Both of the newspapers cautioned that none of the reports could be independently corroborated. But the stories emphasize the point I’ve been making for a while now that even if President Obama manages to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in the next several months (he’s already conceded he’s not going to meet his original January deadline), that’s not going to completely solve the United States’ image problem when it comes to prisoner mistreatment and abuse — because we still have Bagram.

Bagram has already been called “Obama’s Gitmo,” and “The Next Guantanamo” given that the administration is holding about 700 terror suspects there indefinitely without charge, with little meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention, no right to habeas corpus, and in conditions far more secretive than at Guantanamo Bay. We know that several detainees died from abuse at Bagram during the Bush administration, and conveniently, the Defense Department just stopped reporting detainee deaths in Afghanistan sometime in 2006.

So the latest reports of abuse shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Just last summer inmates were protesting their indefinite detention at Bagram, refusing to leave their cells or even speak to family members. That supposedly led to a military review and overhaul of the U.S. detention center in Afghanistan, and recently the United States opened a new and improved prison facility on the air base, designed to improve inmates’ living conditions and quiet some of the complaints. The former detainees interviewed by the Times and Post reporters may not have had the benefit of those reported improvements. But given the secrecy that still surrounds the Bagram facility and its inmates, and the fact that the wing of the prison operated by Special Operations forces is even more secretive and closed to the ICRC, the Obama administration is going to have a hard time answering these latest claims.

Noah Shachtman at Danger Room has come across a proposal emerging from the Joint Special Operations University that has to be seen to be believed. Noah:

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough. Instead, the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates, and other enemies of the state.

America’s military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies already devote thousands of people and billions of dollars to tracking down top terrorists and insurgents. But even the most successful of these efforts — like going after Iraqi militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — have been “ad hoc” efforts, with units cobbled together from different corners of the government. Report author and retired Lt. Col. George Crawford instead would like to see a permanent group with clear authority, training, doctrine and technology to go after these dangerous individuals. These “manhunting teams would be standing formations, trained to pursue their designated quarry relentlessly for as long as required to accomplish the mission,” he writes.

The director of this agency, of course, has to be Gary Busey.

Small Wars Journal has a copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s guidance to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force troops on how the Afghanistan war ought to be conducted. It’s reminiscent of Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno’s messages to the troops about counterinsurgency and what the missions in Iraq under their commands were. (And probably self-consciously so.) There’s a lot that’s been made about McChrystal’s Joint Special Operations Command background, with its enemy-centric focus, posing a problem for a population-centric counterinsurgency command, but ever since before McChrystal was nominated to command U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency crowd has loved and embraced him.

The guidance shows why. McChrystal really could not have demonstrated a greater concern for population protection in this document: it’s the first operational message, and it’s repeated and expanded upon throughout. For those who have (reasonable) concerns about McChrystal’s barely explored involvement with torture in his previous job as the head of Joint Special Operations Command, there’s this:

4. Ensure Values Underpin our Effort. We must demonstrate thru our words and actions our commitment to fair play, our respect and sensitivity for the cultures and traditions of others, and an understanding that rule of law and humanity don’t end when fighting starts. Both our goals and conduct must be admired.

He doesn’t say the T-word, but the spirit is there, and much more beyond the torture issue, as well. On that issue, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) noted in a little-noticed Senate statement for the record that despite McChrystal’s testimony that he was “uncomfortable” with “enhanced interrogation techniques” and worked to rein them in, he requested that his former commander, Gen. John Abizaid, grant him the latitude to use

a number of these techniques, including “sleep management,” “environmental manipulation,” and “control positions.” The request defined “control positions” as “requiring the detainee to stand, sit, kneel, squat, maintain sitting position with back against the wall, bend over chair, lean with head against wall, lie prone across chairs, stand with arms above head or raised to shoulders, or other normal physical training positions” and requested that “in the most exceptional circumstances, and on approval from [the commander]” interrogators be allowed to “use handcuffs to enforce the detainee’s position.”

It’s unclear to me whether Abizaid granted such approval and, if so, whether McChrystal authorized his troops to use those techniques. I have a request for comment out to USFOR-A and will report back if and when I hear more.

The New York Times reported this line of thinking from McChrystal’s subordinate commanders:

“We are going to bring the hurt to the insurgency and offer them an existential choice,” said another senior military officer.

“Those who are ideologically committed — we don’t expect them to change. They will fight, and they will die,” the officer said. “But for the many for whom ideology is not the motivation, we are going to offer them a serious motivation to stop, to make another choice.”

Distinguishing between those for whom it’s possible to deal with and those for whom it’s necessary to confront and defeat is the beginning of wisdom for military strategy in Afghanistan, and it’s not been much in evidence to date. (Except for, like, McChrystal’s scorned predecessor.)  It’s entirely reasonable to wonder if it’s too late at this point. I can’t say I know one way or the other.

This is something to really pay attention to:

“Some of the fiercest fighting we run into is where it’s local,” said one Defense Department official, because those fighters are rooted in the community by tribe or local interests in narcotics, lumber harvesting or smuggling.

That’s a reference to southern Afghanistan. But do they fight for ideology there, or for other reasons?

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook. ]]> http://washingtonindependent.com/48114/mcchrystals-first-message-to-his-troops/feed 0 http://washingtonindependent.com/4799/spencer-4-who-was-that-bearded-man http://washingtonindependent.com/4799/spencer-4-who-was-that-bearded-man#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:15:01 +0000 Spencer Ackerman http://www.washingtonindependent.com/?p=4799 BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan – Lots of soldiers walk through Bagram’s main strip, Disney Drive, in various stages of uniform.

Then there’s a contingent that’s out of uniform and wearing neither contractor lanyards nor carrying Defense Dept. civilian badges. They’ve got beards – thick, grody ones – and tattoos, their More...