The torture poll in nine countries

AP story here on a poll of the US and other countries on the use of torture. Excerpts:

***
Poll finds broad approval of terrorist torture
Most in U.S., Britain, France, S. Korea say torture justified in rare instances

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:29 p.m. ET Dec. 6, 2005

WASHINGTON - Most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances, according to AP-Ipsos polling.

The United States has drawn criticism from human rights groups and many governments, especially in Europe, for its treatment of terror suspects. President Bush and other top officials have said the U.S. does not torture, but some suspects in American custody have alleged they were victims of severe mistreatment.

The polling, in the United States and eight of its closest allies, found that in Canada, Mexico and Germany people are divided on whether torture is ever justified. Most people opposed torture under any circumstances in Spain and Italy.

“I don’t think we should go out and string everybody up by their thumbs until somebody talks. But if there is definitely a good reason to get an answer, we should do whatever it takes,” said Billy Adams, a retiree from Tomball, Texas.

In America, 61 percent of those surveyed agreed torture is justified at least on rare occasions. Almost nine in 10 in South Korea and just over half in France and Britain felt that way.
Accusations of torture, reports of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and claims of shadowy flights carrying terrorist suspects have further strained U.S. relations with some European countries.

Mariella Salvi, who works for a humanitarian organization in Rome, said: “Human beings, as well as their rights, have to be defended, no matter what individuals are suspected of, or charged for.”

The disagreements make cooperation on law enforcement and counterterrorism more difficult, said Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of scholars and other specialists in foreign policy.

During a visit to Germany on Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was peppered with questions about U.S. anti-terrorism policies, including the five-month imprisonment of Lebanese-born Khaled al-Masri and reports of secret CIA prisons and use of European airports and airspace to move terrorist suspects.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the United States had admitted making a mistake in the case of al-Masri, a German who contended in a lawsuit in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday that he was wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA and tortured.

Officials with the European Union and in at least a half-dozen European countries are investigating reports of secret U.S. interrogations in Eastern Europe.

Rice defends tacticsRice aggressively defended U.S. tactics against terrorism as tough but legal. She has refused to comment publicly on the reports of secret CIA prisons.

In the poll, about two-thirds of the people living in Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Spain said they would oppose allowing U.S. officials to secretly interrogate terrorist suspects in their countries. Almost that many in Britain, France, Germany and Italy said they felt the same way. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government.

The Bush administration has taken the position that some terrorism suspects are “enemy combatants” not protected by the Geneva Conventions, international treaties on the rights of prisoners of war.

“The Bush administration policy is against torture of any kind; it’s prohibited by federal criminal law,” said John Yoo, a University of California-Berkeley, law professor. As a Justice Department lawyer, he helped write internal memos in 2002 designed to give the government more leeway in aggressive questioning of terrorist suspects.

“The debate is whether you can use interrogation methods that are short of torture,” he said. “Some who have been critical of the Bush administration have confused torture with cruel, inhumane treatment.”

McCain seeks outright banSen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is among those pushing to ban the use of torture as well as “cruel and inhumane treatment.” His legislation was approved in the Senate by a wide margin and will be considered in House and Senate conference committees as an amendment on two defense bills.

The polls of about 1,000 adults in each of the nine countries were conducted between Nov. 15 and Nov. 28. Each poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

US citizenship and citizenship tests - WSJ news article

The front page of the Wall Street Journal carries today a fascinating article on the current test for citizenship, here, Tuesday, December 6, 2005. I will pick up on this topic later - the question of civic education and conditions of citizenship, including some understanding and commitment to constitutional government of the US, is one that interests me increasingly. As does the question of whether citizenship should be, or must be, automatic with birth. And finally, the question of dual citizenship and the constitutional requirement of foreign allegiance. In a world in which increasingly elites consider citizenship to be merely a matter of where you pay your taxes, but otherwise a quaint attribute of another quaint concept - sovereignty - "so ... so 19th century," as one of my colleagues put it recently - in favor of floating cosmopolitanism - well, there is this question of what citizenship means, what it's good for, whether you can depend on pure cosmopolitans to fight any wars for a polity, or whether, as Michael Ignatieff once admitted in a gracefully concessionary passage in his book, Blood and Belonging, that cosmopolitans like himself depended for their extraordinary freedoms and their borderless prosperity on the blood of people, soldiers, who were not cosmopolitans and willing to die for a community.

Excerpts from the WSJ article:

***
Would-Be Citizens Will Face New Test,
If It's Ever Written

Critics Say the Civics Exam Is Trivial and Arbitrary,
But Few Agree on the Fix

By JUNE KRONHOLZ
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 6, 2005; Page A1

Alfonso Aguilar's job is to write a test that almost everyone can pass. It isn't as easy as it sounds.
Mr. Aguilar heads the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Citizenship, which the Bush administration has charged with rewriting the civics and literacy tests that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens.

As it is, 97% of those who take the civics test make it through by answering questions such as "Where is the White House located?" and "How many states are there in the Union?" A similar number -- 95% -- pass the literacy test by reading one English sentence and writing another. Last year, 418,332 people became citizens after passing those two exams.

No one objects to the high pass rate. "What does the nation gain if you fail people out of citizenship?" asks Mr. Aguilar, a former press secretary and a political appointee, who's a U.S. citizen by virtue of his birth in Puerto Rico in 1969.

But almost everyone objects to the test, with immigrant advocates insisting it is arbitrary, scholars saying it is meaningless and both agreeing it is borderline goofy. "Trivia," says John Fonte, an immigration historian at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Mr. Fonte's grandmother studied a 283-page textbook to prepare for her citizenship interview in 1956.

Mr. Aguilar, while vague on the details of how he plans to change the test, says the new version shouldn't just be a measure of memorization, "something an al Qaeda agent could breeze through." He says it also should "encourage civic learning and patriotism."

With legal and illegal immigrants accounting for one in eight U.S. residents, changing the rules that determine who becomes an American is an emotional and complicated issue, even by Washington standards. The project to develop a new test is already nine years old -- it predated Mr. Aguilar's appointment -- and has at least two years to go.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

1
For how long do we elect members of the House of Representatives?
Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death?"Who becomes president if both the president and the vice president die?
Read answers to these2 and the other 93 possible citizenship questions.

For generations, the citizenship test consisted largely of an interview with an immigration officer. Only in 1986 was the process standardized into a test with a specific format. As Mr. Aguilar tells it, "a couple of immigration officers who were not scholars" tossed together a list of 96 questions that range from the obvious (#13: "Who is the President?") to the obscure (#88: "What's the name of the citizenship-application form?" Answer: N-400).

The Department of Homeland Security, which now oversees immigration, publishes the list of questions. During the test, an examiner picks any 10; a would-be citizen must answer six correctly. To test for English competence, the examiner provides two sentences and asks the test-taker to read one and write another. The examiner can make up sentences or chose from a list of 98 possibilities the government publishes. The list includes "All people want to be free" and "He has a very big dog."

Almost from the beginning, the 1986 test inspired complaints. Immigrant-rights groups charge it is arbitrary and subject to abuse: There is little to prevent an examiner from choosing a tough question such as #72 -- "Name the amendments that guarantee or address voting rights" -- instead of an easy one such as #1 -- "What are the colors of our flag?" (The answer to #72 is the 15th, 19th and 24th.)

Conservative groups fret that the test doesn't promote assimilation by teaching immigrants about American history and the workings of government. "You want a test that makes people think about what it means to be an American," says Matthew Spaulding, who studies immigration policy for the Heritage Foundation, a think tank.

So in 1997, the Clinton administration set up a commission to study the exam, along with other elements of immigration policy. It concluded that the test didn't probe a candidate's "meaningful knowledge" of history and civics. The panel then closed up shop. A string of other government studies followed. They came to the same conclusion and the same end.

In 2001, the Bush administration hired a test-writing company to draft a study guide that could be used to create a new set of civics questions. But immigrant advocates said potential citizens would be baffled by the guide's sophisticated language, such as "inalienable rights." Worse, the guide became tinder in the long-running culture war between liberals and conservatives, who accused each other of ignoring America's failings or discounting its glories. The new questions were never written.

The company also created a literacy exam that asked immigrants to describe in writing what was happening in a picture. During a trial run, failure rates soared.

