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War for Decades to Come? 1 Year After ISIL Advance, U.S. Could Send Hundreds More Troops to Iraq
The Obama administration is considering a plan to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq by sending 400 to 500 more military personnel as well as establishing a new military base in Anbar Province. The United States already has about 3,000 troops, including trainers and advisers, in Iraq. The administration is describing the military personnel as advisors who will help train Iraqi forces in an attempt to retake the city of Ramadi which fell to the self-described Islamic State last month. Plans to retake Mosul may be pushed off until next year. It was a year ago this week when Islamic State fighters seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Today the city remains in ISIL’s hands. Advisers close to the White House say it could take decades to defeat ISIL. We discuss the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria with two guests: Malcolm Nance, a retired Arabic-speaking counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran who first worked in Iraq in 1987; and Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent just back from reporting in Iraq and Syria. Cockburn’s latest book is "The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Obama administration is considering a plan to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq by sending 400 to 500 more military personnel as well as establishing a new military base in Anbar Province. The United States already has about 3000 troops, including trainers and advisers, in Iraq. The administration is describing the new military personnel as advisors who will help train Iraqi forces in an attempt to retake the city of Ramadi, which fell to the self-described Islamic State last month. Plans to retake Mosul may be pushed off until next year. The move comes just days after President Obama acknowledged the U.S. does not yet have a "complete strategy" to deal with ISIL which has seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
It was a year ago this week when Islamic State fighters seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Today the city remains in ISIL’s hands. Advisers close to the White House say it could take decades to defeat ISIL. At the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, Retired Marine General John Allen said "This will be a long campaign. Defeating Daesh’s ideology will likely take a generation or more," he said, using the Arabic name for ISIL.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders is reporting Iraq is now facing its biggest humanitarian emergency in a generation. Almost three million people have fled war-torn areas of the country controlled by the Islamic State. The United Nations estimates 8.2 million Iraqis, nearly 25 percent of the population, will need some kind of humanitarian help this year. To talk more about the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we are joined by two guests. With us here in New York, Malcolm Nance, a retired Arabic speaking U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran who first worked in Iraq in 1987. He is the author of several books, including, The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014. His new piece for The Intercept is called, "ISIS Forces That Now Control Ramadi Are Ex-Baathist Saddam Loyalists." And joining us from London is Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent. He’s just back from reporting in Iraq and Syria. His latest book, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. His most recent article on Iraq is headlined, "War with Isis: As the militant threat grows, so does the West’s self-deception." Let’s go first, right here, to Malcolm Nance. Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this latest piece you have written. Talk about the political context for the rise and the power of ISIS today.
MALCOLM NANCE: Well, the biggest misperception now, we’re on the first anniversary of ISIS taking the city of Mosul, and the biggest misperception that the media has certainly fostered is that ISIS is this new group, which has appeared out of nowhere, they have blitzed across the Middle East, and they have managed to take large swaths of Iraq and Syria. And then in fact, ISIS is the same group and a conglomeration of groups we have been fighting since the day we invaded Iraq in 2003.
The piece that I wrote in The Intercept, which was extracted from parts of my book, based on my book, The Terrorists of Iraq is that the former regime loyalists, almost 100,000 of them, who were all taken away from their jobs by Ambassador Bremer’s general order number two, went underground and have been fighting us for the last 13 years nonstop. However, Al Qaeda in Iraq, which started in 2003 as well, has taken over the upper level management of these groups. And so what we have is we have, technically, a mega group of all the former regime loyalist insurgent groups, all of the Iraqi Islamic insurgent groups, and the foreign fighters who have used Syria as a base camp and they now are called ISIS.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But Malcom Nance, how do you reconcile the fact the Baathists were largely a secular semi-socialist party when they started, reconciling their ideology and their approach to the world with that of jihadists?
MALCOLM NANCE: Yeah, it’s very interesting because the jihadists wouldn’t even have been in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion when the communities that were former Baathists —-and you’re right, the Baathists were secularists. The Baath party was this conglomeration of socialism and secular government that formed into a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein. And also, under Hafez al-Assad in Syria. Now -— but people who were in Iraq who were Baathists were still Muslims. As a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein, in the later years after the U.S. sanctions went into place and after the Iran-Iraq war started become more Islamic in name, that is, to co-opt Islam form the people on the street. The Jihadists who came in just after the invasion — the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, came in with their own ideology, which is radical extremist almost cultish to Islam. But the Baathists understood that these people had the motivation and the combat capacity to do things that the Baathist forces didn’t have to do, as a matter of fact.
