By William Fisher
As the world last week marked the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first orange-jumpsuit-clad prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human rights organizations are attempting to focus public and congressional scrutiny on what some are calling “the other GITMO.”
The “Other GITMO” is a prison located on the U.S. military base at base in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. The detention center was set up by the U.S. military as a temporary screening site after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban. It currently houses some 630 prisoners –close to three times as many as are still held at Guantanamo.
In 2005, following well-documented accounts of detainee deaths, torture, and “disappeared” prisoners, the U.S. undertook efforts to turn the facility over to the Afghan Government. But, thanks to a series of legal, bureaucratic and administrative missteps, the prison is still under American military control. And a recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained about the continued mistreatment of prisoners.
The ICRC report is said to cite massive overcrowding, "harsh" conditions, lack of clarity about the legal basis for detention, prisoners held "incommunicado," in "a previously undisclosed warren of isolation cells," and "sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions." Some prisoners have been held without charges or lawyers for more than five years. The Red Cross said that dozens of prisoners have been held incommunicado for weeks or even months, hidden from prison inspectors and at times subjugated to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
According to Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Bagram appears to be just as bad, if not worse, than Guantanamo. When a prisoner is in American custody and under American control, our values are at stake and our commitment to the rule of law is tested.” She told IPS, “The abuses cited by the Red Cross give us cause for concern that we may be failing the test. The Bush administration is not content to limit its regime of illegal detention to Guantanamo, and has tried to foist it on Afghanistan.”
She added, “Both Congress and the Executive Branch need to investigate what's happening at Bagram if we are to avoid a tragic repetition of history.”
The problems at Bagram burst into the headlines in 2005, after the New York Times obtained a 2,000-page U.S. Army report concerning the deaths of two unarmed civilian Afghani prisoners guarded by U.S. armed forces in 2002.
American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.
But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. The prisoners were chained to the ceiling and beaten, causing their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicide. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.
The U.S. military has spent more than $30 million to build an Afghan prison outside Kabul that meets international humane treatment standards and has trained Afghan guards.
But the number of detainees keeps growing, due to the intensifying combat in Afghanistan. One result is that there is room for only about half the prisoners the U.S. originally planned to put in the new detention center.
Efforts to transfer Bagram’s 630-plus prisoners to Afghan control have run into myriad other problems. First, there were turf battles between the different ministries of the Afghan government. Then Afghan officials rejected pressure from Washington to adopt a detention system modeled on the Bush administration's "enemy combatant" legal framework, with military commissions such as those at Guantánamo.
The ACLU’s Shamsi says that, “While conditions at Bagram have improved, at least since the universal revulsion at the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Congress' passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the tragic mistakes of the past may be in danger of repetition.”
She also raises the possibility that there may be prisoners in Afghanistan who are not "Department of Defense detainees," as one Pentagon official has referred to them, but are instead held by the CIA or another civilian agency.
“We know that the CIA was holding "ghost prisoners" -- prisoners held in secret, hidden from the Red Cross -- at a secret facility called the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan. She notes that the administration has never renounced the CIA's illegal secret detention and interrogation program that President Bush revealed in September 2006. She adds concern that Special Operations forces may not be following Department of Defense directives on the registration of prisoners.
According to Shamsi, “It is clear that another lesson from the torture scandal seems to have been ignored: different rules for different agencies and different prisoners are an invitation to abuse.”
The situation at Bagram has been largely overshadowed by the continuing controversy surrounding Guantanamo. Just last week, a U.S. appeals court ruled that four former Guantanamo prisoners, all British citizens, have no right to sue top Pentagon officials and military officers for torture, abuse and violations of their religious rights. The four who brought the lawsuit were released from Guantanamo in 2004 after being held for more than two years. The suit sought $10 million in damages and named then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 military commanders.
The men claimed they were subjected to various forms of torture, harassed as they practiced their religion and forced to shave their religious beards. In one instance, a guard threw a Koran in a toilet bucket, according to the lawsuit.
The appeals court cited a lack of jurisdiction over the lawsuit, ruled the defendants enjoyed qualified immunity for acts taken within the scope of their government jobs and held the religious right law did not apply to the detainees.
Eric Lewis, the attorney who argued the case for the detainees, vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when a court finds that torture is all in a days' work for the secretary of defense and senior generals," Lewis said.
Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, expressed disappointment that the appeals court failed to hold "Rumsfeld and the chain of command accountable for torture at Guantanamo."
Guantanamo and Bagram have been virtually ignored by candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination. One exception is former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who acknowledged that Guantanamo has become a damaging symbol for the United States and is "not in our best interests."
President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so. In June 2007, Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo -- not tomorrow, this afternoon," explaining that "we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open." And Defense Secretary Robert Gates has reportedly pushed to close the facility because he felt the detention facility had "become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate."
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'?
By William Fisher
As if the pollsters and the media who analyze and report on their findings didn’t make enough mistakes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, here’s another:
The folks who conducted the exit polls following the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary asked departing Republican voters if they were evangelicals." But they didn’t ask the same question of exiting Democrats – apparently assuming there weren't any evangelicals voting for Democrats.
That’s because the conventional wisdom is that Evangelical = Republican.
It’s that wisdom that appears to have been accepted by the outfits that conducted the exit polls.
But it just ain’t so, says Katie Barge of Faith in Public Life. She says it’s “an assumption that is demonstrably not true.”
She notes that polling organizations and media experts on religion explain to us that “evangelicals care mostly or only about abortion and gay marriage, and not about other issues.” And that, she says, “is even more mistaken.”
She explains: “The issues that most concern evangelicals today, especially a younger generation, include poverty, the environment and climate change, human rights, and the morality of a foreign policy where war is the first resort.”
She adds, “This year those issues are drawing a growing number of evangelicals to consider the Democratic candidates.” This broadening agenda, she says, has made the evangelical community “increasingly diverse politically.”
Barge is not alone. Michelle Boorstein and Jon Cohen, writing in the Washington Post’s “The Trail,” remind us that since nearly eight in ten white evangelicals voted for President Bush in 2004, Democrats have been plowing thought, money and time into changing the story line. They have faith advisers, faith forums and faith strategies that show there is such a thing as a progressive evangelical.”