The test-writing company was dropped and more studies followed before Mr. Aguilar took over the project in April after a stint as press secretary for Latin America and Caribbean affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Aguilar promises that he will have a plan in 2006, that a team of psychometricians will produce a new test by 2007 and that it will be in use in 2008.

Mr. Aguilar says he is inclined only to "tweak" the old test. For example, instead of asking who wrote the Declaration of Independence -- question #54, answer Thomas Jefferson -- the new test might ask a would-be citizen to name one of its concepts." 'Fundamental rights' would be an answer," Mr. Aguilar suggests. Meanwhile, the literacy test would rein in the examiners' discretion over which questions to ask.

Mr. Aguilar also proposes orientation sessions for immigrants, training for teachers leading citizenship classes and study guides to help immigrants pass. "If you have 98% passing, that's fine with me," he says.

Immigrant groups aren't reassured. With Congress and the White House proposing an overhaul of immigration laws, advocates worry that the U.S. welcome mat could be pulled in. "It's a dangerous time to be tinkering" with the citizenship process, says Michele Waslin, research director of La Raza, a group that advocates for Hispanics on matters such as education and housing.

For all the promises about test-preparation help, Mr. Aguilar's office has only $3.2 million to spend on citizenship programs. The Department of Education budgets another $7 million for civics education for adult immigrants, Mr. Aguilar says. That doesn't go far in a country that counted 34.2 million foreign-born residents last year, including both citizens and noncitizens, legal and illegal.

In Silver Spring, Md., which is 35% foreign-born, Pamela Leith holds a class for immigrants training for the current exam. They hail from El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic and pay $70 a semester.

One recent evening, Ms. Leith, a public-school teacher by day, taught a lesson on the three branches of government. Then her students practiced the answer to question #17 on the citizenship test: "What is the Constitution?" "The supreme law of the land," they repeated. When Ms. Leith asked who becomes president if the president dies -- question #16 -- Berte Rosa Saucedo, who works in a laundry, ventured cautiously, "The vice presidente?"

Throughout the 90-minute lesson, 12-year-old Wilber Lopez, who was born in the U.S., stood over his parents, Zuma and Gilberto. He translated Ms. Leith's questions and amplified her answers. Asked why she wants to be a citizen, Mrs. Lopez, who cleans office buildings, was quick with an answer: "Because I want to vote." Besides, she added, Wilber wants to be president.

Write to June Kronholz at june.kronholz@wsj.com3

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113383422569514749.html

Senator Lindsay Graham on detainee standards

Senator Lindsay Graham defends his legislation for the treatment of detainees with respect to appeals, habeas corpus, etc., in this opinion piece in the Washington Post. With respect to habeas corpus, there has been much handwringing opinion expressed that this legislation would eviscerate the ancient right of habeas corpus. But of course, as a legal matter, habeas corpus as it exists today in federal law, as a matter of statute, bears little resemblance to the ancient common law right. High speed internet access as a matter of habeas corpus? The question of what is the proper care with respect to detainee treatment is a matter that should, in my view, be covered by appropriate legislation. But histrionic claims that the ancient right of habeas corpus is being washed away because legislation would not apply the extraordinarily complex and US-incarceration specific regime of statutory habeas corpus to detainee treatment does not exactly help matters. Excerpts:

***
Rules for Our War

By Lindsey Graham
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; A29
Washington Post

In my view, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an act of war, not a mere crime. Our terrorist enemies don't represent a sovereign nation, wear a uniform, follow the rules of armed conflict or show any regard for humanity. The key difference between them and us is that we care about these things.

Even during a time of war, we have chosen to be a nation of laws, with a different, higher set of values than the terrorists. We should always remember that we are Americans, possessing values superior to those of our enemy, and that there is a proper balance between the protection of our troops and the humane treatment of detainees. This value system is our national strength, not a weakness.

I support President Bush's statement that all detainees should be treated humanely, and I agree with Sen. John McCain that his detainee treatment amendment is about us, not them. With these concepts in mind, the Senate recently acted in a bipartisan fashion in two critical areas of detainee policy.

First, by a vote of 90 to 9 we passed the McCain amendment, which would require all Defense Department interrogation techniques to be standardized and contained within the Army Field Manual. As a military lawyer, I know our original policies concerning interrogation were confusing and contradictory. Unfortunately, our troops have suffered in trying to implement these flawed policies.

By standardizing procedures in one document, our troops will know what's in and out of bounds. To attempt to recapture the moral high ground, we also reaffirm our long-held position that federal agencies will not engage in techniques that violate standards against torture or inhumane treatment of detainees under the laws of armed conflict.

Any efforts to create exemptions to the McCain amendment will, in my opinion, do far more harm than good, as they may set precedents that could jeopardize our troops in future conflicts. We will win this war by showcasing the differences between the United States and the enemy.
I believe we can have sound interrogation techniques and aggressive detention and prosecution policies for enemy combatants without eroding the values for which we are fighting.

The second bipartisan Senate action was the passage, 84 to 14, of the Graham-Levin-Kyl amendment, which would create a balanced approach to the laws governing detention and prosecution of enemy combatants.

Congress has been virtually AWOL on the status of enemy combatants, resulting in contradictory federal court decisions about detainees' legal rights. Because of Congress's inaction, the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Rasul v. Bush allowed foreign national enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to be granted habeas corpus rights like American citizens.
In the past, federal courts have reviewed military tribunal verdicts involving enemy combatants who were charged with war crimes, but for the first time in the history of warfare, enemy prisoners were granted access to our federal courts to bring lawsuits against our own forces regarding their detention.

There are now close to 200 habeas petitions filed by enemy combatants requesting better mail delivery, more exercise, judge-supervised interrogation, Internet access and the right to view DVDs.

These lawsuits are undermining our ability to gain good intelligence and are placing federal courts in a role never before known in wartime.

Did we ever intend for enemy combatants captured on the battlefield to be given the same rights as U.S. citizens in our federal courts? The answer from a bipartisan majority in the Senate was a resounding no.

The courts asked Congress to get involved in these issues, and finally, through passage of the Graham-Levin-Kyl amendment, we did.

The amendment replaces unlimited habeas petitions with a one-time appeal right to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The review covers whether the formulation and implementation of the practices in place at Guantanamo Bay are constitutional and, in each individual case, whether the military correctly followed procedures.

In addition, the amendment requires federal court review of any military commission conviction involving a war crime and a sentence of 10 or more years. The court can choose to review cases with sentences of less than 10 years, and the Supreme Court will have the right to review lower court actions if petitioned.

The Senate has created legal and congressional oversight over enemy combatant interrogation, detention, and prosecution -- all in excess of what is required by the laws of armed conflict. This is something of which our nation can be proud.

The McCain and Graham-Levin-Kyl amendments, taken together, provide a package of detainee reforms recognizing that we're in a war and striking a balance between protecting our nation's interests and ensuring that we adhere to the values for which we are fighting. They should be adopted in the House-Senate conference committee and by Congress as a whole.

(The writer is a Republican senator from South Carolina.)

UN Undersecretary General for Management Christopher Burnham on UN reform

The UN Under Secretary for Management, Christopher Burnham, writes today on UN reform in the Wall Street Journal opinion page, here, Tuesday, December 6, 2005. Excerpts:

***
COMMENTARY
Home Improvement

By CHRISTOPHER B. BURNHAM

Wall Street Journal
December 6, 2005; Page A20

It has been a difficult year for the United Nations. Although September's World Summit resulted in agreement on the priorities of the its member states, the mood within the committees of the General Assembly has since been one of uncertainty, division and looming crisis. But in the Secretariat, we are making real progress on management reforms. Yes, there is a lot of disagreement right now among the 191 U.N. members, and it is possible that the General Assembly will fail to agree on a budget later this month. But it won't be due to a lack of progress in the U.N. Secretariat, where Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already exercised his authority to push through a number of key reforms.

The secretary-general has presented to the General Assembly five key management reforms: new requirements for financial disclosure by senior staff; a new whistle-blower protection policy; the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards; proposals for a United Nations Ethics Office; and an Independent Audit Advisory Committee.

These are sweeping reforms that will dramatically improve accountability at the U.N.

