BOOK FEST: Sands, Torture Team

Philippe Sands
Torture Team
2008

FORMER British prime minister Tony Blair was advised that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal just hours before former US president George Bush presented him with his timetable for war.

This was the central claim put forward by leading British QC Philippe Sands when he came to Edinburgh to promote his latest book Torture Team.

Professor Sands pointed to documents uploaded online by The Iraq Inquiry which lay bare the claims he made in his earlier book Lawless World (2005), specifically that attorney general Lord Goldsmith was leaned on by the government to change his views on the legality of a war with Iraq.

He pointed to a memo drawn up by Lord Goldsmith on the eve of Blair’s meeting with Bush on 31 January 2003 – available here – in which Goldsmith categorically stated that UN resolution 1441, which offered Saddam a final chance to disarm his weapons, “does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council”.

The existence of this memo has been known about for over five years, but Sands was particularly excited by the release of a new annotated version on The Iraq Inquiry website earlier this year which includes new and, Sands argues, damning notes by Tony Blair and his private secretary on foreign affairs Matthew Rycroft.

Prof Sands even suggested that Blair thought Lord Goldsmith was “a tosser” for writing this memo on the eve of such an important meeting.

Sands told the audience at Edinburgh Book Festival: “If you go on The Iraq Inquiry website and have a look at the declassified documents available on the site there’s a memo from attorney general Lord Goldsmith dated 30 January 2003. The memo states:

'In view of your meeting with President Bush on Friday, I thought you might wish to know where I stand on the question of whether a further decision of the Security Council is legally required in order to authorise the use of force against Iraq...

'You should be aware that, notwithstanding the additional arguments put to me since our last discussion, I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council.'

Sands went on: “Mischievously, and wonderfully, the Chilcot Inquiry didn’t put up the original copy – it put up the annotated Number 10 copy. In the top left hand corner someone has scribbled:

‘Clear advice from attorney on need for another resolution.’

“However, next to that is another note, by Tony Blair’s private secretary on foreign affairs Matthew Rycroft, which reads:

‘[We] specifically said we did not need further advice this week, Matthew.’

“At the bottom of the memo Goldsmith concludes: ‘I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of force without a further determination by the security council.’

“This phrase has been underlined and next to it, scribbled in Tony Blair's handwriting, is written: ‘I just don’t understand this.’

Sands continued: “In other words, Tony Blair is saying ‘I just don’t understand why this tosser is putting out advice saying that the war is illegal’.



“And what happened the next day? Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor [later US Ambassador] David Manning recorded a meeting between Bush and Blair which said that America was preparing for war. The advice is right there at the bottom of Manning’s Memo:

‘The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin.’

“It was made clear that he was doing this with or without another resolution and Blair told Bush that he was ‘solidly behind him’" Sands continued. "Bush added that it would be good if another resolution could be achieved but only as an insurance policy.”

Sands is much more engaging in person than his writing, which is unfortunately but necessarily dry and methodical. However, his style compliments the sterile language of the memos he describes in which US defence chiefs such as Donald Rumsfeld and William Haynes discuss the degrading and inhumane treatments they were meting out to terror suspects.

He is the first to admit that he is no journalist, and is more at home wading through papers than navigating emotive prose. However, for Torture Team he had to learn the skills of a journalist as most of the evidence he needed for his exposé of the US government’s sanctioning of torture techniques in the wake of 9/11 was very deliberately not written down.

“I think many of the people I spoke to for the book met with me precisely because I wasn’t a journalist,” said Sands.

However, Sands’ paper chase to discover who-knew-what-and-when, and his pursuit of key witnesses to corroborate his assertions, would make even Woodward and Bernstein proud.

Rose, A Senseless Squalid War

Norman Rose
‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ : Voices From Palestine 1945-1948
2009


IT has often been remarked by my friends and colleagues that my bookshelf resembles a reading list from a dire Middle East studies course. Most react with horror when I tell them that I read these books for leisure as much as education. It’s difficult to pinpoint where my fascination with the Middle East began but perhaps, like Robert Fisk, it lies in a need to understand and atone for the sins of the father.

