04/26/12 – Marcy Wheeler – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Marcy Wheeler.
Emptywheel.net is the address of her blog where she goes by the name Empty Wheel and where she writes great articles about every thing.
Welcome back to the show Marcy, how are you doing?
Hey Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great, appreciate you joining us today.
Glad to be here.
So let's talk about drone strikes and the laws of drone strikes and the recent leaks by the government about their expanded laws and rules and regulations pertaining to their drone strikes, particularly in Yemen, for example.
What can you tell us?
Yeah, there are two kinds of drone strikes.
There there are signature, there are strikes going after somebody whose identity we know.
For example, when we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, we knew that we were going to kill al-Awlaki and that's right.
And then there are strikes called signature strikes and they are targeted at people or usually groups of people based on patterns of behavior rather than on a known identity.
So you know, the drone 30,000 feet in the sky will capture footage of a bunch of armed men securing a location as if somebody important is going to come and they'll target that site assuming that that somebody important is going to be somebody high level al-Qaeda important person.
We will do that in Pakistan a couple years ago and we're killing a lot of people and then we killed a bunch of civilians and it didn't go over very well with Pakistani government and so we've sharply curtailed these signature strikes in Pakistan but in the last week we've learned that we're going to start doing them in Yemen.
And now from the beginning, well not the very beginning because that would be, I guess, Bush back in 2002 where an American citizen wasn't the target, at least supposedly wasn't the target but died in the thing.
But if we go back to, I guess, the beginning of the renewed drone war in Yemen, as far as I know it started in Obama years, it started in, what, the fall of 2009, right?
And right off the bat they're killing innocent people with cluster bombs, women and children, in November, December 2009.
Right, the worst case, and this was one of the first drone strikes in Yemen, we ended up killing about 40 Bedouins who were reportedly, you know, selling food to al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula fighters but weren't part of AQAP.
And there were lots of kids and, as you said, we used cluster bombs so it made it worse.
Well now that's one of the old rules, right, where they know who they're killing, supposedly.
Yeah, but one of the problems, of course, is that we were partnering with the then president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and he probably was feeding us bad intelligence along the way.
So it's unclear whether that was a case of bad intelligence or whether we just thought all those Bedouins were fighters or whether, you know, that one was not actually a drone strike, it was shot from a submarine.
And so we didn't have the same kind of intelligence that we, I mean, we didn't have the same kind of visual check on a target that we now have with drone strikes, which is not to say that we're accurate with drone strikes, but that is one of the differences there.
I see.
And then, now there's been somewhat of a regime change in Yemen by the people against the United States, the sock puppet Saleh, but it's just all his family members in the exact same government that's continued on, and American support and cooperation, as they call it, with their government on killing people in that country has just continued right on, is that correct?
And that's one of the problems that critics of this new policy have is that in Yemen, you've got two or three different opposition fights going on in different parts of the country.
And, you know, as you say, well, every man in Yemen is armed.
So how from above are you going to tell whether or not they're Al Qaeda or not based on whether they have a gun, because everyone has a gun.
But the other thing is that Saleh was ousted as part of the Arab Spring.
And there still is that opposition to the government because the government is fundamentally the same.
And so by engaging in these signature strikes, what's probably going to happen or what is, you know, what is the likely unintended consequence of this is that we're going to be weighing in on the side of a civil war, and not a side that's particularly popular among Arabs who don't necessarily want to join Al Qaeda, but don't want corrupt dictators ruling their countries anymore.
Well, it's just the perfect folly, as always, you know, blunder into a place, create more enemies, and then use those enemies as the excuse to keep on intervening, and keep making matters worse.
And of course, here, it's already that blatant, right, where Robert Mueller came out on the 24th, and said, Oh, yeah, we're, you know, Al Qaeda is the rebels, the rebels are Al Qaeda, and we will help you crush them to the Yemeni politicians.
Right.
And that's what people are saying in the context of this position as well, as they're saying, well, the two sides of the same coin, the rebels are definitely the same as Al Qaeda.
And they're not, but they will be as soon as we hit the next village of women and children.
And that's all predictable, but it's not going to change it.
And the other thing that's really interesting about the coverage on this new on these new signature strikes is, again, all of these anonymous administration officials who can't say this on the record and won't, you know, won't respond to a FOIA on drone strikes, but, but secretly, I mean, anonymously, they're saying, look, the number of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters has grown significantly since the time we killed al-Awlaki.
And yet nobody's doing the math.
Nobody's saying, well, if hitting them with drone strikes is, is resulting in more AQAP fighters, why are we going to up the number of drone strikes?
Right.
Well, you think it would be a pretty obvious question, right?
Yeah.
And, and unfortunately, nobody in DC seems to be asking it.
I'm trying to Google it now.
I don't know if it'll work first try or not.
There was something by John Glazer at the antiwar.com blog not long ago, where it was, I'm just going to have to paraphrase it for us.
I didn't get lucky, but it was an administration official saying, you know, if we keep bombing al-Shabaab in Somalia, we might accidentally turn them from a regional militia into an international terrorist menace.