• The new financial disclosure requirements were signed out last month by the secretary-general, and broadly expand the amount and type of information required to be filed by all senior staff at the level of assistant secretary-general and above. The new rules also expand reporting requirements to all employees in the procurement and investment areas of the U.N. The U.N. needs the approval of the General Assembly to make the new policy applicable to certain senior management categories below the assistant secretary-general level, and Mr. Annan has made this request to the General Assembly.

• No organization can operate without a system of protection for those who step forward to report waste, fraud and corruption. In the past, the U.N. had a very weak whistle-blower protection policy in which the staff put little faith. The new policy established by the secretary-general this week is the product of many months' effort working to bring in best practice from many nations and key NGOs, and included extensive consultations with U.N. staff members, through their unions.

The new policy should give full assurance to those seeking to report misconduct that their voice will be heard, and that they will be protected. A key point of the new policy is that it specifically spells out the requirements to report misconduct to the proper U.N. authority, but it also allows for a staff member to go to local or federal authorities, or the "peoples' court of last resort," the press.

• Last week the chief executives of all the different U.N. agencies formally adopted new accounting standards for the U.N., to be applied on a world-wide basis. Implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards, which the European Commission also recently adopted, will require General Assembly approval and significant new resources over the next four years. The secretary-general will request approval of these new standards next month. Replacement of a 15-year-old accounting and disbursing system will be the key driver of how quickly we can come into full compliance. The plan approved by the chief executives of all the U.N. agencies calls for that to be done no later than Jan. 1, 2010. This is the essential step in significant improvement in accountability, the full implementation of managerial-cost accounting, and being fully responsible to member states and the global taxpayer.

• Another initiative of the secretary-general is the establishment of a U.N. Office of Ethics. This new office will provide annual training for all U.N. personnel on ethics and integrity, and will require individual certification of that training. The office will also receive and review the enhanced financial-disclosure forms to help prevent potential conflicts, and where suspected misconduct exists, make recommendations to the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services -- the inspector-general-like function at the U.N. No organization can exist unless firmly established on a foundation of ethical standards and conduct. The creation of this new office is essential to the integrity of the U.N. going forward. The secretary-general will ask the General Assembly to approve this new office this month, and to fund it with the resources necessary to begin full operations in Jan. 2006.

• The secretary-general also proposed this week to the General Assembly that it create a new Independent Audit Advisory Committee. This function does not currently exist at the U.N. The committee would be appointed by the General Assembly, and the proposal recommends five members from around the world who are either former auditors-general of their countries, central bankers or individuals of equal stature and probity. This committee would follow up on audits by requiring quarterly reports and presentations from the Secretariat that would detail the progress made on the remediation plans drawn up in response to auditor recommendations and identified material weaknesses. Importantly, the committee would recommend directly to the General Assembly the budget and resources the Office of Internal Oversight Services needs to fulfill its mission. Currently, the budget of OIOS must go through the Department of Management. This is clearly a conflict, and it inhibits the independence of OIOS from the Secretariat.

These are not the only reforms completed or proposed to the General Assembly for action this month. Moreover, the secretary-general will make important recommendations early next year to the General Assembly on modernizing the corporate governance structure of the U.N., the General Assembly completes its review of rules, regulations and mandates, as required by the global leaders' summit this past September.

Until then, the global taxpayer should rest assured that the U.N. is undergoing significant change in accountability, transparency and ethical conduct.

Mr. Burnham is the undersecretary-general of the United Nations for management.

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113384011245714857.html

WSJ editorializes in favor of John Bolton's UN reform efforts

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today, Tuesday, December 6, 2005, here, in favor of John Bolton's efforts to use the pressure of passing a budget to push UN reform. Excerpts:

***
Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Reform, U.N.-Style

December 6, 2005;
Page A20

Front and center on the United Nations Web site is a link titled "Renewing the U.N." Click on it and you'll find a photo of Secretary General Kofi Annan next to a statement that reads, in part, "We must reshape the Organization in ways not previously imagined and with a boldness and speed not previously shown."

That quote dates from last March. Here's Mr. Annan last week: "The business of the U.N. is not reform. The business of the U.N. is carrying out the mandates that the General Assembly and the Security Council have given us, so that business must continue." And people say that U.S. Ambassador John Bolton is the obstacle to U.N. reform?

At immediate issue is the U.N. budget, which must be approved this month. Mr. Annan wants the General Assembly to pass a two-year budget plan, irrespective of how this affects the chances of achieving the reforms agreed by world leaders in September. Meanwhile, he is trumpeting a modest package of management reforms, which are described nearby by U.N. Undersecretary for Management Christopher Burnham. A word on those in a moment.
For his part, Mr. Bolton argues that a two-year budget would obliterate whatever leverage there is to get those proposals passed by the General Assembly. Instead, he has mooted the idea of funding the U.N. through short-term budgets -- just as the U.S. Congress funds the federal government using continuing resolutions -- until meaningful reform is enacted.

Among the reforms: Replacing the shambolic U.N. Human Rights Commission (current members include Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe) with a Human Rights Council whose member states would have to meet basic criteria for respecting the rights of their citizens. Mr. Bolton also wants to kill funding for such U.N. acronyms as the SCIIHRP (Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Human Rights Practices). And he wants to eliminate the duplication that takes place between and even within various U.N. agencies.

Why, for instance, does INSTRAW -- the U.N. International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women -- do outreach on AIDS issues, when that task is presumably covered by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS? Yet INSTRAW is subsidized at $1 million a year, money the poverty-pleading U.N. can ill afford to squander.

Mr. Bolton is right about these reforms, just as he's right about the budget. The U.S. is meeting sharp resistance from the so-called G-77 countries -- the old Non-Aligned Movement -- to even the most elementary efforts to bring administrative discipline to the U.N. (Pakistan and Egypt, both U.S. allies and beneficiaries of American largesse, are among the most recalcitrant.) Many of these countries have vested interests in the way the U.N. currently operates (INSTRAW is based in the Dominican Republic) and are unlikely to vote for change absent stern budget pressure. Ironically, too, failure by the U.N. to impose budget discipline will only increase the likelihood that the U.S. Congress will unilaterally withhold America's 20% share of the U.N. budget, as it did in the 1990s.

As for Mr. Annan's reforms, some are useful even if they are overdue. No doubt it's good that the Secretary General has decided his employees must now declare gifts exceeding $250. But why did that figure remain at $10,000 for the first eight years of this tenure? The same goes for the whistleblower protections now being proposed, or the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards, or the creation of a new Ethics Office.

Less helpful is Mr. Annan's proposal to create an Independent Audit Advisory Committee. The U.N. already has multiple auditing bodies. None prevented the Oil for Food program from becoming a $100 billion field of graft. The U.N. needs to consolidate and outsource its auditing functions to a single, independent and effective body. Yet Mr. Annan's instincts run in the direction of bureaucratic replication.

We know that U.N. reform won't happen in one night, if at all. But if the history of past efforts shows anything, it's that nothing can be accomplished if there are no consequences for inaction or malfeasance. The Bush Administration missed an excellent opportunity to illustrate those consequences when it failed to push for Mr. Annan's resignation over Oil for Food. It would be an act of negligence -- or is it cynicism? -- if it now failed to put some stick into a U.N. budgetary process run amok.

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113383884568714818.html

NYT editorializes against John Bolton's efforts to pressure for UN reform

The New York Times editorialized yesterday, Sunday, December 2, 2005, here (sub req'd), against reported attempts by John Bolton to pressure the UN to engage seriously with reform, by threatening to hold up the organization's two year budget. As reported in an article from the Washington Times' Betsy Pisik, in an earlier post, here, Bolton believes that if the full two year budget is passed, then the pressure for any reform during that budget period evaporates.

About that Bolton is plainly right and the NY Times plainly wrong. As with so many NYT editorials, it sounds like someone met with the editorial board and gave them talking points, which it then dutifully turned into an editorial that sounds at once like God Addressing Eternity and yet manages to be ill-informed. (Who might have briefed the Times? Who indeed?)

Consider, for example, that the NYT says that Bolton is demanding an impossible task of reform within a short few months. But the problem, rather, is that the UN General Assembly has not even begun to discuss, let alone seriously grapple, with the issues that it tasked itself with in its own Final Outcome Document for UN reform back in September. There are significant items that it called upon itself to resolve by December 31, 2005, not merely discuss - they include Security Council reform and other issues.