Not unreasonably, a group of leading progressive evangelicals was upset enough by the acceptance of old stereotypes and caricatures that they fired off a letter to the polling and political directors of media outlets represented in the National Election Pool.
The signatories included such luminaries as Dr. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor of the Northland Church in Orlando and head of The Christian Coalition, an organization once synonymous with the Religious Right; David Neff, Editor of Christianity Today; Rev. Jim Wallis, best-selling author and founder of the Sojourners; Paul Corts, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and other equally high-profile clergymen and theologians.
Here, in part, is what they wrote:
“Religion is playing an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential campaign; the need for accurate and thorough information about religious voters is difficult to overstate. Thus far, the National Election Pool’s exit poll surveys have pigeonholed evangelicals, reinforcing the false stereotype that we are beholden to one political party.
“Your entrance and exit polls at the Iowa caucuses asked Republican caucus-goers if they were 'born-again or evangelical Christian(s)', but did not ask the same question of Democrats. This omission left a substantive hole in subsequent news coverage of the caucuses. Based on your polling, the public helpfully learned that born-again or evangelical Christians played a central role in Mike Huckabee’s victory, but received no information about the impact of evangelical voters in the Democratic race.
“As reported by numerous news organizations, candidates of both parties spoke explicitly of their religious faith while campaigning in Iowa and have robust faith outreach operations. By omitting the question of evangelical/born-again identification from the Democratic polls, you prevented the public from seeing the full picture of how the bipartisan courtship of evangelical voters affected the outcome of the first contest of the 2008 campaign and perpetuated the misperception that all evangelical Christians are Republicans.
“No party can own any faith.”
The letter closes by noting, “With voters entering polling sites in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina in the coming days and weeks and Super Tuesday following shortly thereafter, it is imperative for you to remedy the imbalance in your exit polling immediately. Evangelicalism is not a monolithic movement that fits neatly into one party.”
The reaction from the recipients thus far?
Chuck Todd from NBC -- the only one to respond so far -- wrote back, "I will share this with the team... thank you for your concern."
No word at all yet from any of the other networks. Michael Mokrzycki, AP's director of polling, declined to give details about how the group came up with its questions, but said "if you've seen the questionnaires it is clear we're working with limited real estate and thus must make judgments about priorities."
Given the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson-James Dobson history of religion in politics, the idea of an Evangelical Democrat may well seem counter-intuitive.
But we have a right to expect that the people whose work informs us about our political landscape -- and the journalists who use that work as the rationale for many of their own conclusions – keep their knowledge base current.
The times, they are a-changin'.
Or are they?
There is a larger point to this debate. Here’s how it’s seen by Rev. George Hunsinger, a professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary:
“I think the essential point would be that there are no religious qualifications for holding public office. JFK made that point years ago while Romney recently fudged it.
“Whether there should be questions about religious affiliation in exit polling is less clear. In exit polling as it is currently conducted, perhaps best not.
“But the larger problem of exit polling and superficiality, like the problem of TV candidates' debates and superficiality, is the real nub. If we take the Lincoln-Douglas debates as a standard, we can begin to gauge how far our public discourse has fallen.
“The superficiality of our public discourse -- and especially the slide toward tabloid news coverage -- can hardly be seen as an accident. Our rulers clearly want a general public that has no interest in genuine thought. That way we, the people are more easily manipulated and controlled. Call it creeping Orwellianism.”
Amen!
As if the pollsters and the media who analyze and report on their findings didn’t make enough mistakes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, here’s another:
The folks who conducted the exit polls following the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary asked departing Republican voters if they were evangelicals." But they didn’t ask the same question of exiting Democrats – apparently assuming there weren't any evangelicals voting for Democrats.
That’s because the conventional wisdom is that Evangelical = Republican.
It’s that wisdom that appears to have been accepted by the outfits that conducted the exit polls.
But it just ain’t so, says Katie Barge of Faith in Public Life. She says it’s “an assumption that is demonstrably not true.”
She notes that polling organizations and media experts on religion explain to us that “evangelicals care mostly or only about abortion and gay marriage, and not about other issues.” And that, she says, “is even more mistaken.”
She explains: “The issues that most concern evangelicals today, especially a younger generation, include poverty, the environment and climate change, human rights, and the morality of a foreign policy where war is the first resort.”
She adds, “This year those issues are drawing a growing number of evangelicals to consider the Democratic candidates.” This broadening agenda, she says, has made the evangelical community “increasingly diverse politically.”
Barge is not alone. Michelle Boorstein and Jon Cohen, writing in the Washington Post’s “The Trail,” remind us that since nearly eight in ten white evangelicals voted for President Bush in 2004, Democrats have been plowing thought, money and time into changing the story line. They have faith advisers, faith forums and faith strategies that show there is such a thing as a progressive evangelical.”
Not unreasonably, a group of leading progressive evangelicals was upset enough by the acceptance of old stereotypes and caricatures that they fired off a letter to the polling and political directors of media outlets represented in the National Election Pool.
The signatories included such luminaries as Dr. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor of the Northland Church in Orlando and head of The Christian Coalition, an organization once synonymous with the Religious Right; David Neff, Editor of Christianity Today; Rev. Jim Wallis, best-selling author and founder of the Sojourners; Paul Corts, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and other equally high-profile clergymen and theologians.
Here, in part, is what they wrote:
“Religion is playing an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential campaign; the need for accurate and thorough information about religious voters is difficult to overstate. Thus far, the National Election Pool’s exit poll surveys have pigeonholed evangelicals, reinforcing the false stereotype that we are beholden to one political party.
“Your entrance and exit polls at the Iowa caucuses asked Republican caucus-goers if they were 'born-again or evangelical Christian(s)', but did not ask the same question of Democrats. This omission left a substantive hole in subsequent news coverage of the caucuses. Based on your polling, the public helpfully learned that born-again or evangelical Christians played a central role in Mike Huckabee’s victory, but received no information about the impact of evangelical voters in the Democratic race.
“As reported by numerous news organizations, candidates of both parties spoke explicitly of their religious faith while campaigning in Iowa and have robust faith outreach operations. By omitting the question of evangelical/born-again identification from the Democratic polls, you prevented the public from seeing the full picture of how the bipartisan courtship of evangelical voters affected the outcome of the first contest of the 2008 campaign and perpetuated the misperception that all evangelical Christians are Republicans.
