Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Hersh begins by recounting the findings of a respected CIA analyst sent to Guantanamo - over 60% of those there didn't belong and were being turned into terrorists by the abuse. The ultimate rationale for the abuse, Hersh believed, was President Bush's authorization of special operation "grab or assassinate" squads - the logic was "If I can shoot them, anything else must be covered as well." The Pentagon investigation was a whitewash. The CIA came under a lot of criticism after 9/11 - one operative's explanation was that "most case officers live in Virginia, and rely on other nations' for information." Another said "operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen." The agency had only two Arabic speakers, and had scrubbed hundreds of "assets" with possible criminal/human rights problems. The focus had shifted from results to inter-agency feuding, achieving diversity, and CYA. Meanwhile, FBI computers were not compatible from one location to another, and Internet access was greatly limited. Moussaoui's trial was bungled by Secretary Ashcroft's insistence on the death penalty, resulting in no leverage with which to extract information. Just after his arrest, FBI headquarters had denied a request to examine Moussaoui's computer on the grounds that it might not be allowed - despite having succeeded about 13,000 times previously and been denied only once. Afghanistan War: At Kunduz the U.S. allowed the evacuation of Taliban-supporting Pakistanis and friends to avoid their massacre by Northern Alliance soldiers, and the resulting political threat to President Musharraf. The U.S. was supposed to get access to Taliban for interrogation - didn't happen, and official channels deny the evacuation to this day. About 4 - 5 thousand are believed to have escaped. "There are more cops in New York City" than American soldiers in Afghanistan" - Richard Clarke. He also criticized the fact that it took seven weeks to get boots on the ground after the bombing began, resulting in many escaping. Secretary Rumfeld was trying to prove his theory that a relatively small number of soldiers plus airpower would suffice, saving resources for Iraq, and avoiding becoming bogged down like the Russians. The result (so far) resembles Vietnam - the U.S. never loses a battle, but loses the war. The President of Afghanistan is in reality, more like the Mayor of Kabul as security throughout the country is risky, at best, and opium production is up by about a factor of twenty vs. the Taliban low. Planning for Iraq was fractured by conflict between State and the Pentagon leaders. Primary "evidence" for the WMD claim was the "yellowcake sale from Niger to Iraq," and the "purchase of aluminum tubes for enriching uranium." IAEA concluded two weeks before the Iraq War that documents regarding the yellowcake sale were obvious fakes; the U.S. had the documents for months previously and had delayed handing them over. Ambassador Wilson came to the same conclusion after an 8-

Over the last year I've read or become familiar with more than a dozen of the latest crop of books published to criticize or support the White House's policies, and Chain of Command is the best of the bunch. As would be expected, Seymour Hersh's writing is as always clean and angry and compelling. And the conclusions the investigative reporting icon draws are well thought out and more than a little frightening. In short: if you can read only one book in this genre this year, you've found it. A reader examining Mr. Hersh's work for the first time here may not realize how far ahead of the curve he has been in exposing scores of intelligence failures, poorly thought out national security initiatives, and the horrible Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Many of Mr. Hersh's points were treated with suspicion when they were made, only to be accepted as common wisdom when the full story became known (though the book's editors would have done well to make that clearer, but more on that in a moment). His main point in Chain of Command is all these issues -- the selective evidence regarding weapons of mass destruction, the sidestepping of the federal bureaucracy and the diminished importance of Congress, the misuse of intelligence, the abuse of human rights abroad, foreign policy zealotry, and so on (I might add elections-related shenanigans from four years ago) -- amount to a kind of coup d'état, and it's hard to argue against his points. Clearly, Mr. Hersh is outraged in Chain of Command, but what earns my respect the most if the fact that his anger is not partisan, but instead based on what he seems to see as a widening gulf between what is happening in the U.S. and because of the U.S. and what comes out of the mouths of senior government officials. Mr. Hersh is an old-fashioned muckraker and proud of it. Now allow me to quibble for a moment. The vast bulk of Chain of Command was distilled from around 20 articles Mr. Hersh wrote for the New Yorker, though editors updated a few subjects and juggled the order a bit, most obviously to emphasize new reporting regarding Abu Ghraib. I would have argued in favor of printing the original articles as they were published, in chronological order and with dates on them -- something that would have elegantly presented the material without begging the question of what was known when. The updated information could have easily been presented in a short epilogue to each chapter or to the whole book. Additionally, Mr. Hersh on a few occasions threatens to undermine some of his credibility by relying on speculation on subjects like prison conditions at Guantánamo, and by making only passing references to minor evidence that could weaken his arguments, on subjects such as troop movements between Afghanistan and Iraq. But he never crosses the line in a way that has damned many of the other books out this political season, thanks in a large part to his solid reputation launched when he broke the story about the My Lai mass

