“…the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

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After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

With the Bush Administration in its last days on January 16, 2009, the Pentagon’s Inspector General released a report which found nothing improper in the Department’s pundits for hire program. The report illustrates once again how most Inspector Generals lack independence. (As noted in item 326, the Pentagon’s IG does not even have its own attorney but uses one from the department’s General Counsel’s office, a clear conflict of interest.) The Pentagon uses one of its own lawyer to investigate itself. Unsurprisingly, punches are pulled, and the result as here is a whitewash.

The FOIA documents show that much more went on than this. They cover a criminal investigation undertaken in 2004 concerning the treatment of 8 prisoners in March 2003. They relate how these prisoners were doused with cold water, made to kneel outside in freezing conditions, and kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose, and knees if they moved. One of them, Jamal Nasser died. The military concluded his death occurred due to a “stomach ailment” although no autopsy was performed. The documents also indicate that unnamed prisoners were sodomized. Despite this, a 2006 military review found that allegations of torture were unsupported although there was evidence of “misconduct that warrants further action.”

What this episode says is that the culture of torture and mistreatment of detainees was already well established 7 months before the events at Abu Ghraib began.

The lack of a comprehensive plan is despite calls for such in Bush’s 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, the 2004 9/11 Commission Report, the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act which created the National Counter Terrorism Center precisely to come up with such plans, and the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 which, with the Democratic takeover of the Congress, finally got around to enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations. As the GAO report notes, there have been consequences for this lack of attention.

However, we found broad agreement, as documented in the unclassified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), State and embassy documents, as well as among Defense, State, and other officials, including those operating in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.

In particular the 2007 NIE “Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland” concluded that al Qaeda had successfully replaced its senior operational planners and had “regenerated the core operational capabilities needed to conduct attacks against the United States.” It described its safe havens in the FATA as “the most serious terrorist threat to the United States.” The FATA situation is just part of the larger problem created by Bush’s leaving before the job was done in Afghanistan for his disastrously misguided war with Iraq.

On June 23, 2008, Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee released a memo by Army Major Larry Harrison describing a November 19, 2007 meeting in which embassy personnel including the American Ambassador to Albania John Withers discussed with Albanian officials how to repackage Chinese made ammunition so as to hide its country of origin. The State Department originally reported that it had had little to do with the matter.

In other developments, it turned out that the Pentagon could have gotten a lot this ammo for free from Eastern European former Warsaw Pack members eager to get rid of their old stocks. Apparently AEY had been under investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since 2005 for violations of the Arms Export Control Act and fraud. As a result, as early as April 2006 but certainly by December 2006, the State Department put AEY on its Arms Trafficking Watchlist. Nevertheless, both State and Defense continued to do business with the company.