No Ambiguity on Torture Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Secretary Rice implemented a two pronged strategy in dealing with the torture issue during her trip to Europe.  First, she threatened European governments by asserting that nothing was done that violated their sovereignty. The warning was clear:  the US government will expose the complicity of European governments in secret renditions if they continue to imply that they were done without their consent. Second, she implied that she was announcing a change in policy only to deny that she had.

This will not do. Congress must act to make clear that the United States will not engage in any conduct prohibited by the Convention Against Torture (CAT) as Congress understood those prohibitons when it ratified the CAT.

Opportunity amidst the Rhetoric Posted by Lorelei Kelly

I heard a speech recently by Iraq war critic Zbigniew Brzezinski.  He spoke of how, during the Cold War, Americans and their leaders faced their common threat with a unifying spirit of confidence. In contrast, today's common sentiment is fear--the result of failed leadership.

Democrats and their progressive supporters take note: don't let the recent escalation of the Iraq rhetoric muddle a fundamental truth that could redefine the terms of the debate about where America is headed in the future.  Progressives need an "eyes on the prize" framework for our discussions on Iraq-- something that resonates beyond "we can do better" and "change the course."  After all, the Bush administration and their conservative supporters have finally admitted that good government--lots of it-- is their exit strategy.  Meanwhile, this week's conservative  National Review (their 50th anniversary edition) contains a trance-like anti-government theme. Now is the time for progressives to step in and redefine what this all means with a better philosophy of governing.

Bolton's UN Budget Brouhaha Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Mort rightly notes that there's a disaster in the making at the UN, with the US - at Ambassador John Bolton's instigation - threatening to block passage of this year's biennial budget unless the membership agrees to set aside monies to finance a series of reforms that haven't yet been agreed.

This is all the depressing and utterly predictable result of the failure of this September's UN Summit on reform to deliver tangible results.  I'm glad there's still a debate alive on prospects for converting the UN's disgraced Commission on Human Rights into a more credible Human Rights Council, but I'd be amazed if this actually happens.   In assessing the situation now, I part ways with a lot of progressives (probably including Mort) on the issue of UN reform and how to make it happen .  .  . (also read on for my prediction on how all this plays out in the coming weeks)

'The Sky Is Black With Planes?' Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In my bucolic 70s-80s suburban childhood, that was how the execs at the Fortune 500 media company where my dad worked described the cascading chains of management transfers among media properties.

Today, though, I'm looking at some of the CIA-torture-plane reporting coming out of Europe, counting up the national inquiries -- the BBC and Le Monde between them report eight into CIA activities on or over their territories -- and thinking two things.  First, the scandal is going to stay alive and bedevil our relations with Europe for a long time, as these national inquiries feed off each other.  In addition to the eight above, questions have been raised in Austria, Italy, Germany and the UK that I know of.   Der Spiegel and The Guardian reported 437 CIA flights to Germany since September 11, and 210 into Britain.

Second, that sounds like a lot more activity and many more flights than would have been needed for the 26 "ghost detainees" Human Rights Watch has listed.  The Washington Post said earlier this week that there had been eight prison facilities, which seems to suggest rather more than 26 individuals.

Language Training Posted by Michael Signer

Ross Chanin has a smart and fresh Huffington Post up on how we as a nation need to get way, way up to speed on our foreign language training -- particularly in Arabic and Mandarin.  This graf says it all:

While I am not out to underestimate the clear cultural value of studying French (the world’s number #11 most widely spoken language) and German (#10), when American high school students still do not have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement (AP) exams in Mandarin (#1) and Arabic (#4) we have a problem.

Euro-Leaders to Rice: Thanks, We Needed That (Not.) Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Ever have a life partner, colleague, or friend who interrupted your brilliant storytelling at cocktails with the words, "that's not how you told it last time?"

That's more or less what Secretary Rice, who had been getting oodles of good press for her diplomatic abilities,  did to our European allies this week.

But today in Germany it seems that two can play at that game.

Secrets Overshadow Rice Visit to Europe Posted by Julianne Smith

Derek Chollet has asked me to guest blog this week.  Who am I?  Click here. 

