1.

REPLY TO MIKE GILBERT
By Mark Jensen

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
August 23, 2007

I appreciate Mike Gilbert's taking the time to respond at some length to my complaint about his neglecting of Gen. Jacoby's report on Afghanistan. (See #2 below for Gilbert's full response.) I was pleased to encounter his response this evening while reading his always interesting blog.

Mike Gilbert accuses me of some inaccuracies, so I'll respond in turn.

I said that the Jacoby Report "said that the the stripping of prisoners, forcing them into stress positions, and the use of dogs to intimidate them migrated to Abu Ghraib from Afghanistan," but Mike Gilbert says: "In fact, the Jacoby report says nothing of the kind."

My statement is derived from the Washington Post's discussion of the Jacoby Report and two earlier reports. R. Jeffrey Smith of the Post wrote (Dec. 3, 2004): "Although the [Jacoby] report represents the military's first attempt to survey the scope of prison shortcomings in Afghanistan, indications of widespread abuses there had turned up earlier this year, when Army investigators looked into the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Many of the officials at Abu Ghraib had served in Afghanistan and honed their approach to handling prisoners there, according to two Defense Department reports issued in August. The reports said, for example, that the idea of using dogs to intimidate prisoners at Abu Ghraib migrated from Afghanistan, where U.S. soldiers noted that many citizens feared dogs; other methods transferred to Iraq included stripping prisoners, forcing them into stress positions, and depriving them of light, sleep or human contact." It's reasonable to assume, I think, that the Jacoby Report incorporates the finding of those reports, since it was a more comprehensive review of the same subject. I admit that I don't know that it incorporated them, since large parts of it are redacted (on this, see below). But I don't see how it could not. My statement could have been clearer, I admit, but I do not believe it is inaccurate.

Mike Gilbert also complains that I wrote that "Jacoby could have, but did not, attempt to measure the compliance of U.S. units [in Afghanistan] with the Geneva Conventions," when according to him, "This is also inaccurate." I think not. If it is inaccurate, it is the Washington Post that is being inaccurate, since the statement is derived from the article in the Wash. Post (Dec. 3, 2004), which states: "Jacoby did not attempt to measure the compliance of U.S. units with the internationally accepted standards of the Geneva Conventions, which spell out protections for military detainees."

Also, Jacoby's statement, which Gilbert cites to refute my statement, says that “The consistent and overarching observation that flowed from this inspection was that forces assigned to this command understand the concept of humane treatment and are providing humane treatment to detainees in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention." This is not inconsistent with my statement, since Jacoby speaks (evasively, I would submit) of "the principles of the Geneva Convention" (my emphasis) but not of compliance with the Geneva Conventions' requirements. Also, he speaks of "the forces assigned to this command," an obviously suspect qualifier. Reading Seymour Hersh leads me to believe there were CIA personnel on the Afghanistan bases with access to prisoners who would not be covered by the language of this statement. I'm afraid that Gen. Jacoby's is the sort of well-crafted language that can seem to mean one thing but upon closer examination turns out to mean something else.

Mr. Gilbert excuses his omission of any mention of the Jacoby report by saying: "I don't feel like I am in a very promising position to credibly examine Jacoby's methods and findings in the Afghanistan report." But I wasn't suggesting that any examination at all was required. Surely in a review of his career it deserves some mention. And I applaud his willingness to discuss the matter on his blog.

But the sad truth is that neither Mike Gilbert nor I really know what the Jacoby report says -- it remains classified. But I plead innocent to the charge of having misrepresented it.

Mike Gilbert omits to mention that my chief source of information about the Jacoby Report was not the Washington Post (which had not examined even a redacted version of the report) but an article published on July 20, 2006, on the TomDispatch web site and entitled "The Color of Transparency Is Black." This article was written by one of the foremost authorities in this area, Karen Greenberg, who is Executive Director of the NYU Center on Law and Security and co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge University Press, 2005), an enormous tome that's an essential source. Here's one paragraph of what Karen Greenberg says about the redacted version of the Jacoby Report that was released due to the ACLU FOIA request: "For example, when I reached the subsection entitled, 'Interrogation Techniques,' there was but a black blot of ink, two pages long. I couldn't help myself. I automatically lifted the paper to check if there weren't some way to see beneath the overlay of ink. But of course that was a hopeless thought. Whatever information had been there was gone, eradicated, tossed down the public memory hole that has eaten so much of the detail that I, along with many others, have been trying to discover for two years now." Her entire article can be viewed on the UFPPC web site.

It's clear that we still have a lot to learn about and from the Jacoby Report, which is all the more reason to mention it.

