figure out a way to make a movie about anxious boredom seem compelling to an audience, and I haven’t read Anthony Swofford’s much-acclaimed memoir, so I don’t really know how much the source material is at fault, but stocking Jarhead with war movie cliches and nods to other, better films was not the correct answer.
As the movie begins, Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) undergoes a mercifully brief stint in Basic Training (a la Full Metal Jacket), before being assigned to a unit under the severe but well-meaning Staff Sgt. Siek (Jamie Foxx). Soon, Iraq invades Kuwait, and Swofford’s unit (which includes an excellent-as-usual but somewhat miscast Peter Sarsgaard, and memorable turns by Lucas Black and Jacob Vargas) find themselves in the Saudi desert, and the interminable waiting begins. Trained to be lethal killing machines, Swofford & co. are all dressed up with no place to go, so they spend their days hydrating, pining over their (serially unfaithful) ladyfriends, running chemical attack simulations, and rather unsuccessfully staving off insanity with machismo and masochism. Finally, they’re given the chance to fulfill their training, only to discover to their disgust that marine infantry are somewhat extraneous in this particular conflict, and they’ll have very little chance to exorcise their ingrained bloodlust. (To which I say, better than the alternative — I suspect very few veterans of live combat situations would share their disappointment.)
In almost any war, long stretches of waiting followed by intermittent bursts of activity is the soldier’s lot, so perhaps Jarhead should be commended for trying to bring this reality into focus. But, I have to admit — and admittedly, I’m as civilian as they come — a lot of the movie rings false. And, even if the many implausible details are in fact true and documented, the movie does itself a disservice by wallowing in broad war movie cliche. We’ve got the aforementioned hellish basic training, the sergeant with a heart of gold, the private who goes bug-nuts psycho in the field, the obligatory descent into madness by the protagonist, so on and so forth. In its best moments, Jarhead riffs on these obvious nods — marines hoop and holler to the valkryie scene in Apocalypse Now, and Swofford complains that The Doors’ “Break on Through” is “Vietnam music.” But most of the time, Jarhead just feels like more of the same.
In sum, if you want to see a great Gulf War I movie, watch Three Kings. Jarhead, unfortunately, is at best a low two-pair.
A thin grey line.
Seen tonight with Jarhead: The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Munich, with Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, and Daniel Craig, on the aftermath of, and Israeli response to, the murders at the 1972 Olympics. From this brief clip, it looks to be a very timely meditation on means and ends in the war on terror.
Fein Time.
“There has never been more frustration with the war in Iraq, and less clarity about our mission there, than we face today…And while we haven’t heard the administration clearly articulate our military mission in Iraq, there is another silence that is just as deafening — the lack of a debate in Congress about how and when that mission will be brought to an end.” Over at Salon, Sen. Russ Feingold argues for a timetable in Iraq, or at the very least a congressional debate on the issue.
America Embraces Room 101.
As the Cheney-Addington gang work to strip the Geneva Convention from prisoner treatment manuals, the Washington Post uncovers an overseas network of CIA “black sites,” a.k.a. gulags, some of which actually use old Soviet compounds in Eastern Europe(!) “It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas…Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.”
Whatsmore, these gulags, created under this administration since 9/11, “were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees’ chairmen and vice chairmen on the program’s generalities.” There’s no other way to look at this: By appropriating the tactics of our enemies, as John McCain warned earlier this month, we have abandoned our most fundamental principles and shamed our nation. Evildoers? Please. Dubya need look no further than his own White House and CIA. Update: Congress and the EU want answers.
Behind Closed Doors.
“I demand on behalf of the America people that we understand why these investigations aren’t being conducted.” In a bold and unblockable parliamentary move, Harry Reid closes the Senate doors to push for an inquiry into Libby and Weaponsgate. A blustering and blindsided Catkiller Frist, for one, was shocked — shocked! — by the closed-door session. “The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership…They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.” Please, Frist, take it down a notch…your blind panic is hardly presidential. Besides, the GOP don’t have any convictions yet either…just plenty of investigations and indictments.
Update: The Dems dig in: “We’re serving notice on [Senate Republicans] at this moment: Be prepared for this motion every day until you face the reality. The Senate Intelligence Committee has a responsibility to hold this administration accountable for the misuse of intelligence information. They have promised this investigation. We will continue to make this request until they do it.” Bravo!