“No party can own any faith.”
The letter closes by noting, “With voters entering polling sites in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina in the coming days and weeks and Super Tuesday following shortly thereafter, it is imperative for you to remedy the imbalance in your exit polling immediately. Evangelicalism is not a monolithic movement that fits neatly into one party.”
The reaction from the recipients thus far?
Chuck Todd from NBC -- the only one to respond so far -- wrote back, "I will share this with the team... thank you for your concern."
No word at all yet from any of the other networks. Michael Mokrzycki, AP's director of polling, declined to give details about how the group came up with its questions, but said "if you've seen the questionnaires it is clear we're working with limited real estate and thus must make judgments about priorities."
Given the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson-James Dobson history of religion in politics, the idea of an Evangelical Democrat may well seem counter-intuitive.
But we have a right to expect that the people whose work informs us about our political landscape -- and the journalists who use that work as the rationale for many of their own conclusions – keep their knowledge base current.
The times, they are a-changin'.
Or are they?
There is a larger point to this debate. Here’s how it’s seen by Rev. George Hunsinger, a professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary:
“I think the essential point would be that there are no religious qualifications for holding public office. JFK made that point years ago while Romney recently fudged it.
“Whether there should be questions about religious affiliation in exit polling is less clear. In exit polling as it is currently conducted, perhaps best not.
“But the larger problem of exit polling and superficiality, like the problem of TV candidates' debates and superficiality, is the real nub. If we take the Lincoln-Douglas debates as a standard, we can begin to gauge how far our public discourse has fallen.
“The superficiality of our public discourse -- and especially the slide toward tabloid news coverage -- can hardly be seen as an accident. Our rulers clearly want a general public that has no interest in genuine thought. That way we, the people are more easily manipulated and controlled. Call it creeping Orwellianism.”
Amen!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
MY LAST "DEBATE"
By William Fisher
I have watched my last presidential debate.
I am sick to death of well-coiffed cable TV news anchors asking vapid questions designed to generate heat, not light. I am sick to death of presidential wannabees filibustering questions they choose to avoid by delivering slogans, not answers.
And I am sick to death of the faux choice presented to voters: Change versus Experience. Could someone out there please tell me exactly what that’s supposed to mean?
True, there were some questions – and a bunch of soundbite answers -- about a few of the great issues that will face the next president: Like energy policy, health care, free trade, and the Iraq “surge.”
But these meticulously choreographed-for-TV tableaus should be remembered for what wasn’t covered at all.
Here, in no particular rank order, are a baker’s dozen questions the moderators managed to ignore:
1. What steps will you take to restore constitutional checks and balances between the three co-equal branches of our government?
2. Do you think these three branches are actually co-equal? Or do you believe in the “unitary executive” theory that gives the president far more sweeping powers? For example, do you believe the president should be allowed to use “signing statements” to nullify parts of laws passed by congress? Do you think the Office of the Vice President is part of the Executive Branch of government?
3. Do you agree with President Bush that Guantanamo Bay should be closed? What would you do with the people imprisoned there? Do you think Combat Status Review Tribunals and Military Commissions offer detainees the chance of a fair hearing? What about habeas corpus?
4. The Bush Administration has run one of the most secretive governments in American history. What steps will you take to restore more transparency to the Executive Branch?
5. How would you remove partisan politics from the Department of Justice? And make other federal agencies more efficient?
6. Do you think waterboarding is torture? And are there circumstances under which it should be allowed?
7. The United States has diplomatic relations with – and provides huge amounts of aid to – some of the world’s most repressive governments. Do you think it’s time to rethink our Cuba policy?
8. Do you think some presidential action is needed to reach out more effectively to the American Muslim community, to keep its members from becoming radicalized into home-grown terrorists?
9. Do you think the US should press India, Israel and Pakistan to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? What further steps would you take to ensure the security of nuclear stockpiles?
10. What would you do to accelerate an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians for the establishment of two separate states? Would you press Israel to reexamine its policies regarding West Bank settlements?
11. China and India represent a third of the world’s population – and an ever-increasing amount of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions? What incentives can you offer these countries to cap these emissions according to a mandatory timetable, absent a pledge from the US to do likewise?
12. Do you think US national security is enhanced or injured by our current no-talk policies toward Iran and Syria?
13. What steps would you take to restore respect for the US in the world community?
There are no easy answers to any of these questions. Which is precisely why they should have been asked. The candidates’ answers would speak volumes about how each of them would approach the Presidency.
Forget Experience versus Change. That’s a construct unworthy of serious journalists. It is bumper-sticker lingo from campaign managers. Of course Experience is invaluable; the more you have, the better the chances your new administration will craft the most promising options. If that happens, Change might just take care of itself.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The poem below was written by my longtime friend, Gwen Gould. In addition to writing moving poetry, Gwen is a professional musician -- a gifted conductor who has enriched our little upstate New York area for many years with her community sings, recitals, and concerts with the Columbia Festival Orchestra.
Ice Storm
a seasonal sestina
On a day when all is gray
at the cusp of winter,
tears of the sunless sky
freeze the pace of life.
A gentle but treacherous rain
clothes my world in icy crystals.
In the scant light of early morn, freezing crystals
form on the filagre of branches, gray
and darkened from the rain.
This harbinger of winter
suggests the coming season of my life;
I can conjure it clearly in the foreboding sky.
A hawk swoops by, alone in the sky.
No hint of light illuminates the crystals
in the stiff branches devoid of life.
The sky is still a gloomy gray.
Unrelenting is the approach of winter
I long for a warm spring rain.
But this treacherous winter rain
thickens the darkness of the sky,
chilled in the stillness of winter.
My eyes are the dim crystals
and my memory the sky's dull gray,
slipping down the icy spine of life.
A slender beam of light parts the dull sky, life
is nourished by warming showers of new rain,
that do not wash away the gray
in my hair, but clear the sky
of its thickness and melt the crystals,
thawing my life for another winter.
Now shine the muted colors of early winter.
Slanting rays of light affim new life.
Gleams of wisdom are the crystals
that wash over me like the rain.
Light now beams from a luminous sky.
Russet and beige glow against the gray.
The surface of my life, made shiny by the rain
and toughened by the winter's frozen crystals,
glistens gray and hopeful in the bright winter sky.
a seasonal sestina
On a day when all is gray
at the cusp of winter,
tears of the sunless sky
freeze the pace of life.
