Drawing near to a final decision on a new Afghanistan strategy, President Obama met with top aides for the 8th time Wednesday and stressed that if he does send more troops there as requested, the US commitment will NOT be open ended.

“The president and his team discussed the length of time that it would take to implement the options he’s been presented,” a White House spokesman said after the 2 hour, 20 minute meeting in the White House Situation Room.

“The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan government that our commitment is not open ended. After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time to ensure a successful transition to our Afghan partner.”

The White House also pushed back against any suggestion that the president has decided on how many additional troops to send to Afghanistan. McClatchy reported Saturday that he’s leaning toward sending 34,000 more troops.

“Contrary to published reports, the President has not made a decision about the options presented,” the spokesman said.

President Obama Tuesday honored a select group of Vietnam veterans in the Rose Garden Tuesday – but the White House could not immediately say who they were.

In the event, Obama awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to 86 members of Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, for heroic action saving another company in a desperate fight in Vietnam in March 1970.

“These soldiers define the meaning of bravery and heroism,” Obama said, as several veterans stood behind him and several dozen more sat on chairs under sunny skies.
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“Today also reminds us of our obligations to all our veterans, whether they took off the uniform decades ago or days ago, to make sure that they and their families receive the respect they deserve,” he added.

Yet unlike past events when groups have been invited to the Rose Garden -sometimes to help pitch the president’s agenda _ the White House did not release a list of those honored Tuesday.

Moreover, the White House brushed aside without comment requests Monday for the names and home towns of the veterans being honored, a routine request to facilitate media coverage in the honorees’ home town newspapers.

It was a stark contrast to an event two weeks ago in the Rose Garden, when the White House rolled out a group of doctors in a very public show of support for Obama’s proposed health care overhaul.

Before the Oct. 5 event, the White House called reporters to tell them local doctors would attend, inviting coverage.

Also before the event,  the White House issued a detailed list of every doctor there, including name and hometown to make it easier for the media to find them, interview them, and send home the stories of how much they liked the Obama health care proposals.

 
President Barack Obama Friday named George D. Mulligan, Jr. as Director of the White House Military Office.

Mulligan has been deputy director of the office since 2005, which oversees Defense Department staff and operations that support the office of the president.

He had been in the office in various roles from 1994 to 2004. Before that, he served as an officer in the Navy from 1986 until 1994, with assignments as a Naval Flight Officer as well as at the Pentagon and in the White House Military Office.  He has a Bachelor’s Degree in business administration from Villanova University and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. 

“George brings decades of experience and has served with integrity and a deep commitment to his country – not just in his role at the White House Military Office, but throughout his distinguished career,” Obama said.

“I am very grateful that George has agreed to lead the Office and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the coming months and years.”
 

Howard Kurtz reveals in the Washington Post today that the paper delayed by a day its publication of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Afghanistan assessment, at Obama administration behest. But for followers of the Post's financial fortunes, what may be most interesting is what Kurtz reveals about Woodward's current relationship with the newspaper: Woodward is now a contract writer, with a monthly retainer of $100. That's right, just 2 zeros.

A couple of weeks ago, the United States, without explanation, released five Iranian diplomats that the U.S. military had been holding in Iraq for more than two years. The official statement offered nothing about why. What U.S. officials would say privately is that the U.S. military really didn't want to let the Iranians go.

That leaves you with the suggestion that there was good reason to hold the Iranians in the first place, but the new Status of Forces Agreement required that we turn them over to the Iraqis, who let them go. Now, from an unexpected source, comes word that in fact there wasn't any good reason for holding them in the first place.

Barbara Slavin of The Washington Times, the capital's conservative news organ, reported last week that the U.S. actually had no evidence that the Iranians had been involved in attacks on U.S. forces. The Iranians were essentially hostages, she wrote, held as potential "leverage."

Slavin, who used to cover the State Department for USA Today and wrote a book on Iran (Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation), cited two unnamed sources in her report, one a current official and the other a former official. Slavin's report focused on the three Iranians who American officials had said were member the Quds Force. She quoted a current White House official as sticking up for the original version of why they were held but also acknowledging that he didn't know of any specific anti-U.S. actions the three had been involved in.

Actually, her story sounded a lot like what Iraqi officials were saying at the time. To quote then and now Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the U.S. raids that led to the detentions were "very, very embarrassing."