Huh?
Well, I guess maybe we should shoot them with more drones.
And then, and then they just go on again.
When you're in a hole, you grab a shovel and get digging.
Well, and the other thing, I mean, all they know how to do is print money.
All they know how to do is shoot, help fire missiles at people.
They don't know anything else to do.
Right.
I mean, and they don't, I mean, the problem in Yemen and the problem in Somalia and the problem in Pakistan is a lot of these places don't have civil society.
They don't have government institutions.
They don't have infrastructure.
They don't have, you know, jobs and food and streets.
And those are, especially in Yemen, I mean, the AQAP is kind of rolling out the strategy in Yemen, where they're going to start providing those things.
They're going to do what Hezbollah has done in Southern Lebanon and become the de facto government.
And, you know, the United States isn't doing the math and saying, well, if these terrorist groups keep providing services to people and therefore becoming de facto government, maybe we should just continue to fight them, you know, with more drone strikes, rather than saying, maybe we should make sure that they have effective government with streets.
And schools and so forth, because that's the best way to keep them out of out of, you know, keep them not supporting al-Qaeda.
And they seem to be missing that, because, as you said, their their one hammer in their toolbox is the drone strikes.
And that's what they're going to keep using.
I mean, and really forget helping them.
Just stop killing them would be a great start.
It seems like.
And by the way, here's my footnote.
The Washington Post, the article is under Obama and emerging global apparatus for drone killing.
And in regards to Al-Shabaab, it says, but the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes out of a concern that a broader campaign could turn Al-Shabaab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.
So here they're admitting how counterproductive their strategy is, even to the point of putting American civilians at risk here in the homeland, as they call it.
But they'll just continue on in Somalia and Yemen and the rest of the places as well and in the United States.
And we'll be talking more about that when we get back from this break with Empty Wheel, Marcy Wheeler, EmptyWheel.net.
All right, so welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Marcy Wheeler, the Empty Wheel, EmptyWheel.net is how to find her blog on the internet there.
And there's so many different things I want to ask you about.
I guess, first of all, can you talk to us a little bit about Bradley Manning and the big hearing yesterday?
Well, it's still going on today.
And I'm kind of keeping a half eye on it, but we're still waiting, I think, to hear whether or not the defense has moved to dismiss the trading with the enemy or abetting the enemy charge against them.
And I think we're still waiting on that.
But it's the same old government defending its secrecy, trying to avoid explaining their damage assessments, which say there isn't much.
This accusation that Manning was trying to help Al-Qaeda or helped Al-Qaeda because he leaked all this information that we as citizens should know.
And it's just kind of crazy.
It's definitely such an example of the government trying to crack down on citizens knowing what their government is doing.
Now, why are they trying to say that he's benefiting Al-Qaeda?
Is that because that really what he did is legal, that that's really all they have on him is they have to lie and pretend that he did this to benefit the enemy rather than is acting as a whistleblower here?
No, it's because they have all these other charges against him.
I mean, because talk about overkill, right?
What's the point of that?
Pretending like he's in bed with Zawahiri.
No one believes that.
That's stupid.
Well, I think it's a twofold.
I think they're doing it for two reasons.
One is I think they're trying to get him to testify against Assange.
And so by charging him with this, which carries, could carry the death penalty, they're saying they're not going to go after the death penalty, but certainly get him life in prison.
They're trying to charge him with something significantly serious that he might deal.
And then the other reason they're doing it, I think, is because, and they admitted this, the government, the military, when they testified to Congress about his alleged leak said, there's really nothing keeping people from doing just what Bradley Manning did because our security systems stink.
It's just the trustworthiness of the people.
And so I think that they're really going after Manning because they don't actually keep this information safe through technical means.
Because in the case, the Manning case, he allegedly walked into a secure compartmented information facility, one where you're not even supposed to be able to bring your own pens in and stuff, walked in with a Lady Gaga CD and walked out with all of these cables.
So they're not doing the bare minimum or at least weren't at that point and probably to a significant degree aren't doing what they need to do to protect their networks.
And so they've got to turn Bradley Manning into this evil person, or otherwise we might ask why they aren't taking these security precautions, which would also happen to keep the Chinese out of our network, or the Russians or the Israelis out of our network.
But you know, we know that they're hacking this information, and they're getting to it for the same reason that Manning was allegedly able to get it.
So it's distraction, you know, to a villain.
And then we don't look too closely at the fact that they're pretty much letting this information out there without control.
And now I'll just say very briefly, for people who aren't familiar with this story, you can read it at Wired, at least, you know, their version of the released transcripts of Bradley Manning's conversations with Adrian, the rat that turned him in, where he says, well, hey, why don't you try to sell this to the Russians or something along those lines, the rat says that.
And he says, Oh, no way, man.
See, my whole point here is to be a whistleblower.
I want worldwide reforms.
And there's war crimes that need exposing.
And I was ordered to participate in one and I'm against that.