As for the Times' claim that Bolton is what prevents the UN from reaching some agreement that would keep countries like Cuba or Libya or Sudan off the UN Human Rights Commission - Bolton? Get real. John Bolton is the only thing that might possibly stand in the way of the Cubas and Sudans from continuing on the Human Rights Commission or any successor.

The Times also claims that the most successful US ambassadors to the UN were the ones who used patience and diplomacy to slowly, somehow harness the UN to US policies. Really? The most successful US diplomats to the UN in thirty years have been Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and a review of the Times reporting during their tenure does not suggest that their success was due to patience and slow diplomacy - quite the opposite.

On the contrary, nearly all US ambassadors to the UN who have tried the Times' formula have both met with no success - at least if you count success looking out for US interests rather than being, as both the Times and the UN General Secretariat would patently prefer, the UN ambassador to the US - and have been effectively neutered if not captured by the organization itself.

The Times likewise castigates Bolton for having dumped late in the game a supposedly decent blueprint for reform in favor of a US position that resulted in the final discussions producing a document widely regarded as mush. It fails to recall, however, that the problem was that bottom line US positions, held by the US for decades through many administrations of both parties, were simply ignored by the drafters of the supposed consensus reform document.

All Bolton did in August 2005 was finally to make clear that the United States would stick to its basic positions dating back to the Carter and Nixon years, and that it would propose to negotiate those positions, rather than simply going along with unacceptable provisions. If the Times wants to debate those positions, then it can go back to square one on fundamental US foreign policy - not hold Bolton responsible for a supposedly last minute change in US negotiating. It was last minute only because of the obdurateness - encouraged, it must be said, by the Times - of a UN negotiating committee that assumed that the Bush administration could be rolled over in order to avoid bad press from venues such as ... the New York Times.

Exerpts from the editorial:

***
New York Times
December 2, 2005
Editorial

Blocking Reform at the U.N.

Muscular diplomacy is one thing. But John Bolton has been all muscle and no diplomacy as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Now he's threatening to hold up its entire two-year operating budget unless his demands for major reforms are met almost immediately.

As it happens, the American reform agenda contains many good elements. No one can seriously argue that the U.N. is a rationally structured, efficiently managed body. And letting countries like Cuba, Libya and Sudan sit on a human rights commission that judges the records of other countries diminishes the U.N.'s most important authority, its moral authority. But just as the Senate feared when it declined to confirm Mr. Bolton in the job, his blustering unilateral style is turning him into one of the biggest obstacles to achieving changes that had been within reach before he appeared on the scene.

Two basic changes are needed to repair the U.N.'s tarnished reputation. First, significant authority over appointments and management needs to be shifted from the General Assembly, which has 191 members, to the secretary general's office. Just as important, the secretary general (a new one will be chosen next year) must exercise this new authority wisely, boldly and effectively.

The most important specific reforms include establishing a permanent human rights council made up of countries that respect human rights, creating a commission to oversee the reconstruction of societies devastated by armed conflict, and giving the secretary general the authority to recommend ending missions that have outlived their usefulness and to make senior appointments based on merit, not regional quotas.

Doing these things will require a close alliance between reformers and the secretary general's office and the ability to convince General Assembly members that a more credible and effective U.N. is in their interests. Those are exactly the areas where Mr. Bolton has done the most damage. His demands and his threats to bypass the U.N. if it doesn't bow to them have fed the impression that the whole reform agenda is a power grab by Washington. Hard as it is for Americans to believe, much of the world now suspects Secretary General Kofi Annan of being Washington's lackey.

Mr. Annan made a promising start earlier this year at building a consensus for reform, only to have it derailed by Mr. Bolton. Soon after taking over the American mission this summer, he issued a long list of last-minute demands. As a result, a special international summit meeting that had been organized to adopt real reforms ended up endorsing a document that was mostly fudge and mush.

Mr. Bolton's latest threat, to block the next U.N. budget, is likely to be equally counterproductive. America's most successful U.N. ambassadors, whether they served Republican or Democratic presidents, have known how to harness American power to patient, skillful diplomacy. Regrettably, Mr. Bolton has failed to profit from their example.

Ruth Wedgwood on creating competition to drive UN reform: "Competitive multilateralism"

Ruth Wedgwood of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies writes today in the NY Times op-ed page, Monday, December 5, 2005, that the best way to spur the UN to reform is to create some outside competition for at least some of its functions. Here, behind the NYT subscriber wall. Excerpts:

***
New York Times
December 5, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor

Give the United Nations a Little Competition

By RUTH WEDGWOOD

KOFI ANNAN's term as secretary general of the United Nations has one year to go, and so far he has been unable to deliver on any real institutional reform.

Paradoxically, it is a "high outside" pitch that could be the most promising route to reform - recognizing the virtues of outside competition. Monopoly can be corrosive for any institution, and many of the problems addressed by the United Nations can be and have been handled in other forums. Washington and Turtle Bay would both be aided by recognizing the virtues of "competitive multilateralism."

Even after the exposure of corruption in the oil-for-food program, criminal investigations of the procurement process, reports by a "high-level panel" and a bipartisan commission, and a summit meeting of heads of state, there still seems to be no momentum for change at the United Nations. Mr. Annan has simply not swayed the General Assembly with his public pronouncement that "good management is in the interests of everyone."

The urgency of United Nations reform is easy to diagnose. When resources are scarce for peacekeeping, health and development, it is deadly to keep spinning gold into hay on redundant jobs and expired mandates. Effective use of funds requires transparency and integrity - and becomes nearly impossible when there is a short-staffed inspector general who cannot disclose reports to member states. The organization's important work in human rights becomes satiric when its human rights commission includes gross abusers like Cuba and Zimbabwe.

Smug reliance on an aging brand name is a real danger in any organization; this is no less true for the United Nations than for corporate behemoths like General Motors. "We are acting for the world community," is the mantra in Turtle Bay, "so we must be O.K." At one time that might have been enough. But it is no longer 1945. There are countless regional and transnational organizations that set standards, send peacekeepers and monitor human rights.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of American States and the African Union all post standards for democratic militaries and human rights. NATO and groups like the Economic Community of West African States supply peacekeepers. Standards are set by international trade and professional associations and independent economic groups like the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

A resort to outside competition is made necessary by the sclerosis of reform inside the United Nations. The place is micro-managed by a General Assembly that is reluctant to change the status quo. Delegating more power to the Secretary General would allow an institutional flexibility that can adapt to changing events. But some voices in the developing world have championed a tactic of control by inefficiency as a way to block the influence of larger members, without seeing that it frustrates the work of the United Nations in their own regions.

The United States and Japan may seek to delay the biennial budget. But even if that leads to some short-term changes, in the end the General Assembly will still control the inside rules on perpetual mandates, patronage, document retention and transparency. And unless the Europeans are solidly on board, American proposals for reform will be defeated.

The politics of reform are constrained by the regional solipsism that developed over the organization's first 50 years. During the cold war, the Soviet Union solicited members of the Non-Aligned Movement, an official United Nations caucus, to rally support for its positions against the West. Fidel Castro's Cuba lives on, and still gains influence by wrapping its dictatorship in a cloak of Southern solidarity. American diplomats cannot attend the political discussions of the 115-member group.

The other major caucus of developing nations, the Group of 77, also meets in private to determine positions. Now tipping the scales with 132 countries, the G-77 can pass or block a measure in the General Assembly entirely on its own. America has friends in both groups, but they often fear breaking with a caucus position lest they lose support on local issues.

So the situation seems intractable. But that's no reason to sit on the sidelines and lament, year after year, our inability to improve things. If the United Nations can't reform on its own, America needs to support other multilateral venues. In fact, our seeking parallel paths to international intervention can help the United Nations as well.

As the economist Albert O. Hirschman once observed, "exit" and "voice" are in delicate balance in any successful organization. If threats to exit are casually employed, it drains away impetus to seek internal reform. But if things can't be changed from within, members may need to vote with their feet, one issue at a time.

The idea of competitive multilateralism avoids the stark choice of going alone or going to the United Nations. America must still support the purposes of the United Nations; it is a historic alliance, a product of World War II, and remains the only all-inclusive political organization around. America enjoys prerogatives as a permanent Security Council member that would be hard to gain again. But we do have some flexibility in how we choose to approach international cooperation.