But Slavin's account really ticked off Gen. David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq when the Iranians were arrested and happened to be in Washington the morning Slavin's piece appeared.

 Petraeus and Slavin were both at a conference on Iran sponsored by the U.S. Central Command, which Petraeus now heads, and the Brookings Institution. According to The Washington Post's Al Kamen, Petraeus was livid and gave Slavin a very public dressing down, even accusing her of "irresponsible journalism." Kamen described her as "unflappable."

Today, it was Slavin's turn. In a followup that the Times didn't exactly trumpet (Page A9 in print) Slavin quotes former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker as saying he knows of no evidence that links the three Iranian Quds Force officials to specific acts against U.S.forces. "I was not aware of any specific information linking (the three Iranians) to specific acts against coalition personnel," was the precise quote.

That is an amazing statement coming from Crocker. Petraeus and Crocker were the yin and yang of Bush administration Iraq policy, the Abbott and Costello, the Bogart and Bacall, or, for the younger set, Harold and Kumar, so tightly spooned that an assessment of embassy operations released today made a special point of noting that "the relationship between the embassy and the military is remarkably good. Ambassador Crocker and the military commanders insisted on 'one team, one mission,'and their subordinates followed suit." (Another part of that report was the finding that the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is way overstaffed.)

The two jogged together every Sunday, according to this story by McClatchy's Leila Fadel, and met at least five other times a week to mull over events in the country.

Such tight cooperation surely meant Crocker and Petraeus shared information on why the Iranians had been picked up — especially since Crocker actually met with the Iranian ambassador five months after the three had been seized.

But maybe there wasn't all that much to share. As Foreign Minister Zebari told Slavin for today's story: "Really, they were doing some consular work."

I asked Joe Galloway if he had anything to say about the passing of Robert McNamara, who, of course, oversaw Vietnam where Joe became the only civilian awarded a Bronze Star for bravery for rescuing wounded soldiers at the Ia Drang Valley. Joe sent along these comments and promises a formal column tomorrow:

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McMamara while doing research for We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.

Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara's comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.

The only disagreement I ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

The most bizarre incident involving McNamara occurred when he was president of the World Bank and, off on his summer holiday, he caught the Martha's Vineyard ferry. It was a night crossing in bad weather. McNamara was in the salon, drink in hand, schmoozing with fellow passengers.

On the deck outside a vineyard local, a hippie artist, glanced through the window and did a double-take. The artist was outraged to see McNamara, whom he viewed as a war criminal, so enjoying himself.

He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away.

The New York Times, whose reporting on detainee recidivism rates, merited an Editor's Note skinback (here's Planet Washington's summary) two weeks late, is once again being accused of carrying Bush administration water on detainee policy -- in a leaky bucket.

The latest offense, says Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, is the Times's assertion that, whatever the ongoing controversy, all the Justice Department lawyers agreed the harsh interrogation techniques were legal. Greenwald asserts that the Times again is guilty at least of sloppy reporting. He notes that if you read the e-mails on which the Times piece is built, it's clear that 1) not everyone agreed with the conclusions that were about to be set forth in one of the Stephen Bradbury memos approving of harsh interrogation and 2) that in any case, all the pressure to do so was coming from the White House.

I'll let you decide for yourself if you agree with Greenwald's conclusions. The debate, if nothing else, seems to provide one more reason for the Obama administration to get on board the calls in Congress for an independent investigation of what took place.

Meanwhile, Seton Hall has released a fairly thorough debunking of the detainee recidivism report that came out of the Pentagon and led to the Editor's Note above. You can read it here.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has handed the Pentagon a defeat in its effort to prevent three prisoners held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan from suing in federal court in the United States for their freedom.

Pentagon lawyers had argued that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting Guantanamo detainees the right to sue didn't apply to the men in Afghanistan. The Pentagon argued that Afghanistan was a traditional battleground and that it would be impractical to grant habeas corpus hearings to prisoners held there.

But U.S. District Judge John D. Bates disagreed, ruling that nearly all the standards the Supreme Court laid out in its Boumediene v. Bush decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to sue apply to the situation of the three men.