But again, thanks to Mike Gilbert for his detailed response to my concerns.

--Mark Jensen is a member of United for Peace of Pierce County and of the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University.

2.

JACOBY'S REPORT ABOUT DETAINEE OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN
By Mike Gilbert

FOB Tacoma
August 20, 2007

Original source: News Tribune (see original for links)

On at least two occasions now PLU French prof Mark Jensen has taken me to task on the United for Peace Pierce County web site for his view that I have failed to adequately cover Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby's report on detainee operations in Afghanistan. Bottom line up front: Reasonable people can disagree about what should be covered in a news story, but Jacoby's report doesn't say what Jensen says it does.

Jacoby, while a brigadier general and assistant division commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Afghanistan, was directed in 2004 to inspect all aspects of U.S. military detainee operations in Afghanistan and report his findings. His report is dated June 2004.

You can read it here yourself -- much of it, anyway. The Pentagon redacted large portions of the copy it released to the American Civil Liberties Union. (Click here for the ACLU's list of the redacted documents.)

However, most of Jacoby's findings, conclusions and recommendations are there.

You can read Jensen's "News Tribune glosses over Fort Lewis commander's past" here, and Jensen's "News Tribune applies 'withdrawal of information' policy to Ft. Lewis commander" here.

Of the profile of the new Fort Lewis commanding general that we ran Aug. 12, Jensen wrote: "Gilbert's 2,000-word account contains quite a bit about Jacoby's devotion to 'the community' but omits altogether his most important contribution to American history, the Jacoby Report on Afghanistan. -- This infamous document put Jacoby's name on the front page of the Washington Post (and many other papers) in 2004, but the News Tribune seems committed to burying the memory of it. -- The report said that the the stripping of prisoners, forcing them into stress positions, and the use of dogs to intimidate them migrated to Abu Ghraib from Afghanistan."

In fact, the Jacoby report says nothing of the kind.

Nor does the apparent source of Jensen's statement, a Dec. 3, 2004 Washington Post story that for the most part accurately reports on Jacoby's findings. The Post attributes its story to three unnamed "government officials privy to its conclusions."

But the Post story also goes on to report on matters disclosed in two other Department of Defense reports the previous August about detainee abuses in Iraq. It was in those reports -- not Jacoby's -- that the military disclosed the "migration" of detainee abuse tactics from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In addition, the Post cited an Army Criminal Investigation Command probe completed the month before Jacoby's report that implicated Army MPs in the deaths of three detainees in Afghanistan in 2002.

Jacoby, in his report, notes that he was ordered to conduct an inspection, not an investigation, and as such his mission was not to confirm specific allegations of abuse.

Jensen also wrote: "Jacoby could have, but did not, attempt to measure the compliance of U.S. units [in Afghanistan] with the Geneva Conventions."

This is also inaccurate. Jacoby noted that it was the Bush administration policy that captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan were "detainees," not "prisoners of war," and therefore not entitled to treatment according to the Geneva Conventions.

But Jacoby reported: "The consistent and overarching observation that flowed from this inspection was that forces assigned to this command understand the concept of humane treatment and are providing humane treatment to detainees in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention.”

Finally, at his roundtable session with reporters last month, Jacoby was asked what he learned from his experience with the Afghanistan report. His full answer: "I think we’ve learned a lot over time. And I also I think the main point of the question you bring up is the Army, your Army, is a learning organization and we are getting better at detainee operations. There are mistakes that are made, but the key to this is the discipline and training of the force. And I can tell you coming out of the incidents that we’ve had in the past, there are aggressive and comprehensive training programs that are in place and all soldiers are undergoing before going into theater.

"Having said that, this is an emotional, emotional experience. This is not disconnected from memorial services that you all attend. I mean soldiers love each other, they bond with each other, they serve with each other and so, you know, (in) the harsh light of the interview room, it looks a little different than it does on the battlefield. But our soldiers are disciplined. We should be proud as a nation that the people we detain are treated fairly and consistently across the theater.

"It’s not really my lane to talk about what's going on in theater right now but I can tell you the training programs are in place and we’ve learned lessons as a result of our past experiences."

So why didn't I go into all of this in my profile of Jacoby? Fair question.

Here in Tacoma, more than three years after the fact and thousands of miles away from the scene, I don't feel like I am in a very promising position to credibly examine Jacoby's methods and findings in the Afghanistan report. Others have had their say about it -- here, for example. I don't know that with many hours of reporting work I would have found much new to add.

My goal was to tell local readers more about the person who is running the post, and to give readers some insight into the subplot that will be running in the background throughout his tenure at Fort Lewis; that is, preparations for the Corps' likely deployment to Iraq.