Anytime transatlantic tensions have soared in recent years, Atlanticists on both sides of the pond have found solace in the fact that counter-terrorism cooperation between the two continents remains rock steady.  Even at the height of the Iraq debate, when the French were creating a multipolar moment with the Germans and the Russians in an attempt to block the U.S. invasion, French and American security officials were busily sharing intelligence on suspected terrorist cells, ironing out extradition agreements, and strengthening judicial cooperation.  No matter how many times the headlines have said we hate each other, no matter how many polls have highlighted our “values gap,” and no matter how loud the shouting has become at Munich’s annual security conference,  the counter-terrorism community has slogged on.   

But new accusations about secret prisons in Europe run by the CIA, coupled with other concerns about U.S. policy on torture and rendition, now threaten to erode the mainstay of transatlantic security cooperation.  American policymakers have been inundated with requests for more information on the so-called “black sites,” and the EU has launched an official investigation, threatening to suspend the voting rights of any EU member state that is found to have hosted such sites.  Unlike past transatlantic debates over the EU arms embargo or Iran, this one threatens to damage the Teflon-coated world of intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation across the Atlantic.  Intelligence sharing between Europe and the United States certainly won’t grind to a halt but European political elites are coming under increasing pressure from their angry publics to distance themselves from any U.S. practices that infringe on human rights and international law.  That spells trouble for European intelligence officers who cannot say with certainty how the intelligence they share will be used by their U.S. counterparts. 

In an effort to preempt the barrage of questions she will face on the subject in Europe this week, Secretary Rice hosted a press conference yesterday just before her plane left Andrews Air Force Base.  But her broad reassurances that the U.S. does not condone torture and promises to look into the matter are unlikely to prevent this black cloud from following the Secretary across Germany, Belgium, Ukraine, and Romania.  The Europeans want details and dialogue – two things the State Department isn’t providing at the moment.  Until that changes, attempts to focus on any of the multiple items on our common transatlantic agenda will be tough. 

Daniel Benjamin (who just wrote a great piece in Time tied to this subject) and I leave for Holland later today for a dialogue with Europeans on terrorism-related issues.  Time allowing, I will report back with fresh insight from the land of wooden shoes.

Thinking about the Insurgents Posted by Michael Signer

One silver lining in the stormclouds of the public outcry about American policy in Iraq might be a public push to make our leaders think harder, and more accurately, about just what's going on in Iraq.  Just last week, Donald Rumsfeld explained the motivations of the insurgents in Iraq as religiously motivated: 

"These people aren't trying to promote something other than disorder, and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate and then spread it around the world."

But it looks like Rumsfeld just might be dead wrong about the motivations of the insurgents.  Is it any surprise that a faith-based Administration would make the mistake of assuming our enemies are motivated solely by faith?

A Looming UN Crisis Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Having spent most of Friday at the United Nations headquarters in New York, I am much more pessimistic about the chances for reaching agreement on a new human rights council.  More alarming, I fear that the US is precipitating a crisis which will further weaken American ability to lead and which could debilitate the UN. 

As reported in an editorial in the New York Times on Friday,  John Bolton has informed his colleagues that the United States will only support an interim three month budget for the UN and will accept a longer budget only after the US reform agenda is implemented.   This position has provoked a sense of alarm in New York, causing the Secretary General to cancel a long-planned trip to Asia.   With the possible exception of Japan, the US position has no significant support. UN officials say that the UN will run out of money by late February if this course is adopted.

Perm Reps from friendly nations, deeply involved in these negotiations, believe that Bolton went directly to the President (perhaps through the Vice President) and that the Secretary of State was told by the President that the US would not budge from its opposition to adopting the regular UN budget this month.

So much for the promise to the Senate that Bolton would simply be an Ambassador taking orders from the State Department. Only a concerted counter-attack from supporters of the UN, in the administration, the Congress, and the public, can prevent a train wreck.

UN Election Chief Perelli Ousted on Eve of Iraq Polling Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I just stumbled on this while previewing tomorrow's New York Times:  Carina Perelli, head of the UN's election arm expects to be dismissed Monday as a result of a management review that found she demeaned staffers and created a work environment rife with sexual innuendo.

