Obama Press Conference: Nailing Torture, Trashing the Pakistani Government

Related Post: Pakistan - Who's in Charge?
Video and Transcript: President Obama “Day 100″ Press Conference (29 April)

President Obama offered an excellent presentation in Wednesday night's press conference. He was in command, fluently moving from his opening agenda on swine flu and the economy to questions on foreign policy, the US auto industry, and the financial sector. He even dealt effectively with the puffball question, courtesy of a New York Times correspondent, "What has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?"

Obama said little about foreign policy and security in his initial statement, dealing with the immediate health crisis and the Federal Government's budget, but the third question put him on the spot over torture:

You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture....Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

I half-expected the President, given the Administration's back-and-forth over the last 10 days on whether to press charges against any Bush officials, to flinch. He didn't. To use baseball language, he knocked the question out of the park.

What I’ve said — and I will repeat — is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture.... And that’s why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

Yes, it was torture. And whether it had any effect is tangential, given the damage done to America's counter-terrorist efforts and its standing in the world.

Obama invoked Winston Churchill --- and who in the US could hate Churchill? --- who "said, 'We don’t torture,' when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat". The President avoided the trap of commenting on which Bushman "sanctioned torture", but he turned the main talking point of Bush defenders, "Torture helped win the War on Terror", against them:

[Banning torture] takes away a critical recruitment tool that Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians. And it makes us — it puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international, coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these networks.

I am sceptical that Obama will be closing Guantanamo Bay this year. And I still have concerns --- serious concerns --- about other US detention facilities, such as Camp Bagram in Afghanistan. But, at least on the narrow issue of whether there is any rationale for "torture", the President signed, sealed, and delivered the appropriate response.

In foreign policy, two specific cases arose: Iraq and Pakistan. On the former, Obama easily held the line, despite the continuing bombings and political instability in and beyond Baghdad:

Athough you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a — a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, et cetera, remain very low relative to what was going on last year, for example. And so you haven’t seen the kinds of huge spikes that you were seeing for a time. The political system is holding and functioning in Iraq.

(The questioner, Jeff Mason, let Obama off the hook. The emerging issue is whether the US military will have troops in and just outside Iraqi cities well past the summer deadline for withdrawal.)

Pakistan, however, offered a far more serious exchange, the significance of which has been missed so far by the media. It started with a sensationalist, and thus potentially useless question:

Can you reassure the American people that if necessary America could secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban’s hands or, worst case scenario, even al Qaeda’s hands?

The President batted that scenario straight back, "I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure." Then, however, he offered two very clear signals.

First, his Administration is standing behind the Pakistani military and encouraging it to take the lead in the fight against insurgency. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe "primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands. We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation." What's more....

On the military side, you’re starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you’re starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists.

Second, while Obama and his advisors are placing their strategic chips on the military, they have little faith in the current Pakistani Government:

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan....The civilian government there right now is very fragile and don’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people.

Obama's statement was not off-the-cuff. It was the next step, after statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that Islamabad better get its act together to take on "the Taliban" and "Al Qa'eda" or its politicians can be put to the side.

If Pakistani President Zardari is not convinced, he will do well to consider Obama's concluding challenge:

We will provide them all of the cooperation that we can. We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.

Of course, Obama never said "coup", but as Washington ramps up the fight against insurgents in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, he sent out the message.

Zardari is disposable. The Pakistani military is not.

Video: Hillary Clinton in Baghdad

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton maintained a positive, stay-the-course line on her trip to Iraq, despite the bombings on the eve of her arrival that killed more than 150 people:

[The attacks] do not reflect any diversion from the security progress that has been made. The reaction from the Iraqi people and the Iraqi leaders was firm and united in rejecting that violence and refusing to allow it to set Iraqi against Iraqi, which is obviously one of its intended goals.

Clinton also pitched the wider Obama agenda, using a CNN interview (the interviewer's question was clearly set up by Hillary's staff in advance so the Secretary of State could knock it out of the park) that American success in Iraq can serve as a model for US intervention in Afghanistan:

Latest from Iraq: When Violence Goes Beyond "Violent Semi-Peace"

In January, just after the US Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq, we had a go at the construction in The New York Times of a "violent semi-peace". It seemed to us that the authors were trying to salvage a back-slapping congratulations of a US accomplishment even though violence and political instability were likely to continue in Iraq.

After the series of bombing in the last 48 hours that have killed more than 150 people, it is not a question of returning to that exchange with a "see, we told you so". The situation is far too serious for that.

Juan Cole, as always, has been incisive in his analysis, noting that there has been almost 30 major bombings in Iraq this month. Yesterday's assault on the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim in northern Baghdad is "much more dangerous", however, because of the symbolism: Musa Kazim is the seventh of twelve Imams for Shi'a. If the shrine had been destroyed, the incident could have sparked retaliations such as those that followed the destruction of the Samarra mosque in 2006.

The concern has an eerie feel this morning as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has landed in Baghdad has landed for a surprise visit. Her assurance --- in the manner of January's New York Times --- that Iraq is "on the right track" is to be expected.

What is more disturbing is her blame of "rejectionist efforts" for violence: that is uncomfortably close to Donald Rumsfeld's confidence in 2003 that it was only "dead-enders" causing trouble in Iraq.