And also I have video of another that's very shocking and information about how the first world exploits the third that just seems almost criminal and unfair.
And I just think that the world will be better off that the people could make better decisions if only they knew this truth.
I mean, he's literally paraphrasing.
He doesn't know it.
He's paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson about the value of truth and in the free market of ideas and information in the world so that the right decisions can be made in a free society.
I mean, it's just perfect whistleblower shtick.
And he meant it.
He wasn't, you know, he didn't know he was going to be turned in here.
He was just explaining himself, his motivation.
It was perfect whistleblower ness.
Right.
And this argument that Manning helped outside by by leaking all this information so that you and I could figure out what the heck our government was doing.
Manning's not the first time the government has made this claim.
They also made the same claim in the Jeffrey Sterling case where they actually said it was worse for him.
Remember, Jeffrey Sterling is the guy who allegedly leaked information on this crazy, you know, our plot to sell Iran or to give Iran bad nuclear blueprints to Operation Marlin.
Yeah.
So in that case that, you know, he allegedly leaked it to James Rison.
And they they said in that case, kind of like they're saying here with Manning, well, it's worse that you leaked it to a journalist because the whole world could find out.
And and, you know, it's this crazy notion that not only turns whistleblowers, Manning and Sterling into the villains, but it also also, you know, implicitly turns journalists into villains, because the notion is that one journalist, I mean, the journalists are in the business of giving information to al Qaeda.
That's, you know, that's supposedly according to that logic.
That's the way our government understands journalists.
Well, and we've seen that last week and this week with the USA Today or no, pardon me, Los Angeles Times publishing just two out of 18 pictures of American soldiers parading corpses around mutilated corpses, which is against the laws of war, I think, in writing somewhere.
And everyone attacked them.
It's not our soldiers that are doing the wrong thing.
It's not that the American people need to know that there's a breakdown in morale and order over there in our armed forces so that we can insist our politicians do something about that.
No, this is just the L.A. Times making our guys look bad and putting their lives in danger.
That's all right.
I mean, we've seen this over and over again, and it is worse under the Obama administration.
It's this notion that anything that makes the United States look bad or anything that reveals, you know, nefariousness on the part of the United States or lawbreaking or what have you, is itself, you know, illegal or dangerous or, you know, in anonymous statements, they've said that that amounts to aiding al Qaeda.
And it's like, you know, again, whatever happens, Thomas Jefferson's idea that we as citizens need to be informed.
Well, and then, of course, the flip side of this is you can torture anybody you want and write a book all about it.
And all you got to do is brag that, yeah, you're damn right, I'm a torturer.
And apparently you're just fine as long as you have a hall pass from George Bush, I guess.
No, no, he got sad.
You're talking about Jose Rodriguez, the guy who kind of instituted the torture program and destroyed the torture tapes.
And apparently he complains in his book that the torturers were called torturers.
So, you know, he's fine that they did it.
He just doesn't want us actually calling him and his torturers what they actually are.
It's enhanced interrogation.
Okay.
Get it straight.
Right.
We can't call it what it is.
Well, and this guy, again, Jose Rodriguez, he was what, the director of operations, the spy and throat slitting side of the CIA, the coup d'etat side of the CIA, right?
Yeah, when he destroyed the tapes, he was director of operations.
When he was in charge of torture, he was in charge of the counterterrorism center.
So he actually was there, went away and then came back and got put in charge, you know, got put in a more authoritative position and decided to take it upon himself to destroy evidence.
And to your listeners, one of the important things about this is he keeps saying, and all of the journalists who've reported this thus far have said, oh, the tapes portrayed the waterboarding of Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah.
And we know, first of all, that the tapes didn't portray the waterboarding of Al-Nashiri because they were being taped over on a day-to-day basis.
But even the tapes of Abu Zubaydah, a big chunk of them were blank or damaged or, or taped over by the time Rodriguez got to him.
So what, you know, he's out there saying, oh, I did it out of goodwill because I didn't want anybody to see these videos.
So I didn't, you know, if they had, they would have gone and killed CIA officers.
And yet they were substantially blank tape.
And that's really important for people to remember because the whole myth he's selling is that he destroyed the tape just to keep CIA officers safe.
And it's like, well, why do you bother destroying them at all?
Yeah, right.
And, and it's not like they were at risk of coming out.
They might've been at risk of being shown to Congress.
And again, God forbid that Congress actually get to see what the CIA is doing.
Right.
So what you're telling me though, Marcy, is that some of them were blank, but there was actual real evidence that they didn't want the Senate to see, for example, in there too.
Yeah.
I think one of the big reasons they were destroyed is because uh, they very clearly had been tampered with beforehand.
I mean, the CIA is that keep tape and they decided to not tape the worst parts of interrogations.
They, they were like, well, they all have a get out of jail free card anyway.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
We're out of time.
The show's over.
We got to go empty wheel.net to read all about all this great stuff.
Thanks so much for your time, Marcy.
Good to talk to you, Scott.