A gentle but treacherous rain
clothes my world in icy crystals.
In the scant light of early morn, freezing crystals
form on the filagre of branches, gray
and darkened from the rain.
This harbinger of winter
suggests the coming season of my life;
I can conjure it clearly in the foreboding sky.
A hawk swoops by, alone in the sky.
No hint of light illuminates the crystals
in the stiff branches devoid of life.
The sky is still a gloomy gray.
Unrelenting is the approach of winter
I long for a warm spring rain.
But this treacherous winter rain
thickens the darkness of the sky,
chilled in the stillness of winter.
My eyes are the dim crystals
and my memory the sky's dull gray,
slipping down the icy spine of life.
A slender beam of light parts the dull sky, life
is nourished by warming showers of new rain,
that do not wash away the gray
in my hair, but clear the sky
of its thickness and melt the crystals,
thawing my life for another winter.
Now shine the muted colors of early winter.
Slanting rays of light affim new life.
Gleams of wisdom are the crystals
that wash over me like the rain.
Light now beams from a luminous sky.
Russet and beige glow against the gray.
The surface of my life, made shiny by the rain
and toughened by the winter's frozen crystals,
glistens gray and hopeful in the bright winter sky.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
CHANGES DEMANDED IN TERRORIST-FINANCING LAWS
By William Fisher
The government’s spotty record in obtaining convictions of people charged with providing “material support” to terrorist organizations is adding new impetus to the efforts of prominent constitutional lawyers to seek substantial changes in the law.
The latest failure in a terrorism-financing prosecution came late in 2007, when a Texas jury failed to render any guilty verdicts in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) – once the largest and most prominent charity dedicated to supporting Palestinian and other Muslim causes. Several HLF officials were charged with giving money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1995. The trial ended with a mix of acquittals and deadlocks.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation started looking into HLF in 1993. In December 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department (DOT) seized and confiscated the charity’s assets and records, effectively putting the organization out of business. Given that outcome, some legal scholars have questioned why the government pursued a criminal prosecution at all. The trial did not begin until mid-2007.
William Neal, a juror in the HLF case, told the media that the government’s evidence “was pieced together over the course of a decade — a phone call this year, a message another year.” Instead of trying to prove that the defendants knew they were supporting terrorists, Mr. Neal said, prosecutors “danced around the wire transfers by showing us videos of little kids in bomb belts and people singing about Hamas, things that didn’t directly relate to the case.”
Civil liberties groups say the HLF case was just the latest in a line of misguided
prosecutions. One such group, OMB Watch, charges that the USA Patriot Act gives the government “largely unchecked power to designate any group as a terrorist organization.” It says that “once a charitable organization is so designated, all of its materials and property may be seized and its assets frozen. The charity is unable to see the government’s evidence and thus understand the basis for the charges. Since its assets are frozen, it lacks resources to mount a defense. And it has only limited right of appeal to the courts. So the government can target a charity, seize its assets, shut it down, obtain indictments against its leaders, but then delay a trial almost indefinitely.”
One result, say critics of the government’s policy, is that Muslim charities have experienced a precipitous decline in contributions. Contributions that do arrive often come in cash from anonymous givers. And donors who happen to be Muslim are increasingly turning to the large household names like Oxfam and Save the Children, which may conduct programs in predominantly Muslim areas abroad.
One of America’s foremost constitutional scholars, Prof. David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center, argues that the “material support principle is ‘guilt by association’ in 21st-century garb, and presents all of the same problems that criminalizing membership and association did during the Cold War.” He told us that the problem requires fundamental changes in the terrorism-financing law.
Included in Cole’s recommendations for major changes:
1. The Treasury Department should be required to permit closed charities to direct their collected funds to charities mutually approved by the frozen charity and the government.
2. Congress should enact a statutory definition of a "specially designated terrorist." “Right now the Treasury Department makes such designations entirely on the basis of an Executive Order, and accordingly Congress has given the President essentially a blank check,” Cole told us.
3. Treasury should allow designated entities to use their own funds to pay for their own defense. “Treasury not only shuts down charities in a secretive one-sided process, but then bars the charities from using any of their own money to defend themselves against the designation,” according to Cole.
4. The criminal material support statutes should be amended to require proof that an individual supported a proscribed group with the intent to further its illegal activities. “Today,” according to the government, “even aid intended to discourage terrorist activities is a crime under the material support laws,” Cole says.
He adds, “There is no requirement that the aid have any connection to terrorism,” and cites a case he is handling with the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
He told us, “My clients had been providing human rights advocacy training to the PKK in Turkey, as a way of encouraging them to use peaceful lawful means to resolve their disputes with the Turkish government over its treatment of the Kurdish minority. By encouraging lawful outlets for dispute resolution, such aid would presumably discourage terrorism. Yet under the material support statute it is a crime even if HLP could prove that both the purpose and the effect of their support was to decrease the PKK's resort to violence.”
OMB Watch says the “material support” effort has resulted in the government shutting down charities that were not on any government watch list before their assets were frozen.
The organization says the result is that Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government suspects of ties to terrorism. “Organizations and individuals suspected of supporting terrorism are guilty until proven innocent,” it says.
OMB Watch told us, “A group could comply 100% and still be shut down ‘pending an investigation’."
Material-support cases are just a small fraction of the Justice Department’s terrorism prosecutions, but some observers believe they represent a shift in government strategy from punishment to prevention. Earlier prosecutions were for acts of violence that actually took place. Examples include the first World Trade Center attack, the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa, and conspiracies that were relatively close to fruition.
Nonetheless, government terror-financing prosecutions have been reasonably successful. From the Sept. 11 attacks to last July, the government started 108 material-support prosecutions and completed 62. Juries convicted nine defendants, 30 defendants pleaded guilty, and 11 pleaded guilty to other charges. There were eight acquittals and four dismissals.
In terrorism prosecutions involving a violent act actually committed or near fruition, the government’s record is spottier. According to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, the government has a 29 percent conviction rate in terrorism prosecutions overall, compared with 92 percent for felonies generally.
The latest government setback involves the so-called Liberty City Seven – seven men named for the blighted Miami district where they allegedly operated. Charged with plotting to join forces with al-Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, one was acquitted last month and a mistrial was declared for the six others after the federal jury deadlocked.