The Torture Memos: A Quick Response to George W. Bush's Officials

Related Link: Text of the Torture Memos
Related Post: 4 Torture Memos Released, No Prosecutions of Interrogators

I am still concerned that the Obama Administration's release of four Bush-era memoranda documenting the authorisation of torture (or, as Politico insists, "interrogation techniques") is, in part, a deflection from ongoing issues over Executive power and surveillance/rendition/indefinite detention. And I suspect we'll be pursuing those matters in days to come.

But for today, as former members and acolytes of the Bush Administration absolve themselves in the press:

This was torture sanctioned by President Bush and his chief advisors. This was torture that was illegal, immoral, and ineffective. This was a torture that did not win the "War on Terror" but damaged US foreign policy and American standing with other countries and peoples.

This was a brute exercise of power, sanctioned by (but not actually responding directly to) the brutal attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001.

To Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency/Central Intelligence Agency, and Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General, who write in the Wall Street Journal that the release of the memoranda "makes the problem [of national security] worse":

Both of you, without question or qualm, carried out the orders that violated the Geneva Conventions, defied agencies such as the Red Cross, suspended any notion of US and international law, and --- in certain cases --- led to injury and death. Both of you strove for years to hide these orders. Both of you put out stories of the effectiveness of "interrogation techniques" which were later discredited.

To William Kristol, who sneers at the statement of current Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that "[these] methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing":

From your editor's chair at the Weekly Standard and with yo social-political connections in Washington, you pressed for a war --- one that would both demonstrate and assure American superiority --- you had been advocating since 1998. Initially, you declared that war against the "jihadists". But, even as you supported the torture of detainees, your priority was not our safety from Al Qa'eda but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, after that, you wanted the overthrow of the Iranian Government.

Your primary concern was not "terrorists". Yet you were happy, in the name of perpetual war, to promote any method, no matter how effectively it shredded our own laws and standards rather than the threat from our enemies.

To Karl Rove, who Twitters about Kristol's column: "Another Must Read":

Your primary, maybe only, concern about the measures taken by the Bush Administration was the extent to which they supported the election and re-election campaigns of Republican candidates. If we raised our voices against torture, that only bolstered your message that we were soft, unreliable, appeasers of the enemy. And you too were only using Al Qa'eda as a foil to get to your #1 battle, the War against Iraq that would ensure a Republican mandate for years to come.

Forgive me, gentlemen, if you are receiving an undue share of my anger, given that the former President, George W. Bush, and the leaders of the campaign for torture, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should also be held to account. But as they have not responded to yesterday's news....

Your fatuous, sometimes whining criticism of this current Administration for revealing your illegal, immoral, counter-productive seizure and manipulation of power is no better than the criminal blaming the judge who allowed the evidence into his courtroom.

You are deceivers and liars. In an ideal world, you would be held to criminal account for your actions; in this world (ironically thanks to yesterday's Administration decisions) you will face no formal prosecution. Therefore, we can only hope that your ex post facto excuses and pretenses reinforce a determination to ensure that this shall never happen again.

UPDATE: General Odierno Backs Down on Obama's Iraq Plans?

Related Post: Video and Transcript: General Odierno on CNN’s State of the Union
Related Post: Obama v. The Military (Part 441) - Odierno Launches an Offensive from Iraq

As we thought earlier today, the appearance of General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, on CNN's flagship State of the Union programme was quite interesting. Indeed, it appears the General --- after his apparent challenge to the White House withdrawal plan earlier this week --- has beat a retreat.

John King's interview started with the same topic that opened Odierno's chat with The Times of London, "an uptick in violence in recent days" in Iraq. And the General initially maintained the flexibility of "stay or go" despite deadlines for withdrawal:

We will continue to conduct assessments along with the government of Iraq as we move forwards the June 30th deadline. If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain a presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that.

But then Odierno added an unexpected twist: "Ultimately, it will the decision of [Iraqi] Prime Minister Maliki."

Nouri al-Maliki never appeared in Odierno's interview with The Times. Not once. Indeed, the General showed no recognition of Iraqi politics even as he went through a checklist of the challenges that might keep US forces in the country.

Noticing the Iraqi Prime Minister, and his "ultimate decision" on US forces, was not the only shift in Odierno's position. Asked by King about his earlier statement that he would "like to see a force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000" through 2014 or 2015, Odierno once more put the rationale for a continuing American presence:

It really has always been about Iraqi — Iraqis securing their own country. So the issue becomes, do we think they will be able to do that?

Yet the General then gave way: "As they continue to improve in the operations they’ve been able to conduct, I believe that they will be able to do that by the end of 2011."

King pressed, "On a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being fully confident, that you will meet that deadline, that all U.S. troops will be gone at the end of 2011?" And Odierno gave a near-definitive answer that he never offered The Times:

As you ask me today, I believe it’s a 10 that we will be gone by 2011.

There are scenarios in which Odierno's shift is not a concession to his President. For example, The Times never put the blunt 1-to-10 question that King asked.

As I read and view this, however, I see this scenario. In the 72 hours between the publication of The Times interview and the CNN appearance, someone in Washington got a hold of Odierno and told him to cut out his "wiggle room". More than that, in fact. The general was instructed to recognise that the Iraqi Government, not Raymond Odierno, would make the call on whether US troops would leave by the deadines set out in the December 2008 Status of Forces Agreement.

If that is so, Barack Hussein Obama may have finally gotten the upper hand on one of his military adversaries. Which only leaves the matter of a General David Petraeus.