In his opus The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest Of The Middle East [which I have shamefully yet to finish], Fisk recounts how his father Bill Fisk was duped, along with millions of other young men, into believing that the war he was fighting in 1914-18 was: “The Great War For Civilisation”. Nearly a century later, Robert Fisk is still reporting on “The Clash of Civilisations” between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the Middle East, an area carved up in the spoils of what Fisk calls “my father’s war”.

My own atonement isn’t for the sins of my father, but for my grandfather Pte Richard McLaughlin, a sentryman in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers who fought in the last days of the British mandate in Palestine. Palestine 1945-1948 was “my grandfather’s war” [although it must be noted that this war was no more my grandfather’s than World War I was Bill Fisk’s. Both were conscripts.]

My grandfather died when I was very young, but when I was old enough to ask the ubiquitous question, “What did grandad do in the war?”, I recall being disappointed to hear that he was too young to fight in World War II but had completed his National Service in a mysterious land called Palestine.

He didn’t talk about it much, according to my father, save for a short, enigmatic, recollection of “dodging stones thrown from both sides of the road – with Arabs on the one side and Jews on the other”.

“Why would anyone fight in a war where neither side wanted you to be there?” I recall my child’s mind struggling to comprehend.

As I write, an adult still working to understand this “Clash of Civilisations” from my own little corner of the world, a diplomatic row is unfolding over Israel’s attack on an aid flotilla attempting to break their blockade on Gaza, an attack which left at least nine dead and dozens more injured. While reporting on fears for the wellbeing of Edinburgh-based Gaza aid worker Theresa McDermott today, I was struck by the parallels between this unfolding drama and the book I had already begun preparing for review on my blog’s ongoing list of personal reading.

For this reason, I have cast aside my usual thrifty editing to record my thoughts more deeply.

Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ is the first book I’ve read that’s come close to clarifying my childish confusion about “my grandfather’s war.
The clearest statement I have yet found which comes close to articulating my childhood quandary can be found in chapter two of Rose’s relatively accessible history, from the first military and later civilian Governor of Jerusalem Ronald Storrs [the man T.E. Lawrence described in Seven Pillars as “the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East”].

“I am not wholly for either, but for both,” said Storrs in 1920. “Two hours of Arab grievances drive me to Synagogue, while after an intensive course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam.”

Listening to the conflicting reports of today’s attack on the Gaza flotilla I find myself in the same position as Storrs. Today’s protestors were undoubtedly sailing in international waters, attempting to run a blockade which is legally questionable at best, while carrying aid to an area which resembles the Nazi ghettos that Israel’s founders used as moral justification for a Jewish homeland. This moral justification was articulated by sympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton: “There was a strong case for [a Jewish national home] before the war. There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of [the Nazis].”

After listening to Israel’s defence today that their forces opened fire only after they were “clubbed, beaten and stabbed” [supported by television footage which seems to show supposedly “peaceful” protestors attacking Israel’s boarding party], and state their belief that the flotilla was, at least partly, organised by groups with “ties to Global Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Hamas” [something I have no evidence for but I don’t find entirely implausible that some Jihadi sympathisers were aboard] and I find myself back in the middle.

However, what Storrs was yet to witness was Israel’s disproportionate response to any provocation.

When British authorities carried out arms-raids on Jewish settlements during Operation Agatha in 1946, and the Zionists responded by blowing up British command HQ at the King David Hotel. When Egypt instigated a blockade on Israel in 1967 similar to the blockade that Israel now imposes on Gaza [with, it must be noted, the help of modern-day Egypt’s policing of Rafah], Israel launched a pre-emptive strike which annexed most of the region in six days. When Israel-friendly Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel was assassinated in 1982, the Israeli Defence Force [under orders from defence minister and future president Ariel Sharon] orchestrated a brutal massacre of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. When Lebanese militants again enraged Israel in 2006 by killing a dozen soldiers, Israel responded with a devastating bombing raid killing at least 1,500 people.