Prosecutors acknowledged that no attack was imminent, and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the alleged terror cell was ''more aspirational than operational.''
In some cases, defendants are arguably convicted of terror-related offenses in the court of public opinion rather than in the courts. One example often cited by lawyers is the case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born American citizen, who organized and raised money for a charity providing humanitarian relief to children in Iraq. He was never charged in court with a terrorist-related offense; the word “terrorism” was not allowed to be used in his trial, although prominent politicians such as then-New York Governor George Pataki hailed his arrest as a victory in the war on terror.
The upstate New York oncologist was sentenced to 22 years in jail in 2005 for 59 felony charges, including violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq.
The government’s spotty record in obtaining convictions of people charged with providing “material support” to terrorist organizations is adding new impetus to the efforts of prominent constitutional lawyers to seek substantial changes in the law.
The latest failure in a terrorism-financing prosecution came late in 2007, when a Texas jury failed to render any guilty verdicts in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) – once the largest and most prominent charity dedicated to supporting Palestinian and other Muslim causes. Several HLF officials were charged with giving money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1995. The trial ended with a mix of acquittals and deadlocks.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation started looking into HLF in 1993. In December 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department (DOT) seized and confiscated the charity’s assets and records, effectively putting the organization out of business. Given that outcome, some legal scholars have questioned why the government pursued a criminal prosecution at all. The trial did not begin until mid-2007.
William Neal, a juror in the HLF case, told the media that the government’s evidence “was pieced together over the course of a decade — a phone call this year, a message another year.” Instead of trying to prove that the defendants knew they were supporting terrorists, Mr. Neal said, prosecutors “danced around the wire transfers by showing us videos of little kids in bomb belts and people singing about Hamas, things that didn’t directly relate to the case.”
Civil liberties groups say the HLF case was just the latest in a line of misguided
prosecutions. One such group, OMB Watch, charges that the USA Patriot Act gives the government “largely unchecked power to designate any group as a terrorist organization.” It says that “once a charitable organization is so designated, all of its materials and property may be seized and its assets frozen. The charity is unable to see the government’s evidence and thus understand the basis for the charges. Since its assets are frozen, it lacks resources to mount a defense. And it has only limited right of appeal to the courts. So the government can target a charity, seize its assets, shut it down, obtain indictments against its leaders, but then delay a trial almost indefinitely.”
One result, say critics of the government’s policy, is that Muslim charities have experienced a precipitous decline in contributions. Contributions that do arrive often come in cash from anonymous givers. And donors who happen to be Muslim are increasingly turning to the large household names like Oxfam and Save the Children, which may conduct programs in predominantly Muslim areas abroad.
One of America’s foremost constitutional scholars, Prof. David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center, argues that the “material support principle is ‘guilt by association’ in 21st-century garb, and presents all of the same problems that criminalizing membership and association did during the Cold War.” He told us that the problem requires fundamental changes in the terrorism-financing law.
Included in Cole’s recommendations for major changes:
1. The Treasury Department should be required to permit closed charities to direct their collected funds to charities mutually approved by the frozen charity and the government.
2. Congress should enact a statutory definition of a "specially designated terrorist." “Right now the Treasury Department makes such designations entirely on the basis of an Executive Order, and accordingly Congress has given the President essentially a blank check,” Cole told us.
3. Treasury should allow designated entities to use their own funds to pay for their own defense. “Treasury not only shuts down charities in a secretive one-sided process, but then bars the charities from using any of their own money to defend themselves against the designation,” according to Cole.
4. The criminal material support statutes should be amended to require proof that an individual supported a proscribed group with the intent to further its illegal activities. “Today,” according to the government, “even aid intended to discourage terrorist activities is a crime under the material support laws,” Cole says.
He adds, “There is no requirement that the aid have any connection to terrorism,” and cites a case he is handling with the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).
He told us, “My clients had been providing human rights advocacy training to the PKK in Turkey, as a way of encouraging them to use peaceful lawful means to resolve their disputes with the Turkish government over its treatment of the Kurdish minority. By encouraging lawful outlets for dispute resolution, such aid would presumably discourage terrorism. Yet under the material support statute it is a crime even if HLP could prove that both the purpose and the effect of their support was to decrease the PKK's resort to violence.”
OMB Watch says the “material support” effort has resulted in the government shutting down charities that were not on any government watch list before their assets were frozen.
The organization says the result is that Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government suspects of ties to terrorism. “Organizations and individuals suspected of supporting terrorism are guilty until proven innocent,” it says.
OMB Watch told us, “A group could comply 100% and still be shut down ‘pending an investigation’."
Material-support cases are just a small fraction of the Justice Department’s terrorism prosecutions, but some observers believe they represent a shift in government strategy from punishment to prevention. Earlier prosecutions were for acts of violence that actually took place. Examples include the first World Trade Center attack, the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa, and conspiracies that were relatively close to fruition.
Nonetheless, government terror-financing prosecutions have been reasonably successful. From the Sept. 11 attacks to last July, the government started 108 material-support prosecutions and completed 62. Juries convicted nine defendants, 30 defendants pleaded guilty, and 11 pleaded guilty to other charges. There were eight acquittals and four dismissals.
In terrorism prosecutions involving a violent act actually committed or near fruition, the government’s record is spottier. According to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, the government has a 29 percent conviction rate in terrorism prosecutions overall, compared with 92 percent for felonies generally.
The latest government setback involves the so-called Liberty City Seven – seven men named for the blighted Miami district where they allegedly operated. Charged with plotting to join forces with al-Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, one was acquitted last month and a mistrial was declared for the six others after the federal jury deadlocked.
Prosecutors acknowledged that no attack was imminent, and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the alleged terror cell was ''more aspirational than operational.''
In some cases, defendants are arguably convicted of terror-related offenses in the court of public opinion rather than in the courts. One example often cited by lawyers is the case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born American citizen, who organized and raised money for a charity providing humanitarian relief to children in Iraq. He was never charged in court with a terrorist-related offense; the word “terrorism” was not allowed to be used in his trial, although prominent politicians such as then-New York Governor George Pataki hailed his arrest as a victory in the war on terror.
The upstate New York oncologist was sentenced to 22 years in jail in 2005 for 59 felony charges, including violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
2007: YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS
By William Fisher
The year is racing to a close. Lamentably, it’s going out with a Bhutto Bang.