The United Nations' specialized programs depend on voluntary financing from member states, and we should direct our money to those that are cost-effective. We can also give funds directly to private relief organizations that show initiative, without a bypass through United Nations middle-management. Relief organizations in newly freed East Timor, for example, were hard put to work around a slow-footed United Nations administrative process.

On issues where the global organization is impotent or counterproductive, we can make progress through regional organizations and informal coalitions. We can give greater support to regional human rights groups, instead of seeking consensus with political thugs at the Human Rights Commission. We can act in international crises through the Community of Democracies and NATO.

We can negotiate treaties in various forums. The Cybercrime Convention was negotiated through the Council of Europe, with the United States and other high-tech nations as added participants. Likewise, the Proliferation Security Initiative, begun by the United States and 10 other countries in 2003, has been successful in countering shipments of weapons of mass destruction despite not having a formal treaty structure.

In the Internet age, there is no single venue for cooperation. This is true for politics and business alike. The United Nations may gain a second wind and a youthful gait if it discovers that it has some real competition.

(Ruth Wedgwood is a professor of international law and organizations at Johns Hopkins University.)

Baby boom demography of Europe, in Tony Judt's book Postwar

I've been slowly reading Tony Judt's quite marvelous Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. One of the many, many fascinating bits is his account of what drove the Western European 'age of affluence', between the early 1950s and the end of the 1970s.

The "trigger for the European economic miracle," he says, "and the social and cultural upheaval that followed in its wake, was the rapid and sustained increase in Europe's population." (at 330.) He then goes on to discuss why Europe had such difficulty in having sustained population growth over the centuries - the limitations of traditional agriculture, war and disease, and emigration abroad.

And after reviewing the data of the post WWII baby boom in Western Europe in the fifties and sixties, he adds: "There are many explanations for the recovery of European fertility after World War Two, but most of them reduce to a combination of optimism plus free milk." (at 331.)

US budget plan for UN criticized

Betsy Pisik in the Washington Times has this story on criticism of the US budget plan for the UN, here, Wednesday, November 30, 2005.

My take on the aftermath of the UN reform summit back in September is that very, very little has actually happened. The UN General Assembly seems almost certain not to complete any of the goals it set in the final action plan to be completed by year end, and there is no good reason to think they will be accomplished ever. Ambassador Bolton seems to be trying to pressure the situation by pressing for an interim short term budget of three months, in order to ensure that the longer term budget for the remainder of the two year budget cycle will actually reflect some measure of UN reform. Japan has backed the US in this, but they are set against the usual group of non-aligned countries plus various Europeans. As Ambassador Bolton says in this article, if the two year budget is passed, it reduces greatly any pressure to engage in UN reform during that period - only the threat of not having a budget, only the threat of running out of money has any chance of getting any actual reform.

The point is that the parties of reform at the UN are very few. The Secretariat, so far as I can tell, simply saw it as a way of saving Kofi Annan and high UN officials from getting ousted over the oil for food scandal. Now that they see that it has blown over, from the threat of ouster standpoint, there's no desire at the Secretariat for reform. The Secretary General maybe sees some ability to salvage his reputation by making reform the centerpiece of his last two years in office. But it now looks rather more that he has concluded that, given the fact that no one cares about reform outside the US and a handful of other countries such as Japan, and given the fact that the oil for food scandal is largely seen as the mean ol' US pulling the plug on a form of corruption and patronage that is seen as normal and part of the UN's patrimony and gift, well, his reputation outside the US is perfectly secure.

So reform is on the agenda only insofar as the US (along with Japan, at this point in history) wants to force it there, against the wishes of the rest of the world, whose missions, representatives and, often, whole countries, want to keep their grubby paws working the til. Ambassador Bolton of course knows all this and more - presumably he, in his persistent, hard headed way, is simply looking to use US leverage to get some level of managerial reform. Good luck to him.

Excerpts from the Washington Times story:

***
U.S. budget plan for U.N. criticized

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 30, 2005

NEW YORK -- A senior U.N. administrator warned yesterday evening that a U.S. proposal to pass an interim three-month budget while delegates continue to debate reform could have a disastrous effect on the United Nations.

The Bush administration has refused to pass the proposed $3.6 billion biennial budget unless it includes a variety of administrative and management reforms to make the organization more efficient and effective.

To avoid a budget crisis, U.S. officials have suggested passing a sort of continuing resolution, which is common in Washington and other capitals but unprecedented at the United Nations.

"We do not want to be in a position where we adopt a budget next month and we get no more reform for the two-year life of the budget," U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton told reporters on Monday.

But U.N. Comptroller Warren Sach said the interim budget would leave the organization in a cash crunch, forcing it to borrow from closed peacekeeping missions and dwindling management accounts.

"The secretariat considers this a serious problem in terms of cash flow," Mr. Sach said. He said the organization requires between $450 million and $500 million for the period of January through March 2006, but that member states traditionally pay only 38 percent of their assessed dues so early in the year, leaving a shortfall of up to $350 million.

Because roughly 75 percent of the U.N. budget goes to payroll and related fixed expenses, he indicated that staff might be asked to accept late payment or partial salaries during the interim period. The organization would also be forced to defer or delay paying its bills.

Mr. Sach acknowledged to reporters that "the perception of member states is that this is part of a negotiating scheme" by the United States. However, he said that he had already begun to make contingency plans.

Secretariat officials and many member states, including Britain, say that the budget should be passed now, and reforms can be paid for with supplemental budget requests. The new budget pits the United States and Japan -- which pay a combined 40 percent of the U.N. regular operating budget -- against a loosely affiliated bloc of developing nations.

Major donors say enacting the reforms is a necessary step to revitalizing the organization. The developing nations say that many of the measures transfer too much power from member states to the U.N. secretary-general.

Specifically, the proposed changes would give the secretary-general more discretion to allocate posts and funding between programs. Many of the suggestions under consideration were first proposed more than a year ago by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Many members of the 132-nation Group of 77 fear that this secretary-general would transfer resources from development programs to security and human rights. They have suggested in recent weeks that Mr. Annan is playing into Washington's agenda to remake the organization.

"I made it quite clear that there's no attempt at power grab," Mr. Annan told reporters last week.

Steve Wasserman on the decline of the LA Times

This is off the topic of international politics and law, but in an earlier post discussing book reviews, I mentioned my old friend Steve Wasserman, the former editor of the LA Times book review and now the managing director of the NY office of Kneerim and Williams at Fish and Richardson, a literary agency. Steve gave me a call tonight - it was fabulous to be in touch again and catch up on many things - and mentioned this piece on the decline of the Los Angeles Times in the hands of the Chicago Tribune Company. It's a sad, sad story. The book review under Steve was an exciting place - but it could never survive under the current moronic suits, and Steve is doing well in his new position and well out of the LAT.
Among the many things Steve is right about in that article is his assessment of what print newspapers and reporters and editors and newsrooms are good for, and what blogs and all that are good for. Leaving aside certain publications that have simply migrated to the web while keeping their traditional journalistic structure intact, what web journalism is about is mostly opinion. Like this blog. Despite the increasing amount of information and data available raw on the web for research and investigation, there's still no substitute for shoe leather, interviews, investigation that cannot be done online. Citizen journalists sometimes produce genuinely new information, but 99% is comment on what someone else has done. There are big exceptions - the military blogs from Iraq and Afghanistan, for example - but most of the rest of us comment. It's the nonweb investigatory journalism that represents traditional media's competitive advantage - access, rolodex, the ability to get to sources that the rest of us can't get to. Yet so much MSM seems entranced by the idea of being pundits, migrating from the news pages to the op-ed page. The prestige seems to be there; some sense of working with ideas, not merely facts. Bad idea. It might better be thought of as trading in journalism for being merely a blogger. There's no competitive advantage there - indeed, journalists should not even assume that, being journalists, they even write so much better than other professionals who take to the web. The quality of writing in the serious blogs can be surprisingly high. The competitive advantage of professional journalists lies in what they can do with a serious block of time offline. It's what they can bring to the table that isn't already part of the (in some respects) curiously closed information circle of the web. Steve makes the point slightly differently, and better, than I do here, and the whole piece is really worth reading.