You had Al Qaeda in Iraq, would carry out all the suicide bombings they wanted. The Baathists would facilitate their entry in from Syria, would build car bombs for them, would gather all of the intelligence against U.S. forces, direct them to it, and they would drive their car bomb into a target. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them over the 12 years that Iraq has been in this turmoil. But it’s a marriage of convenience, to a certain extent. Mosul was a Baathist city. Tikrit was a Baathist city. These are the people who ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1968 to 2003, and they’re the people who were actually living there. ISIS is just the spearhead of the forces that have now joined them who are Baathists as well. But ex-Baathist. And they have now taken this patina of the Islamic Caliphate on top of that and they have sworn their loyalties, but they are the 7 million person population that owns the place.
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, you’re the Middle East correspondent for The Independent , you’re just back from Iraq and Syria. Do you share this assessment of Malcolm Nance?
PATRICK COCKBURN: No. I think that there’s a big is disconnect between what’s happening now and what happened when Iraq was ruled by the Baath party. Remember also, the Baath party and Iraqi security forces were supremely unsuccessful militarily in 2003, 1991, and before, while Islamic State is very successful, both come out of the Sunni community at all, but I don’t think that the Islamic State is the Baath party in a new guise.
One thing that does strike me, though, as very important at the moment, and I have just been in northern Iraq and northern Syria, talking to people who have come from Islamic State, is that it’s recruiting people all the time. It’s introduced conscription. So, it’s calling up tens of thousands of young men. So it’s an expanding organization. And I don’t think that the outside world in America or anywhere else have quite taken on board how tough this organization is and how quickly it’s growing.
And every so often, we hear accounts that it’s got weaker and so forth, but then it takes another city. It took Mosul. It’s taken Ramadi, it’s taken Palmyra and now it’s getting close to Aleppo. Once the biggest city in Syria. And it’s threatening Western Syria. So people talk about it is going to take some of the decades to get rid of this organization. But the problem is much more immediate. This is an expanding organization. It’s a military machine that combines religious fanaticism with military expertise. And it’s growing all the time.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Patrick Cockburn, how do you account for this, this — such a fast growth of the organization, especially given the years when there didn’t seem to be any expansion of the Jihadists, especially in Iraq?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, it looks to the Sunni community in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni Arabs about 20 percent of Iraq, about 60 percent of Syrians. When the Syrian uprising took place in 2011, there was a whole big new constituency for them. And then militarily, they’re much better organized and more effective than the other groups in Syria. And although they’ve expanded, they still seem to be able to create a real state. I mean, that is one thing that struck me talking to people from there. They’ve introduced taxation. They have introduced conscription, they’ve introduced horrible laws restricting women from leaving home without a male relative. And you get beaten if you don’t do that. You have to wear the Niqab covering the whole face. If you’re a woman. And anybody who opposes them ends up dead very fast. We were talking to the leader of one tribe in Iraq, the Albu Nimr, and 864 of them have been killed since last October.
So this is a savage organization. But it’s a pretty effective one. And it administers everything. It controls education, even fishing rights in the Euphrates River. They have a whole series of instructions, what you can and cannot do. You cannot use explosives, you can’t use poison. So it really does control the area into which it’s expanded, which is greater than the size of Great Britain, and maybe it has at least 6 million people in it.
AMY GOODMAN: So your main point of disagreement with Malcolm Nance is simply that, while it may have started with different groups, it is far larger than the Baathists of the past?
PATRICK COCKBURN: It’s far larger than Al Qaeda was during the 10 years ago or since. It has gotten much bigger. You know, if you were a Baathist back then — this is — most of these people are pretty young. If you have to go back to Baathist-Iraq, these guys — if all of the militants came from there, it would be quite an aging organization. But I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a connection in the leadership. Some of these people come out of the Iraqi security forces. But I think that it has developed into a very different type of organization, and unfortunately a far more effective one.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s get Malcolm Nance’s response.
MALCOLM NANCE: Well, in some respect, he’s right. It is a very different organization. It has developed in a different way, and it does have a large quantity of young men. But let’s not forget history here. If you were a member of the Saddam Fedayeen at age 20 when the United States invaded, you’d be 35 years old right now. And you would be a mid-level commander with 13 years of extraordinary combat experience under your belt. There were 100,000 Iraqis that we fought when we invaded Iraq. We only killed 6,000 of them in the invasion. That’s a lot and it is horrific we even did it, but the very fact is, that left almost 90,000 people who were there to fight us during the eight years that we were in combat with them.