Almost as pathetic as this cruel assassination is the wisdom spewed out by our presidential wannabees. Funny how they all morphed into instant Pakistan Pundits to continue their endless pandering to those who will bundle themselves up to venture out into the chill air of Iowa and New Hampshire to cast their primary ballots.
My vote for the most pathetic goes to Mike Huckabee, who was in charge of Arkansas’ foreign policy during his years as the Republican governor of this historically Democratic state. Rev. Huckabee suggested that after Bhutto’s assassination the United States should, “have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our border, and particularly to make sure, if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally.”
Right on, Mike. Gotta watch those Paki terrorists turning up in California to pick lettuce.
That comment struck just the right tone to end a year filled by consequential events too numerous and too depressing to catalog here. Suffice it to say that, for a journalist, 2007 was a very good year. “If it bleeds, it leads,” was the year’s press mantra. And there was more than enough bleeding to keep all of us scribblers very busy.
During 2007, I wrote several hundred pieces of news and opinion. Almost all of them reported bad news – imperial wars, government incompetence and intransigence, thousands of dead civilians, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, tens of thousands more seriously wounded, poverty ignored, populations displaced, preventable diseases not being prevented, the toxic extremism of fundamentalist clerics and their followers of all faiths. And on and on. You get the picture.
But, at the risk of being called a Pollyanna, let me give you the good news.
And, yes, for Americans at least, there was some good news.
Despite our government’s efforts to re-create 1984, we Americans continued to live in the freest country in the world. Free to think, write, speak, organize, get involved, associate with whomever we wish, worship or not worship.
Our courts may be filled with judges we disagree with, but Chief Justice Roberts is not under house arrest.
Our legislators may be the world’s most talented Kabuki dancers, but they still read our letters and take our phone calls, and occasionally even do what we pay them to do.
Our president may think he’s King, but next year, he’ll leave office peacefully and say nice things about his successor.
We should be grateful for all these blessings, but they are all macro blessings. The really good news happens and keeps happening at a totally unreported, but far more meaningful, level: Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Like my 60-plus cousin-in-law, who learns to knit so he can make a blanket for his first grandchild.
Like the mother of a friend’s cleaning lady, who works three jobs so her daughter can get to college.
Like the neighbor who just shows up year after year to plow the snow off a friend’s driveway and never asks for a penny.
Like the friend who organizes farmers to get our town to appreciate the benefits of local agriculture.
Like the local psychotherapist who gives up her Thanksgiving Day to distribute food to our less fortunate neighbors.
Like the hundreds of volunteers who show up to work phone banks or lick postage stamps to support their chosen candidates for town supervisors, local judges or county commissioners.
Like the retired UN official who turns her acreage into a refuge and recovery center for our county’s orphaned, abandoned, abused or injured wildlife.
Like the retired college profs who spend hours mentoring kids who have no role models.
Like the management consultant who shares her “happy gene” with a depressed widower and gives him a new life.
There are millions of these kinds of acts of kindness. They happen every day in every American town and city. We rarely hear about any of them. They are the acts of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are the real threads that hold the fabric of our country together.
As long as they continue, we can be hopeful.
As long as they continue, 2008 may yet turn out to be a good news year.
The year is racing to a close. Lamentably, it’s going out with a Bhutto Bang.
Almost as pathetic as this cruel assassination is the wisdom spewed out by our presidential wannabees. Funny how they all morphed into instant Pakistan Pundits to continue their endless pandering to those who will bundle themselves up to venture out into the chill air of Iowa and New Hampshire to cast their primary ballots.
My vote for the most pathetic goes to Mike Huckabee, who was in charge of Arkansas’ foreign policy during his years as the Republican governor of this historically Democratic state. Rev. Huckabee suggested that after Bhutto’s assassination the United States should, “have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our border, and particularly to make sure, if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally.”
Right on, Mike. Gotta watch those Paki terrorists turning up in California to pick lettuce.
That comment struck just the right tone to end a year filled by consequential events too numerous and too depressing to catalog here. Suffice it to say that, for a journalist, 2007 was a very good year. “If it bleeds, it leads,” was the year’s press mantra. And there was more than enough bleeding to keep all of us scribblers very busy.
During 2007, I wrote several hundred pieces of news and opinion. Almost all of them reported bad news – imperial wars, government incompetence and intransigence, thousands of dead civilians, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, tens of thousands more seriously wounded, poverty ignored, populations displaced, preventable diseases not being prevented, the toxic extremism of fundamentalist clerics and their followers of all faiths. And on and on. You get the picture.
But, at the risk of being called a Pollyanna, let me give you the good news.
And, yes, for Americans at least, there was some good news.
Despite our government’s efforts to re-create 1984, we Americans continued to live in the freest country in the world. Free to think, write, speak, organize, get involved, associate with whomever we wish, worship or not worship.
Our courts may be filled with judges we disagree with, but Chief Justice Roberts is not under house arrest.
Our legislators may be the world’s most talented Kabuki dancers, but they still read our letters and take our phone calls, and occasionally even do what we pay them to do.
Our president may think he’s King, but next year, he’ll leave office peacefully and say nice things about his successor.
We should be grateful for all these blessings, but they are all macro blessings. The really good news happens and keeps happening at a totally unreported, but far more meaningful, level: Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Like my 60-plus cousin-in-law, who learns to knit so he can make a blanket for his first grandchild.
Like the mother of a friend’s cleaning lady, who works three jobs so her daughter can get to college.
Like the neighbor who just shows up year after year to plow the snow off a friend’s driveway and never asks for a penny.
Like the friend who organizes farmers to get our town to appreciate the benefits of local agriculture.
Like the local psychotherapist who gives up her Thanksgiving Day to distribute food to our less fortunate neighbors.
Like the hundreds of volunteers who show up to work phone banks or lick postage stamps to support their chosen candidates for town supervisors, local judges or county commissioners.
Like the retired UN official who turns her acreage into a refuge and recovery center for our county’s orphaned, abandoned, abused or injured wildlife.
Like the retired college profs who spend hours mentoring kids who have no role models.
Like the management consultant who shares her “happy gene” with a depressed widower and gives him a new life.