Once again we see the disproportionate response in action. When protestors attacked with sticks, stones and knives they were dropped by automatic weapons.

Further parallel’s between today’s events and those recounted by Rose in 1945-48 can be found in one of the most decisive events in turning public opinion against Britain’s continuing mandate in Palestine, the bid to prevent the SS Exodus boat breaking a British blockade imposed to prevent uncontrolled post-war immigration into Palestine.

According to Rose, American journalist Izzy Stone “accused the British of murder and piracy on the high seas , pointing out that the Exodus had been attacked in international waters” [a charge levelled at Israel today] and includes an account by Captain Stanley Brian de Courcy-Ireland, commander of British blockade flagship Ajax, which is absolutely dripping with contemporary resonances:

“The [British] boarding parties soon learned what they were up against. Those that got over were assaulted from all angles...I was forced to draw my revolver and fired eleven warning shots. One of the last shots, however, I used to stop a lad of 17 or 18 from collecting my scalp with a meat axe. He got it in the stomach.”

Israel has already faced a wave of global condemnation for the deaths on the flotilla today, but the repercussions for this are yet to be seen. Britain may have been Israel’s midwife but its international influence is now too small for Israel to bother taking notice. It remains to be seen how USA, the nation that nurtured Israel through its troublesome adolescence first by turning a blind eye to illegal arms smuggling during the mandate and then becoming its chief arms supplier, responds in the long term.

The US remains in thrall to the Jewish lobby and one of the most entertaining episodes that shows this lobby at work in the last days of the mandate recounted in Rose involved future mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek, Mafia boss Frank Costello’s New York nightclub the Copacabana and “Zionist sympathiser” Frank Sinatra taking centre stage in illegal arms smuggling, using tactics not too dissimilar to those allegedly used by Palestinian supporters in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran today.

“Kollek recorded liaisons with spies, mobsters, movie moguls, statesmen bankers, professors, industrialists and newspapermen. The Hagana [the principle Jewish military organisation in mandated Palestine] arms mission profited greatly from the vast amounts of army surplus supplies left over from the war [including] rifles, machine guns, engine parts and aircraft...

“To finance their vast operation Kollek relied on donations from wealthy Jewish backers as well as from the Jewish agency...

“Transferring money – or bribes – to Kollek’s shady contacts was always a problem...It was common knowledge that Frank Sinatra was sympathetic to the Zionist cause. Only the previous autumn he had sung at a rally at the Hollywood Bowl attended by 20,000 Zionist supporters. The solution was logical. Kollek: “I walked out of the front door of the building with a satchel and the Feds followed me. Out of the back door went Sinatra, carrying a paper bag filled with cash.”

“Perhaps for the only time in his career, Sinatra had played an unscripted role, that of ‘bagman’ for the Haganah.”

Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

T.E. Lawrence
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1926 (Vintage edition with introduction by Robert Fisk 2007)

The ur-text of Middle Eastern war reporting and top of the reading list for US Army officers during the last war in Iraq.

At the beginning of Lawrence of Arabia, the celebrated 1962 biopic very loosely based on Seven Pillars, a young reporter approaches Allenby [former commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and Lawrence’s paymaster] for a few words at Lawrence’s memorial service. “More words?” Allenby retorts, disdainfully.

After battling through nearly 700 pages of Lawrence’s dense and flowery recollection of his role in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks in World War I, I can quite understand the sentiment – but what words!

My 2007 Vintage edition of Seven Pillars displays a neat endorsement by Winston Churchill on the back cover, calling it one of “the greatest books ever written in the English language”. He added: “As a narrative of war and adventure it is unsurpassable.”