White phosphorous

Bottom line as a law of war matter on white posphorous:

White phosphorous is not a chemical weapon and does not fall under the prohibitions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Nor is it a substance prohibited under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. It is not prohibited by III Protocol of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (and in any case the United States is not a party to the III Protocol). It is not prohibited by any treaty to which the United States is a state party.

Nor is white phosphorous prohibited as a weapon by customary international law of war.

Deliberately targeting civilians with it is prohibited, as is indiscriminate use which does not attempt to distinguish between civilian and military targets - but this is true of all weapons, bullets included; there is nothing special in that about white phosphorous or anything else.

I have been struck by the general lack of attention to the subject by the serious human rights/law of war monitors. Perhaps I have missed something, but I don't see anything on the Human Rights Watch website on the issue - one might have thought that it ought to offer its view on whether the Italian state television report was credible, given the enormity of the charges - one might have thought that it should have investigated the credibility of the factual reporting as well as opining on the actual state of the law. Its silence is not helpful on charges as strong as these, made in an important media venue. Amnesty International is much less expert or credible than HRW in laws of war matters, but one might have thought that merely the appearance of evenhandedness would urge it to investigate and correct, as necessary, factual and legal aspects of a story so momentous. But I, at least, can't find anything on its website about it. (If there is something on either website about this that I can't find, I'll be happy to stand corrected.)

The deeply honorable exception to this tendency, among groups generally aligned with the human rights movement, has been Anthony Dworkin at the the Crimes of War Project. His article on the white phosphorous controversy is measured, accurately researched, and straightforward about the law, including areas where the law is unsettled. I do not always agree with the legal analysis presented at Crimes of War.org - unsurprising, since there is plenty of room for disagreement and interpretation within this field. But I believe Anthony Dworkin sets the standard in this article for a balanced, transparent, and sober discussion of controversial charges. The article is here. It should be widely circulated and read by anyone following this story.

Text of article (Anthony, hope I'm not violating your copyright!):

***

November 17, 2005
The Use of White Phosphorus in Fallujah: Was it Against the Law?
By Anthony Dworkin

The Pentagon has admitted that U.S. forces used white phosphorus as an offensive weapon during their attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004, reversing earlier claims by the U.S. government that phosphorus had only been used sparingly for illumination purposes. The acknowledgement follows the discovery and circulation on the internet of accounts by U.S. soldiers in which they describe the use of white phosphorus munitions against enemy positions.
The apparent reversal of the U.S. government has given added impetus to criticism of the American use of white phosphorus. A central point of contention is whether the use of shells containing white phosphorus against enemy fighters -- or their use in areas where civilians may be affected -- should be seen as an unlawful use of chemical weapons. Much discussion of the white phosphorus issue -- whether from ill-informed U.S. spokesmen or internet commentary -- has been confusing. This article will attempt to describe the different provisions of the laws of war that are relevant and sketch out the ways in which they might apply.

The latest charges against the U.S. army spring from a documentary broadcast by the Italian TV station Rai24 last week. The documentary entitled Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre which contained allegations that U.S. forces used massive amounts of white phosphorus in a way that caused large numbers of civilian deaths. The documentary includes an interview with one soldier, Jeff Englehart, who says he served in Fallujah and knows that white phosphorus was used there. Englehart describes white phosphorus as "without a shadow of a doubt" a chemical weapon.

Since the documentary was released there have been numerous articles in the international press and on the internet. One of the most prominent pieces was by George Monbiot in The Guardian on November 15. Under the headline "The US used chemical weapons in Iraq -- and then lied about it," Monbiot claims that white phosphorus "becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people."

There is no question that white phosphorus shells were used to target locations in Fallujah where insurgent fighters were believed to be hiding. An account by US soldiers in the army journal Field Artillery published in March 2005 describes their use in detail: "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for [smoke]screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon aginst the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
Another report that has been widely quoted over the last few days was written by a journalist from the North County Times embedded with marines during earlier fighting in Fallujah. He describes marines sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives into buildings where insurgents have been sighted.

This week Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said that "U.S. forces used white phosphorus both in its classic screening mechanism and...when they encountered insurgents who were in foxholes and other covered positions who they could not dislodge in any other way."
The fact that the United States has had to take back earlier claims about the use of white phosphorus has been a public relations disaster. However that does not mean that the use of these weapons was illegal. In fact, most of the arguments made to support the idea that the use of white phosphorus munitions was a violation of the law are highly questionable.

White phosphorus munitions have been a regular part of the arsenal of contemporary military forces, including those of the United States and United Kingdom. They have not been regarded as chemical weapons but (at least when used against enemy positions) as incendiary weapons, which work by spreading fire.

Although white phosphorus has never been classed as a chemical weapon, some recent commentary has suggested that it should be regarded as a chemical weapon when used directly against enemy fighters. This argument is based on the fact that the Chemica Weapons Convention which came into effect in 1997 bans the use of any weapon that is designed to cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of a chemical that "through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm."

Although white phosphorus is a chemical compound, its primary effect on victims appears to be through the generation of heat (white phosphorus burns fiercely from contact with air and can continue to burn even when embedded in flesh). The smoke produced by white phosphorus does not seem to cause significant harm through chemical action on immediate exposure (although scientific studies have shown that longer exposure, while not lethal, may cause medical problems). For these reasons, the effects of white phosphorus weapons -- while undeniably unpleasant -- do not appear to bring it within the scope of laws governing chemical weapons.

Incendiary weapons like white phosphorus are governed by another treaty -- the 1980 Protocol III to the Convention on Conventional Weapons. This defines incendiary weapons as primarily designed "to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target." (The fact that heat or flame is produced by a chemical reaction does not make them chemical weapons, since it is not a case of a substance that causes death or injury by chemical action on the victim's "life processes")

Tthe United States is not a party to the Incendiary Weapons Protocol -- but in any case, the treaty adds little to existing law, except a blanket restriction on dropping incendiary weapons from the air against military objectives "located within a concentration of civilians" (as was done in the fire-bombing of German cities like Dresden in World War II). Since the weapons used in Fallujah were shells, not bombs, this provision would not in any case be relevant.

The tests that should therefore be applied to the U.S. use of white phosphorus munitions are the standard rules provided in the laws of war for the use of any weapon. First, it is always unlawful to use force directly against civilians, or to carry out an attack where the expected level of harm to civilians is excessive in proportion to the military advantage expected. Secondly, it is forbidden to use weapons that cause "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering." That would probably cover the use of white phosphorus in some weapons -- e.g. anti-personnel bullets -- but the United States could plausibly argue that the use of white phosphorus munitions to flush insurgents out of hiding places is militarily justifiable and therefore not unlawful.

The recent British Manual of Military Law says that white phosphorus may be used "to set fire to targets such as fuel or ammunition dumps" or "to create smoke," but that it "should not be used directly against personnel." Using white phosphorus munitions against locations in which personnel are hiding falls between these two cases. If it is lawful to use WP in such cases, the army that wishes to use it must be able to meet a high threshold of demonstrating that no other less destructive weapon could have been used instead.

There is every reason to believe that U.S. forces will continue to employ white phosphorus as part of their arsenal in urban warfare. Although the weapon is undeniably unpleasant, it is unlikely to be given up entirely. Those concerned with promoting the humane standards enshrined in the laws of war would be better off questioning whether its use in particular circumstances meets legal rules on discrimination, proportionality and humanity -- rather than making implausible claims that it can never be used against enemy positions.

Related chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know:
Weapons

Related Links:

La Strage Nacosta (The Hidden Massacre)
Rai 24 News
(Contains links to video of the documentary in Italian, English and Arabic)

Did the United States Use "Illegal" Weapons in Fallujah?
U.S. Department of State
January 27, 2005

Text of Bush administration Iraq strategy paper

For reference, here is the pdf text of the Bush administration Iraq strategy. Here is the text of Bush's Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Annapolis speech on Iraq. Nancy Pelosi's response, here. Thanks to RCP.