There are millions of these kinds of acts of kindness. They happen every day in every American town and city. We rarely hear about any of them. They are the acts of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are the real threads that hold the fabric of our country together.
As long as they continue, we can be hopeful.
As long as they continue, 2008 may yet turn out to be a good news year.
Monday, December 24, 2007
THE ARMY: AHEAD TO THE PAST?
By William Fisher
The year was 1951. The Korean “police action” was raging. I was a draftee NCO in a military police unit safely nestled in a major American city. But my comrades and I lived each day under the long, dark shadow of being shipped out to fight in a frozen country most of us couldn’t find on a map.
Like most army units, my company had a “welfare fund” – money collected from our fellow troops, to be used for their benefit: for Christmas parties, summer barbeques, gifts for newly married buddies, and suchlike.
The fund had to have a treasurer –someone to collect, hold and account for the money. But no one wanted the job. More paperwork was exactly what none of us needed.
But one of us had a brilliant idea. We would go sell the idea to the private we all referred to as “The Idiot.” We would persuade him that being “The Treasurer” would get him known and enhance his chances of promotion.
The Idiot was good kid, but strange. I mean really strange. His buddies thought he was “a little crazy.” He was alternately depressed and euphoric, pastoral and warlike. He would arrive back at our base after a three-day pass with a big wide toothy grin and enough doughnuts for the whole company. Five minutes later he would be on the brink of apoplexy, raging against the army, the draft, his parents, the Koreans. Five minutes after that he would be sitting alone in a corner of our barracks, staring morosely at his boots for an hour, seemingly oblivious to things going on around him. After that hour, we would see him ebulliently bounding down the aisle between the beds, trumpeting some brilliant new idea to remake the military. And five minutes later, he would be smashing furniture and throwing boots and chairs at his comrades. The Idiot’s behaviors were as unpredictable as they were bizarre.
But he was our only candidate. Long story short: We got him to take the treasurer’s job, and he dutifully gave us a monthly accounting of how much money was in our welfare fund, receipts for what was spent, and a report on likely future expenses.
The rest of us, if we thought about it at all, were happy with our solution. We thought we’d pulled off a coup. Until December, that is, just before our company Christmas party. It was then The Idiot told us we couldn’t have a Christmas party that year, but that this was really a good thing because he’d spent our money buying toys for poor kids.
The Idiot was court martialed, spent a year in the stockade (Army-speak for jail), and dishonorably discharged.
I haven’t thought about that episode in more than half a century. But that’s where my mind went as I read the harrowing story of 1st Lieutenant Elizabeth Whiteside.
Though described by one of her Iraq comrades as “A Soldier’s Officer,” Lt. Whiteside may finally learn this week whether she will be treated for severe mental illness and given the appropriate benefits to pay for her care – or court-martialed and face the possibility of life in prison.
The charges now being considered against her: Attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.
The military prosecutor, Maj. Stefan Wolfe, argues that, even after seven years of exemplary service, the 25-year-old Army reservist should be court-martialed. Under military law, soldiers who attempt suicide can be prosecuted because their action affects unit order and discipline and discredits the armed forces.
In Whiteside’s case, prosecutors consider her mental illness "an excuse" for criminal conduct. But the military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined her after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound have diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone.
The prosecutor has warned Whiteside's lawyer of the risk of using a "psychobabble" defense. But a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed, asked to justify his diagnosis of severe mental illness, responded angrily: "I'm not here to play legal games. I am here out of the genuine concern for a human being that's breaking and that is broken. She has a severe and significant illness. Let's treat her as a human being, for Christ's sake!"
At one point, Whiteside requested that she be allowed to resign to avoid a court-martial. But the result of that course would mean having to spend the rest of her life explaining why she didn’t receive an honorable discharge, living with the still-present stigma being mentally ill – and probably losing her medical care and benefits.
Walter Reed’s commander, Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, a physician and now Army surgeon general, agrees. He said, "This officer has a demonstrably severe depression which manifested itself . . . as a psychotic, self-destructive episode. . .. Resignation in lieu of court-martial eliminates all of the benefits of medical support this officer deserves after seven years of credible and honorable service."
But many other members of the uniformed military involved in the case take the opposite view. One of them said, "Although the sanity board determined that at the time of the misconduct she had a severe mental disease or defect, she knowingly assaulted and threatened others and injured herself."
Whiteside, who is now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, ran a medical unit at the very same hospital until 2006, when she volunteered to deploy to Iraq. She told the Washington Post that seeing so many casualties at Walter Reed made her feel she was not bearing her full responsibility.
The bare details: In Iraq, she was assigned as a platoon leader in a medical company at the Camp Cropper detainee prison, which housed 4,000 suspected terrorists and insurgents, and included such high-security prisoners as Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali."
Whiteside supervised nine medics who worked the night shift at the prison, ate one meal a day and worked seven days a week, dispatching drivers, medics and support staff to transport sick and wounded Iraqis and U.S. troops. Her superiors credit her with her unit's success.
Given the radio handle "Trauma Mama," the high school valedictorian and ROTC grad told the Washington Post, "I loved our mission because it represented the best of America: taking care of the enemy, regardless of what they are doing to us."
Sometime after Hussein’s execution, a nurse in Whiteside’s unit reported that Whiteside was "freaking out." The nurse found Whiteside sitting on her bed, mumbling and visibly upset.
When comrades tried to help, Whiteside resisted and told them to leave. At one point, she fired her pistol into the ceiling. Later, she pointed the weapon at one of her colleagues, yelling that she wanted to kill them. When she opened her door she saw armed soldiers approaching. She slammed the door shut and fired her weapon once into her stomach. She was still in serious condition when she arrived at Walter Reed a few days later.
There are many more details I’m not going to try to cover here. The Washington Post first told Lt. Whiteside’s story in a brilliant report by Dana Priest and Anne Hull in the December 2 paper. It’s well worth reading, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html.
The point of all this is that, despite monumental advances in mental illness diagnosis and therapy, and endless pronouncements from the White House and the Pentagon about how deeply concerned they are about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other combat-related psychological problems, the Army doesn’t seem to have moved very far from “The Idiot” of my 1951 MP unit.
Back then, doctors knew virtually nothing about how to diagnose, much less treat, his psychological disorder. His buddies thought of him as a little crazy. So The Idiot was tried, jailed and dishonorably discharged.