Bates ruled that United States control over the detention facility in Afghanistan was no different from its control of Guantanamo (recall that the Bush administration attempted to argue that the U.S. courts had no jurisdiction at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station because the navy base is really a part of Cuba, an argument the Supreme Court rejected).

Bates also ruled that the situation the three men in Afghanistan faced was essentially the same as the prisoners at Guantanamo. Like the men at Guantanamo, who'd been captured elsewhere and then brought to Guantanamo, none of the men held in Afghanistan had been captured there, Bates said. None is Afghan and none had a previous connection to Afghanistan.

Finally, Bates ruled that whatever led to their being declared "enemy combatants" by the Bush administration (the Obama administration no longer uses the phrase) certainly did not meet the Supreme Court's requirement for due process. That means they are entitled to a habeas hearing where a judge can decide whether they should be held or not.

It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram, which respondents correctly maintain is in a theater of war. It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries -- far from any Afghan battle field -- and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguably may not reach. Such rendition resurrects the same specter of limitless Executive power thje Supreme Court sought to guard against in Boumediene -- the concern that the Executive could move detainess physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely.

Read the full decision here.

The public version of Bates's decision reveals no details of where the men were captured, except to say that two were clearly captured outside Afghanistan and that the third disputes that he was captured in Afghanistan. Those sections of the ruling were deleted from the public version as classified. According to Human Rights Watch, which issued a press statement on the ruling, one of the men, Amin al Bakri, was seized in Thailand in late 2002 while on a business trip. Bakri's father told Human Rights Watch he had to hire a private detective to find out what had happened to his son.

Bates deferred judgment in a fourth case, that of Haji Wazir, because Wazir is an Afghan. He said the arguments governing an Afghan citizen hadn't been sufficiently made, one way or another, to allow a ruling. That, too, is a defeat for the Pentagon, since Wazir's case remains active. Wazir's brother told Human Rights Watch that Wazir was living in Dubai and disappeared after going to the mosque. "We didn't know who had kidnapped him," HRW quoted the brother as saying.

What will happen next to the three is unclear. President Obama has ordered the review of the evidence against all of the men held at Guantanamo, but he's issued no similar order for men held at Bagram and it's not clear how many detainees there match the description of the three.

Add to those pressing for a full investigation of Bush-era detention policies former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former FBI director Bill Sessions. In an op-ed piece in this morning's Washington Post, the former officials, both of whom served under George W. Bush's father, urge President Obama to appoint a presidential commission to ferret out the details of who authorized what in the sad Bush policy of detainee abuse.

Investigations by Congress and other bodies have shown that, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, government officials have encouraged and acquiesced in prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel, and detainees have been transferred to countries that are known to torture. In many cases, the perpetrators of abuse and torture were given the support and encouragement (tacit or explicit) of their superiors, possibly as high up the chain of command as the president himself.

The two praise Obama for ordering Guantanamo closed. "But it is only a first step. . . . We must understand how we got where we are today to ensure that we correct our past mistakes and change our policies going forward."

There is no doubt torture took place. Pentagon official Susan Crawford bluntly acknowledged as much in an interview with Bob Woodward earlier this year.

The Red Cross made the allegation in its confidential report to the Bush administration on the treatment of 14 so-called high value detainees while they were held at clandestine CIA prisons, as Mark Danner reported in The New York Review of Books. This piece is illuminating in that it reveals some of the "sophisticated" interrogation techniques the Bush administration felt had to be kept secret to prevent al Qaida operatives from preparing for them. The chief one: wrapping a towel or clamping a collar around a detainee's neck, then using the extra leverage that would give to slam the detainee's head into the wall. Exactly how does one prepare to resist that?

Michael Hayden, when he was CIA director, downplayed the extent of such abuse by saying only three detaineess were subjected to waterboarding, which until the Danner story came out was the only specific interrogation technique widely discussed. But no one has addressed how many underwent the "collar beating" treatment. And no one has answered whether the use of that technique had the approval of someone in Washington.

Maybe someone ought to.

One of the policies that has gnawed at journalists since the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the refusal of the Pentagon to allow coverage of the return to the United States of the remains of those killed in the war. Obama was asked about it at tonight's press conference. His careful answer said there was a review underway of the policy and he wanted to be briefed on that review so that he understands the sensitivities. Who's briefing him on the journalist perspective?