I have no idea if the charges, which Perelli vehemently denies but have been around for a while, are true.   But whether this is a case of grave managerial abuse or a errant cabal out to get one of the UN's rising stars, the development is bad news for both the UN and for those who support it.

Thanks in no small part to Perelli, running elections has emerged as one of the UN's core competencies, and a task that - because of its international credibility - the organization is well-placed to carry out virtually anywhere in the world when outside assistance is needed.  Back in May election assistance made my list of the Top 10 Things the UN Does Well.

The charges against Perelli have been around since at least March.   Yet she claims not to have ever been approached about the possibility of quietly resigning.  Why not?  If there was no choice but ouster, why not do the deed over the summer when the highest-profile elections were months away?  Or wait until January when all the Iraqi ballots are counted and attention has turned away?

In light of the high stakes associated with maintaining the public image of one of its most effective arms, an entity set apart from oil for food and the UN's other scandals, its hard to imagine Kofi Annan could not have avoided the equivalent of the army ousting the commanding officer a week before the planned invasion is to start.   

Governments, corporations and organizations are constantly faced with the problem of easing out bad managers.   There are ways of doing these things that avoid firestorms, and the UN has faced far to many scandals not to have developed tactics to avoid this needless Perelli embarrassment.

As Mort discussed Friday one reason US Ambassador John Bolton is counterproductive at the UN is that he is so frustrated with the organization's failures that his rash, impracticable proposals for change go nowhere and actually impede tangible progress.  I will address this point in relation to the UN budget debate later this week.  But in the meantime, its worth remembering that while his tactics are often singularly ineffectual, Bolton's frustration is not without some basis.

Iraq: Bush Begging for Benchmarks Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I am returning to an idea of a few weeks ago, because President Bush has asked for it. Instead of benchmarks for withdrawal from Iraq, we should adopt benchmarks for staying in.  We need regular measurements to assess if the Bush Administration's strategy, announced this week, is working.  In its bullet-pointed “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” the Administration invited benchmarking, telling the public that:

We track numerous indicators to map the progress of our strategy . . . Detailed reports . . . are issued weekly, monthly, and quarterly . . . Americans can read and assess these reports to get a better sense of what is being done in Iraq and the progress being made on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

But the reports the document links to (see the links here) are a lot to wade through and, in some cases, offer more public affairs-style puffery than hard metrics.  Having been urged to audit the Administration, we should take up the offer but choose our own measures of progress.

Consider a private corporation.  Right now, most Americans would consider the Iraq war a failed business venture, losing more than its gaining.  In a corporation, management of a failing venture might get a chance to turn it around, but would be watched closely on whether their turnaround plan is paying off.

Now, Robert McNamara got into trouble thinking that the management principles he learned at Ford Motor Company would win the Vietnam War. But here are a few quantitative measures we ought to track to see whether Bush’s strategy is working. I’ve included only measures that seem to get reported monthly – if you cannot track the benchmark, its no use. Here at Democracy Arsenal we’ll return to these 9 benchmarks periodically.

"We are losing." Posted by Heather Hurlburt

"We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the 'war on terror.' In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack."

So opens the new book by my old colleagues Dan Benjamin and Steve Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.  (They're the guys who brought you The Age of Sacred Terror a couple years back.)

You can check out their argument -- and poke holes in it, if you like -- tomorrow, when Dan Benjamin will hold forth live at 5pm EST on Monday, December 5 over at Campusprogress.org.**  I haven't read this one yet, but anybody who's not afraid to come out and say that we aren't winning deserves attention.  In addition to being a leading terror wonk, Dan is a former reporter AND fellow recovering speechwriter, which means his books are if not enjoyable (given the subject) at least highly readable.

But don't take my word for it -- check Dan out tomorrow.

**and yes, Campus Progress is, like Democracy Arsenal, an initiative of/with the Center for American Progress.  If you like us, you'll love Campus Progress.  If you love to argue with us, you'll love arguing with Dan in real time.