Do You Get the Feeling We’re the Adversaries Deputy Defense Secretary Lynn Is Talking About?
After having managed the Wikileak dump as an opportunity to dial up another NYT A1 fearmongering Michael Gordon article against Iran, DOD has turned to complaining about Wikileaks again. But given the vagueness described in this complaint, I can’t help but wonder whether William Lynn is using the term “adversary” rather loosely.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn called the documents “stolen material” and said they give adversaries key insight on how the U.S. military operates. He did not say which groups, or how the Pentagon knew they were researching the documents.
“There are groups out there that have said they are indeed mining this data to turn around and use against us,” Lynn told a small group of reporters during a brief visit to Baghdad. “We think this is problematic.”
Of course groups are mining documents–and it’s no mystery how DOD has learned of it. The UN has mined the documents and subsequently raised questions about America’s obligations to prevent torture in Iraq. I would imagine that Lynn finds it “problematic” that the UN might challenge its policy of ignoring torture.
I imagine, too, that Lynn believes Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s demand that the US investigate its support for torture “problematic.”
“Anything that suggests basic rules of war, conflict and engagement have been broken or that torture has been in any way condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked at.
“People will want to hear what the answer is to what are very, very serious allegations of a nature which I think everybody will find shocking.”
It would be “problematic,” too, if the Danes were forced to admit that its own records, neglecting all mention of turning over 62 Iraqis to be tortured, were inaccurate.
I’d be flattered, frankly, if DOD considers us mere American citizens–their paymasters–among that group of “adversaries.” It’d be nice if our military had some fear that citizen disgust with its actions might exercise some kind of check over their power. It’d be nice if the exposure of our government’s complicity with torture proved somehow problematic to the bureaucracy that institutionalized that complicity.
Sadly, I suspect that if Lynn is including us mere citizens in that group of “adversaries,” he’s only doing so because he finds the notion of citizen oversight and accountability so “problematic.”