As was to be expected, most of those who criticize this book here(and several appear to be the same person) make clear that they have not read it. Why read when you have Sean Hannity to explain the world to you? First, the idea that Hersh sympathizes with Al Qaeda is a slander. Hersh does suggest the war in Afghanistan was a mistake, because, he argues, there were elements within the Taliban who could have been bribed to hand over Bin Laden. Agree or disagree with Hersh, he still begins on the fundamental principle that Al Qaeda is an enemy that must be defeated. It is only the means that differ. To compare such a position to Jane Fonda (who openly supported a North Vietnamese victory) is outrageous. What makes this book fascinating is that it is not a stream of extreme leftist drivel about empire, but a carefully compiled collection of dissenting voices from within the intelligence, defense and diplomatic services. (Which does not mean, of course, that their analyses is automatically right.) Neither does Hersh smear the soldiers. While he is unflinching in recounting the crimes that occurred, the entire point of the book is to put those crimes into a larger context, one that cannot help but make one feel a certain sympathy for the soldiers (without excusing them). They were often untrained to handle interrogations and were being told that they needed to perform these acts in order to help stop the daily attacks that were killing their fellow soldiers. One of the heroes in this book is the National Guard officer who refused to follow a Military Intelligence officer's command that he order his soldiers to keep prisoners awake. The Guard officer explained that he was not going to put his men in the position of performing such a duty without the proper training, for fear they might get "creative." Hersh's contempt is for those higher up in the chain of command (get the title?) who did put soldiers in such positions, where abuses were bound to occur (if not directly ordered), and then left those same soldiers to take all the blame. The pseudo patriotism and overblown rhetoric of those who have attacked this book is frightening because it embodies perfectly the mentality of this administration: come to a conclusion based upon ideology, seek out the facts that support that conclusion, when reasonable criticism is raised, impugn the critic personally, and then - as the bill comes due and facts on the ground show up the inaccuracy of your original conclusion - meet that reality with ever greater levels of self delusion. They forget, we are a democracy, our nation is ultimately only that which we make of it. It is the sum of our actions. Taking that principle seriously is the beginning of true patriotism.

In this well-documented, revelatory book, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has fearlessly chronicled a very rocky road between 9/11 and the disclosure of prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. On a deeper level, this book brings to light the questions around accountability when such obvious abuses are exposed, questions that bear certain similarities to the ones faced by those judging the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Does the responsibility rest with the soldiers executing the abuses, or does it go up to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, both of whom Hersh says were made aware of the situation? As horrific as 9/11 was, it was an idealistic notion that a tragedy of such magnitude would produce an epiphany that would inspire the government to bring the nation closer to its founding democratic principles. Hersh proves that quite the opposite has evolved, as he has been doing in the New Yorker, breaking stories that have shocked and repelled on America's war on terror. Breaches are numerous and detailed with dramatic precision in his book - military missteps in the hunt for al-Qaida, abuses at Guantanamo, the Pentagon's manipulation of intelligence, and in the most graphic images from the war, the humiliating treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What was initially hoped to be a sad one-off incident has become the touchstone for what Hersh sees as fundamentally wrong with CIA intelligence and the US military infrastructure. He makes a convincing argument for whom should take responsibility for the prison abuses. Senior military and national security officials in the Bush administration were repeatedly warned by subordinates in 2002 and 2003 that prisoners in military custody were being abused. Hersh draws on numerous sources - most legitimate, some apocryphal - at senior levels of the government and intelligence community, from foreign officials, and from those on the battlefield, all of whom substantiate his investigation. Sadly the message appears to be that the buck does not seem to stop anywhere. While the investigation faults the Army for "failing to provide leadership," senior commanders in Baghdad and the top commander himself, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, as well as senior Pentagon officials, "were found to have had no role in ordering or permitting the abuse." The message is muddled to the rest of us - it is the system's fault, not the fault of those running it. The book sadly reveals that a lack of leadership equals exoneration of the leaders. There comes a point where closing one's eyes to such evidence is a form of complicity, that ignoring the warnings may be closer to a war crime than anyone cares to admit. In raw terms, Hersh brings the brutality of the post 9/11 journey this nation has taken, and while there have been moments of inspiration, the road has unfortunately been riddled with lapses that spread the imperial hubris this country denies globally rather than the great