But today, both diagnosis and treatment are real options – and they are happening every day. They happen when mental health professionals, not military prosecutors, get listened to and believed.
This week we may find out whether the Army has been listening.
The year was 1951. The Korean “police action” was raging. I was a draftee NCO in a military police unit safely nestled in a major American city. But my comrades and I lived each day under the long, dark shadow of being shipped out to fight in a frozen country most of us couldn’t find on a map.
Like most army units, my company had a “welfare fund” – money collected from our fellow troops, to be used for their benefit: for Christmas parties, summer barbeques, gifts for newly married buddies, and suchlike.
The fund had to have a treasurer –someone to collect, hold and account for the money. But no one wanted the job. More paperwork was exactly what none of us needed.
But one of us had a brilliant idea. We would go sell the idea to the private we all referred to as “The Idiot.” We would persuade him that being “The Treasurer” would get him known and enhance his chances of promotion.
The Idiot was good kid, but strange. I mean really strange. His buddies thought he was “a little crazy.” He was alternately depressed and euphoric, pastoral and warlike. He would arrive back at our base after a three-day pass with a big wide toothy grin and enough doughnuts for the whole company. Five minutes later he would be on the brink of apoplexy, raging against the army, the draft, his parents, the Koreans. Five minutes after that he would be sitting alone in a corner of our barracks, staring morosely at his boots for an hour, seemingly oblivious to things going on around him. After that hour, we would see him ebulliently bounding down the aisle between the beds, trumpeting some brilliant new idea to remake the military. And five minutes later, he would be smashing furniture and throwing boots and chairs at his comrades. The Idiot’s behaviors were as unpredictable as they were bizarre.
But he was our only candidate. Long story short: We got him to take the treasurer’s job, and he dutifully gave us a monthly accounting of how much money was in our welfare fund, receipts for what was spent, and a report on likely future expenses.
The rest of us, if we thought about it at all, were happy with our solution. We thought we’d pulled off a coup. Until December, that is, just before our company Christmas party. It was then The Idiot told us we couldn’t have a Christmas party that year, but that this was really a good thing because he’d spent our money buying toys for poor kids.
The Idiot was court martialed, spent a year in the stockade (Army-speak for jail), and dishonorably discharged.
I haven’t thought about that episode in more than half a century. But that’s where my mind went as I read the harrowing story of 1st Lieutenant Elizabeth Whiteside.
Though described by one of her Iraq comrades as “A Soldier’s Officer,” Lt. Whiteside may finally learn this week whether she will be treated for severe mental illness and given the appropriate benefits to pay for her care – or court-martialed and face the possibility of life in prison.
The charges now being considered against her: Attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.
The military prosecutor, Maj. Stefan Wolfe, argues that, even after seven years of exemplary service, the 25-year-old Army reservist should be court-martialed. Under military law, soldiers who attempt suicide can be prosecuted because their action affects unit order and discipline and discredits the armed forces.
In Whiteside’s case, prosecutors consider her mental illness "an excuse" for criminal conduct. But the military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined her after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound have diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone.
The prosecutor has warned Whiteside's lawyer of the risk of using a "psychobabble" defense. But a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed, asked to justify his diagnosis of severe mental illness, responded angrily: "I'm not here to play legal games. I am here out of the genuine concern for a human being that's breaking and that is broken. She has a severe and significant illness. Let's treat her as a human being, for Christ's sake!"
At one point, Whiteside requested that she be allowed to resign to avoid a court-martial. But the result of that course would mean having to spend the rest of her life explaining why she didn’t receive an honorable discharge, living with the still-present stigma being mentally ill – and probably losing her medical care and benefits.
Walter Reed’s commander, Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, a physician and now Army surgeon general, agrees. He said, "This officer has a demonstrably severe depression which manifested itself . . . as a psychotic, self-destructive episode. . .. Resignation in lieu of court-martial eliminates all of the benefits of medical support this officer deserves after seven years of credible and honorable service."
But many other members of the uniformed military involved in the case take the opposite view. One of them said, "Although the sanity board determined that at the time of the misconduct she had a severe mental disease or defect, she knowingly assaulted and threatened others and injured herself."
Whiteside, who is now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, ran a medical unit at the very same hospital until 2006, when she volunteered to deploy to Iraq. She told the Washington Post that seeing so many casualties at Walter Reed made her feel she was not bearing her full responsibility.
The bare details: In Iraq, she was assigned as a platoon leader in a medical company at the Camp Cropper detainee prison, which housed 4,000 suspected terrorists and insurgents, and included such high-security prisoners as Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali."
Whiteside supervised nine medics who worked the night shift at the prison, ate one meal a day and worked seven days a week, dispatching drivers, medics and support staff to transport sick and wounded Iraqis and U.S. troops. Her superiors credit her with her unit's success.
Given the radio handle "Trauma Mama," the high school valedictorian and ROTC grad told the Washington Post, "I loved our mission because it represented the best of America: taking care of the enemy, regardless of what they are doing to us."
Sometime after Hussein’s execution, a nurse in Whiteside’s unit reported that Whiteside was "freaking out." The nurse found Whiteside sitting on her bed, mumbling and visibly upset.
When comrades tried to help, Whiteside resisted and told them to leave. At one point, she fired her pistol into the ceiling. Later, she pointed the weapon at one of her colleagues, yelling that she wanted to kill them. When she opened her door she saw armed soldiers approaching. She slammed the door shut and fired her weapon once into her stomach. She was still in serious condition when she arrived at Walter Reed a few days later.
There are many more details I’m not going to try to cover here. The Washington Post first told Lt. Whiteside’s story in a brilliant report by Dana Priest and Anne Hull in the December 2 paper. It’s well worth reading, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html.
The point of all this is that, despite monumental advances in mental illness diagnosis and therapy, and endless pronouncements from the White House and the Pentagon about how deeply concerned they are about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other combat-related psychological problems, the Army doesn’t seem to have moved very far from “The Idiot” of my 1951 MP unit.
Back then, doctors knew virtually nothing about how to diagnose, much less treat, his psychological disorder. His buddies thought of him as a little crazy. So The Idiot was tried, jailed and dishonorably discharged.
But today, both diagnosis and treatment are real options – and they are happening every day. They happen when mental health professionals, not military prosecutors, get listened to and believed.
This week we may find out whether the Army has been listening.
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