As a narrative of adventure, the landscapes, characters and language Lawrence brought home from the Middle East are even more fantastic and otherworldly than anything Tolkein would later dream up for Middle Earth, and as a narrative of war it is still largely unrivalled.

This edition comes complete with a brisk and rather unsatisfying introduction by Robert Fisk, and the my final few pages dovetailed nicely with the BBC’s two-part documentary The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia, narrated by former Iraq provincial governor [and current Tory parliamentary candidate] Rory Stewart. Both draw parallels with the Arab Revolt and the insurgency in Iraq, and highlight the continuing importance of the lessons Lawrence brought home from his war in the desert almost a century ago.

Freedman, A Choice of Enemies

Lawrence Freedman
A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East
2009

Concise and largely objective overview of 30 years of American foreign policy in the Middle East, by London King College's professor of war studies. Tellingly, for a concise overview, it still runs to around 600 pages of dense text, but it would be impossible to do justice to the book's remit in any less.

Freedman focuses his thesis on the crucial year 1979 - the year of the Iranian Islamic revolution, Saddam's rise to power in Iraq and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan - and lets the history unfold from there.

The book is a damning indictment of America's wavering policies in the Middle East, where allies swiftly become enemies. Much is said about the instability of Middle East politics, but as Freedman's book shows Mideast leaders are equally adept at exploiting the inherent instabilities in America's political system.

Witness how Khomenei waited until Carter left the White House, almost to the second, before he released the Iranian Embassy hostages, or how successive Israeli governments maintain their occupation of the West Bank and Golan by mobilising the powerful US Jewish-lobby and confounding successive Presidents with empty "accords" and aimless "road maps" to peace.

Hider, The Spiders of Allah

James Hider
The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War
2009

The first Gulf II non-fiction page turner I've read, by The Times' Middle East bureau chief. The action is relentless, and Hider's visual style of writing unfolds like an action movie.

Unlike Simpson and Bowen, Gulf II was Hider's first war so he comes unburdened by the weight of history and experience to describe many of the war's atrocities with fresh eyes.

His central thesis that Islam is a brutal, backward and superstitious religion (the book's title alludes to the Iraqis' belief that an army of huge shrieking spiders had been sent by Allah to cut down the invading troops) is inflammatory and has a ring of old Colonialism about it - but Hider offsets this by describing plenty more atrocities conducted in the name of secular/Christian warfare.

Low points include an army senior commander ordering a sniper to cut down an old man collecting sticks in case his bundle contained an RPG, and American troops storming Basra with Team America's 'America: Fuck Yeah!' blaring from tank speakers without a hint of irony.

Gulf II has yet to be given the full Apocalypse Now or Jarhead Hollywood treatment, but when they do the producers could do worse than tear through Hider's book for source material.

Where Coppola's fictional Vietnamese villagers died to the haunting sound of Wagner, Iraqis lost their lives with "lick my butt, and suck on my balls" still ringing in their ears.

Bowen, Six Days

Jermey Bowen
Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East
2004

Hour-by-hour account of the 1967 Six Day War. Much less readable than Bowen's follow up War Stories. Not for the uninitiated.

Simpson, The Wars Against Saddam

John Simpson
The Wars Against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad
2003

Refreshingly less self indulgant than some of Simpson's other work. Contains the best description of Saddam I've encountered to date - a brutal gangster rather than a head of state.
Simpson portrays Saddam as an unpleasant Don Corleone figure, with his brutal son Uday and his quieter but no less unpleasant son Qusay as his own Sonny and Michael. Son-in-law Hussein Kamel is the family's Fredo, defecting to Jordan in 1995 only to be lured back and killed for his treachery.

Bowen, War Stories

Jeremy Bowen
War Stories
2007

Eyewitness account of 20 years of war. Bowen has one eye on the big picture, and one eye on the human costs of war. His narrative always comes back to the individuals affected by war with dozens of tragic case-studies that bring the action home.