Claudia Rosett on the UN Volker archives

Claudia Rosett - a journalist who in a fairer world would have many journalism prizes - expresses concern, here, in the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, November 30, that the archives of the Volker oil for food investigation might be destroyed by the UN, thus depriving future researchers and investigators of vital information. Excerpts:

***
Don't Shred on Me
The U.N. must not be allowed to destroy the Volcker investigation's archives.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT

Wednesday, November 30, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Wall Street Journal

Paul Volcker's findings on Oil for Food have been widely received as the final word on the United Nations relief program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Far from it--as Mr. Volcker himself has admitted. In reporting that Saddam, along with his smuggling and oil graft, diverted $1.8 billion in kickbacks from U.N.-approved relief contracts under the program, Mr. Volcker underestimates, quite probably by billions, the amount the U.N. allowed Saddam Hussein and many of his favored business partners to graft out of Oil for Food deals for goods such as oil parts, milk, laundry soap and baby food. In low-balling the total, Mr. Volcker understates the negligence of the U.N., and overlooks some of the most potentially virulent links in Oil for Food.

The most urgent implication of Mr. Volcker's incomplete findings is that his huge and expensively assembled archives must be preserved intact well beyond the Dec. 31 deadline by which Mr. Volcker now plans to start disposing of them. Above all, they must not be handed back to the U.N., where too much related to the corrupt Oil for Food program has already vanished--including, to a fascinating extent, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own powers of recollection. The former head of the program, Benon Sevan, alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam, was allowed to skip town, U.N. pension in hand. Mr. Annan is even now resurrecting, via a new $4 million U.N. program called the Alliance of Civilizations, the career of his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who officially retired earlier this year after it came to light that during Mr. Volcker's investigation Mr. Riza had overseen the shredding of three years' worth of documents that might have better illuminated the oil-for-fraud shenanigans of the U.N.'s executive 38th floor.

As it happens, Rep. Henry Hyde, who has led the main investigation into Oil for Food in the House, introduced a bill on Nov. 17 urging that the U.S. withhold $100 million from its U.N. dues for each of the next four fiscal years, or until the secretary of state certifies to Congress that the Volcker investigation's archives have been transferred, intact and uncensored by the U.N., "to an entity other than the [Volcker] Committee or the United Nations"--and made available for public inspection, at the very least by law-enforcement authorities.

If $100 million a year seems a punitive sum, it pales next to the billions in suspect money that Mr. Volcker left out of the grand totals in his final report. And that's even if we set aside for now the staggering $19 billion in Oil for Food revenues which the U.N. doled out under its usual secrecy via the U.N. Compensation Commission to victims of Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. These compensation payments were, for the U.N., a huge chunk of the program, which Mr. Volcker promised to cover and somehow never got around to--though U.N. internal audits suggest it was riddled with waste and abuse.

More immediately, let us turn to the $39 billion or so in U.N.-approved payments by Saddam to his chosen Oil for Food relief suppliers. When Sen. Norm Coleman's investigators last year estimated the amounts scammed by Saddam out of this relief money, they came up with a total of some $7 billion--almost four times larger than what Mr. Volcker reports. Why the big difference? Saddam used a variety of scams, and Mr. Coleman's investigators took into account most of them, while Mr. Volcker focused on only two--illicit transportation fees, and the $1.8 billion in standardized kickbacks to Saddam--which he was able to measure fairly precisely. Basically, if Mr. Volcker could not attach precise numbers to a graft scheme, he did not try to measure it at all--even if the amounts involved almost certainly totaled billions. Notably, after puzzling over one of the biggest flows of suspect relief money, Mr. Volcker concluded in a comment buried on page 299 of his 623-page Oct. 27 final report that "this matter likely warrants further investigation and review."

That note comes at the end of a section describing Saddam's tendency to overpay for many relief supplies, thus providing fat profits to favored suppliers. In some cases--or, as Mr. Volcker reports, in virtually all cases for the last half of the seven-year program, meaning from 2000 until the 2003 overthrow of Saddam--the supplier would kick back about 10% of the contract price to Saddam. Those kickbacks Mr. Volcker duly totals, to produce his estimate of $1.8 billion grafted out of the relief contracts. But in some cases, as a Pentagon audit study reported in 2003, and further evidence from both congressional investigations and Mr. Volcker himself has since corroborated, the routine kickbacks to Saddam's regime did not account for the full amounts overpaid to the suppliers. In other words, vendors of baby food, or detergent, or milk, even after paying a kickback to Saddam, would in some cases still end up with extra loot on their hands. Asked about this at an Oct. 27 press conference, Mr. Volcker speculated this sort of thing was perhaps "just a reward" for the "favored" contractors. OK. But what were they being rewarded for?

As the program got bigger, and the U.N.-approved range and scope of suppliers grew, so the overpricing grew too--as Mr. Volcker's own team illustrated in a chart (click here to see it), from the Sept. 7 penultimate report on Oil for Food, which shows the growing spread between market price and Saddam's purchase price for three sample commodities (which Mr. Volcker for some reason does not name). A post-Saddam Pentagon audit in 2003 of the prices paid on a sampling of Oil for Food contracts found similar spreads. Such overpayments are as a rule a bright red flag for graft in the form of payoffs. But instead of explaining that, or trying to estimate the scale, Mr. Volcker puzzled over it briefly in his last two reports, speculating that perhaps Saddam had to pay a growing premium to soothe suppliers "uncomfortable with their continued obligation to pay kickbacks."

The real mystery is why this was all so mystifying to a veteran money man like former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. In every other aspect of Oil for Food, from Saddam's bribery attempts before the program even began, to the shrink-wrapped cash that surfaced in liberated Iraq, there is every sign that Saddam's regime levered every penny it could out of the program. And every sign that in choosing contractors Saddam picked a great many who had something to offer his regime beyond arm's-length market deals on groceries. The official aim of the U.N. program, of course, was to limit Saddam's use of oil money to the purchase of fairly priced goods for relief. But the way the U.N. actually ran the program allowed Saddam not only to skim money earmarked for aid, but to launder it via relief suppliers worldwide, for any use to which a supplier might agree.

Another odd oversight in the Volcker report is the glaring lack of follow-up on suppliers--especially ones that were, according to Mr. Volcker, based in places such as Cuba and Afghanistan--that, as far as Mr. Volcker could determine, paid no kickbacks. That could mean they were just companies so honest, selling goods so desirable, that in these cases Saddam simply forsook his crooked ways. Or it could mean Saddam for more worrisome reasons was so eager to transfer money to these companies that he did not even bother to demand a kickback. These companies include U.S. suppliers of food and equipment, a drug manufacturer in Cuba; and a company listed by Mr. Volcker as operating out of both the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, some of that during the years in which Osama bin Laden, courtesy of the Taliban, was resident there, planning the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.

The likeliest explanation of Saddam's growing zest to overpay for relief, and his apparent benevolence toward select companies in places not generally famed for their shopping centers, is that both these tendencies offered Saddam ways to transfer purloined relief money to suppliers who were in a position not only to sell him rice, soap and medicine, but to do sanctions-busting favors for Saddam--such as procure illicit goods, forward money to secret bank accounts, or send it onward to people whom Saddam wished to support. Arms dealers and terrorist groups come to mind. All that would have been possible, under cover of these U.N. contracts, no less. Saddam's suppliers under the U.N. program included companies based in or linked to such financial havens as Liechtenstein and Switzerland; such arms-trafficking hubs as Russia, China and Belarus; and such trouble spots as Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and--as Mr. Volcker notes in passing--Cuba and Afghanistan.

To sort out the innocent from the not-so, far more information is needed than the U.N., or Mr. Volcker, has so far disclosed--including which specific contracts were most clearly overpriced, and whether anyone actually inspected the medicine ordered up by Saddam from Cuba--or, to take another example, the yogurt from Liechtenstein. But far from making available the full documentation on the thousands of U.N.-approved Oil for Food relief deals, Mr. Volcker's reports, apart from providing a few case studies, do not even try to break out even the most egregious overpricing by company, or even country. Perhaps it was simply too much work, even for Mr. Volcker's well-equipped inquiry, funded with $35 million in leftover Oil for Food money, and employing 75 investigators from 27 countries for 18 months.

But in that case, before the U.N. revs up its shredders, there are others more attuned to such matters as arms-trafficking and terror-funding, or for that matter, payoffs forwarded via U.N.-approved baby-food contracts, who need a chance to sift through Mr. Volcker's document trove.

(Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.)

