McChrystal Unclear

By Steve Hynd

The New York Times has deep misgivings about appointing General Stanley McChrystal as the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Special Operations task forces operated in secret, outside the normal military chain of command and with minimal legal accountability, especially during the years Donald Rumsfeld ran the Pentagon. General McChrystal�s command substantially overlaps this troubled period.

In 2004, for example, a Special Operations unit converted one of Saddam Hussein�s former torture centers near Baghdad into its own secret interrogation cell, where detainees were subjected to a range of physical and psychological abuses.

This was not an isolated incident. In 2006, The Times reported on field outposts set up by Special Operations units in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk where detainees were stripped naked and subjected to simulated drowning.

At least 34 Special Operations soldiers were eventually disciplined by the Pentagon for these abusive interrogations. Many more cases had to be dropped because the specific interrogator could not be conclusively identified or because crucial computer records were lost.

While there is no suggestion that General McChrystal was personally involved in any misconduct, he has a clear responsibility to illuminate what went wrong, what if anything was done to stop these horrors, and what he intends to do to ensure that they are not repeated under his command in Afghanistan.

The NYT is being too kind. Actually, there are plenty of reports suggesting McChrystal was intimately involved in preventing scrutiny of what Special Forces were up to. Siun at Firedoglake has helpfully collected them in a must-read post. Siun suggests that the abuse photos Obama has turned loops to ban might include "direct documentation of the abuses uncovered...at Camp Nama, the detention center he commanded in Iraq."

NAMA (aka "Nasty Ass Military Area") was a secretive detention facility run by �elite American Special Operations forces. The main purpose of the camp was to interrogate prisoners for information about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. . . . [T]he elite unit, known as Task Force 6-26, used the facility to torture and abuse prisoners both before and after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal."

It was so secretive that a military witness told a Human Rights Watch investigator:

the colonel told them that he "had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in�they just don't have access, and they won't have access, and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating. Even Army investigators."

Secretive or not, an Esquire article, noted by Andrew Sullivan who has been doing intensive reporting on McChrystal�s record, reports that McChrystal visited the facility and at least one witness said that orders on how to treat the detainees came from �a two-star general. I believe his name was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times."

And Siun also links to Spencer Ackerman, who reports that hearings for McChrystal are being stage managed.

Want a sure sign that Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal isn�t going to face a difficult confirmation hearing to command U.S. forces in Afghanistan? The Senate Armed Services Committee just announced that McChrystal�s going before it on June 2. But it�s not his confirmation alone. He�s triple-booked alongside Adm. James Stavridis, the Southern Command chief who�s going to be NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Douglas Fraser, who�s going to take Stavridis� place at Southern Command.

This is Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee, pushing McChrystal through the process...Adding the Southern Command hearing is just egregious. Will committee members get sufficient time to question McChrystal � or to let McChrystal answer the charges against him?

Levin isn't doing this off his own bat - it's got to be with collusion from other Dems on the committee and at the White House's instigation. As Siun writes, "none of this is new information - these reports have been available since at least 2006 � yet these Generals have been promoted and given charge of Obama�s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." Bush rollback ? Meh, not so much.