Joe Lieberman on Iraq

Just in case the New York Times doesn't see fit to run this as front page commentary, here is Joe Lieberman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, here, Tuesday, November 29, 2005, on the war in Iraq. Excerpts:

***
Our Troops Must Stay

By JOE LIEBERMAN
November 29, 2005; Page A18
Wall Street Journal

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood -- unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

* * *
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.

* * *
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.

Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.

The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan -- Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.

These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future -- and why the American people should be, too.

* * *
I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."

Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.

(Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.)

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113323207590108762.html

John Bolton's performance at the UN

Frederick Kempe, "The U.N.'s Bolton Moment," Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, November 29, 2005, here.

***

THINKING GLOBAL
By FREDERICK KEMPE

The U.N.'s Bolton Moment

Wall Street Journal
November 29, 2005

What has confounded John Bolton's abundant detractors, both American and foreign, is how little he has lived up to their caricature of him as the fire-breathing, unilateralist, neo-conservative pit bull during his first four months as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
"He's an intelligent person," says Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan, a Bolton opponent on any number of issues, most critically now over U.N. management reform. "He's articulate, and he's a tough negotiator. As far as I'm concerned, he's quite okay."

Mr. Akram then pays Mr. Bolton the greatest compliment possible from within the ranks of diplomats deeply suspicious of his motives for wanting the U.N, job in the first place. "I have no reason to believe he's here to destroy the institution," the Pakistani envoy says. "I can work with him."

U.S. envoy John Bolton

That said, Mr. Akram and others remain far from viewing Mr. Bolton as their salvation, though that well may be what he represents. His appointment to the U.N. was the rough equivalent of Richard Nixon's visit to China, as he is determined to provoke needed change and has the hard-line credentials to sell skeptical congressmen on any agreed-upon reforms.

Senior U.N. officials "expect me to be … the U.N. ambassador to the U.S. and that isn't going to happen," Mr. Bolton says, in an interview. Yet he recognizes that he is the man most trusted by congressmen who have drafted a bill aimed at withholding 50% of U.S. funding for the U.N. if it doesn't make itself more effective and transparent. "If we have a good story on reform, I'll tell it to the Hill. If we don't, I'm not going to spin it. What they know is that I am is a tough negotiator for U.S. positions."

Unfortunately, developing countries thus far view U.S.-backed reform efforts more as an attack on their influence than a way to strengthen an organization overburdened by demands and deeply stung by the oil-for-food corruption scandal. For that reason they are launching a counteroffensive against the management reforms that are central to Mr. Bolton's efforts. The U.S. has responded by refusing to sign off on the institution's two-year budget until it makes more progress toward reforms that a U.N. summit in September endorsed, including tighter financial and ethical oversight and increased authority for the secretary general to hire and fire and close down programs that have lost their utility.

A New Pragmatism

While many diplomats search for Mr. Bolton's hidden motives in pushing this agenda, they've missed the most obvious: the Bush administration has realized at great pain via Iraq that it can't achieve much in the world without more effective multilateralism. The challenges increasingly defy unilateral solutions: terrorism, international crime, pandemic threats, global warming, nuclear proliferation.

Those who know Mr. Bolton best consider him to be one of the hardest-working, if hottest-tempered, diplomats the U.N. has ever seen. That said, he has also surprised many with his talent for the diplomatic horse-trading that is that institution's hallmark. Friends of Mr. Bolton say a former boss who influenced him deeply was James Baker, a prototypically pragmatic secretary of state.

"The single most important piece of political advice Jim Baker gives anyone is 'Keep your eyes on the prize,'" Mr. Bolton says.

The coming days will show whether this kinder, gentler Mr. Bolton and the broader policy he represents of greater U.S. engagement with the U.N. can yield the wide-ranging management and ethical reforms necessary to rescue the body from its tendencies toward corruption and self-satisfied inefficiency.

Mr. Bolton himself has reason for doubt.

"We're two months beyond the September summit and we are not making the kind of progress we would like," says Mr. Bolton, choosing the careful language of international diplomacy.
Some call what the U.S. is trying to achieve -- with significant support from other countries, notably Japan -- the GE-ization of the U.N., that is, introducing the modern management mechanisms of global companies. Together the U.S. and Japan provide more than 40% of U.N. funds (the U.S. 22% and Japan 19%). Among the leading opponents are Pakistan, Egypt and India.

"We have a structural problem," says Mark Malloch Brown, the secretary general's chief of staff. "The Security Council and member states generally interfere in the management of this organization. They've not given the secretary general the authority or the resources or the means to run a modern organization that can be held properly accountable to its membership."
Counters Mr. Akram of Pakistan, co-chair of the U.N. reform body: "When people say let's transform this into a corporation, that's not possible" because as a political organization the U.N. must satisfy all its members.

The body that symbolizes the problem is also the source of much of the resistance to reform. Known as the Fifth Committee, it is the main council of the General Assembly responsible for administration and budgetary matters. It has 191 members and micromanages to a degree that it is nearly impossible for the secretary general to fire poor performers or shift resources between operations. Imagine a Western legislature having a committee that signs off not just on all expenditures but on each staff position in every mission. Management reform, if it is to work, would take much of that power and give it to a chief executive.

The most effective parts of the United Nations are funded voluntarily and aren't beholden to the Fifth Committee or the General Assembly. They include the United Nations Development program, the World Health Organization, the World Food program and UNICEF. Mr. Bolton has supported a shift of U.N. funding toward such voluntary activities, where competition for government funds with non-UN organizations has created more competitive, efficient organizations.

'If It Works, We'll Use It'

Much has been made of Mr. Bolton's recent comments that suggested that if management reform doesn't happen then Washington would move its business to other institutions. Mr. Bolton says he wasn't expressing ideology but explaining how Americans think.

"The U.S. public's basic question about the United Nations is how well does it work?" he says. "It's a question Americans ask every day about any number of governmental institutions. If it works, we'll use it." And he calls continued speculation that he has come to the U.N. merely to destroy it "conspiracy theories from the fever swamp."

Thus far, U.S. opponents at the U.N. view Mr. Bolton mostly as a rallying point for America-bashing. But Mr. Brown says that tendency is misguided. "Developing countries inaccurately have seen reform and modernization primarily as John Bolton's agenda, and for that reason they are against reforms that should be embraced by anyone who believes in the institution," he says.
Yet for developing countries to embrace U.S.-backed reforms would require them to put their national interests in a better-functioning U.N. ahead of their animosity toward Mr. Bolton and the Bush administration.

That may be the U.N. reform most difficult to come by.

fred.kempe@wsj.com5

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113320522765108247.html

Note re Diogenes' comment re David Luban's article

A comment from Diogenes (reposted from the comments section):

David Luban's piece in the Washington Post is an exercise in refocusing the debate, away from the trivial and towards the serious. He succeeds in this very well, and his work is an important contribution to the dialogue. While I am not sympathetic to Charles Krauthammer and his recent Weekly Standard piece, I consider it far more serious than any of the other defenses of the Cheney-Addington viewpoint that have been published in the last year - certainly compared with Andrew McCarthy's and Heather Mac Donald's work for instance. But Ken Anderson's comments here are very disappointing. Rather than engage in debate on legal, ethical or intelligence policy grounds, they consist of cheap political rhetoric of the sort I am used to hearing from the mouth of the Rush Limbaughs of the world. This isn't scholarship. It isn't even serious argument. And Ken's line about valuing human life is the cheapest shot of all. I've been a follower of Ken's work for some time, but I have to say this marks a real low point.


Re Diogenes comment above - well, I've apologized to Professor Luban for getting too personal. As for the rest of it, I'm sorry that Diogenes does not find that it engages even as an ethics argument. Possibly not persuasive as an ethics argument, but that it does not engage on that ground? Really? I think I've proposed at least one important ethical principle that is not captured or well captured by existing discussions of torture and mistreatment, viz., the moral status of the person you are dealing with. I've suggested that there is not an alternative to a certain moral casuistry in dealing with actual practices - hence my insistence that legal solutions must in fact deal with actual practices that the legal texts do not directly address. Arguments over ethical principal, arguments from cases - what am I missing here? But if I've descended to Rush Limbaugh territory, then let me put the question back to Diogenes, same as to Marty Lederman in my earlier post. Zarqawi is captured - and please do not tell me that it is not a live possibility or that it is somehow irrelevant - what will you do with him and how will you treat him?