Al Qaeda in Iraq got all of the news during the time that we were fighting. The United States believed that Al Qaeda-Iraq was everyone that we were fighting. But in fact, we were fighting 30,000 Saddam Fedayeen 26,000 intelligence agency officers and managers, 6,000 senior Baathist commanders who had Iran-Iraq war experience. These people are the Sunni community of Iraq. They are the men and their children who are the people who own northern and western Iraq. ISIS is just Al Qaeda in Iraq evolved. Once in 2011, Syria fell, that gave them a complete playground, gave them all of the lines of communications, weapons, that they could take and use it as a sanctuary to start carving out these areas. But you can’t carve out Anbar Province you can’t carve out Nineveh and Tikar without actually co-opting the communities that are in there who turned against them in 2007 during the Iraq awakening campaign. It’s just in 2011 they turned back to the people who are going to give them the autonomy they weren’t getting with the al-Maliki government.
So yes, it is a young organization. I know this organization and I’ve fought this organization. This organization has tried to kill me. I take it very personally. I see how they operate and I understand that their tactics — their blitz tactics are very effective against the Iraqi Army that really doesn’t want to be where they are. But as they take these communities like Mosul, that community of Mosul, of course, that community of Mosul are Sunnis who have always been there and who have ruled Iraq and they are allowing them to come in.
AMY GOODMAN: We are going to come back to this conversation after break. Our guests are Malcolm Nance, a retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran. He’s here with us in New York, has a piece in The Intercept. And Patrick Cockburn is with us, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. He is joining us from London. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Our guests are Patrick Cockburn in London, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired U.S. intelligence officer and combat veteran who spent many years in Iraq. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Malcolm Nance, you alluded to your experience in Iraq, and I wanted to go back to some of that experience because you are in Iraq as far back as 1987, before the Persian Gulf War even. Could you talk about your experiences, your earliest experiences there? And also, your assessment of the Shia community and the Shia militias and their role in the continuing battle with ISIL?
MALCOLM NANCE: The missions that I worked in the 1980’s, of course, were in support of the Iran-Iraq war. And, as you know, we had a de-confliction problem after Iranian aircraft accidentally struck a U.S. Navy warship. So their were de-confliction missions to Iraq and around Iraq and Kuwait.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: De-confliction? What does that mean?
MALCOLM NANCE: Ah, yeah. Sorry, that’s a technical term which means that we assist them in not mischaracterizing or misidentifying our warships as Iranian Navy ships. They were carrying out airstrikes in the Persian Gulf destroying Iranian tankers. And so there was a very early mission to deconflict their aircraft attacks away from U.S. warships.
AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. was supporting both sides.
MALCOLM NANCE: The United States at that time was technically neutral, but it was in the interest of the United States to facilitate the Saudi and Kuwaiti activities in support of Iraq.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the Shia, and your experience with the Shia militias as well?
MALCOLM NANCE: Well, I got involved with the Shia very early on. Right after the Operation Desert Storm, I operated in southern Iraq around the areas south of Basra, Umm Qasr, an Assari [sp], all of these areas down there. And this is where the Shia uprising took place, because the Iraqis, of course, they know their people. They managed to coordinate, trick General Schwarzkopf into allowing them to use helicopters and, as the Shia of basra rose up, they used the terms of our peace treaty to carry out attacks on them. And I spent quite a bit of time in Basra, as a matter of fact.
Right now what you’re seeing with the Iraqi-Shia militias, the Hashid Shabi, these popular mobilization units they call themselves. It’s very interesting because throughout my entire time in Iraq, we fought the Shia. The U.S. Army fought the Shia militias of the Jaish al-Mahdi which was Muqtada al-Sadr’s southern organization, and I would have people say to me, if Sheikh Sistani tells me, or Sheikh al-Sadr tells me to attack the Americans, I have to, I’m just obligated to do that.
Right now, because of the failure of the Iraqi Army, that is how the southern — the Shia of Iraq, who I believe are about 80 percent of the population of Iraq, are mobilizing now in a capacity they wouldn’t do if they were an Iraqi unit. They are essentially armed mobs who are going up there and throwing manpower at the ISIS crisis, and with some Iranian support and just coming in and giving large quantities of manpower to take back cities like Tikrit Baiji oil refinery. And they believe that they’re going to Ramadi. But when they go there, they are in it for punishment. They are not in this in order to maintain the stability of the Shia and Sunni dialogue within Iraq. They’re going there to punish the community for bringing ISIS.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to comments of your former boss. That’s right, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who told the times of London, "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words." He went on to say, "I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories." Several commentators, including the journalist Bob Woodward, have challenged Rumsfeld’s recent comments. Seven weeks after the U.S. invasion, Rumsfeld said "If Iraq — with its size, capabilities, resources and its history — is able to move to the path of representative democracy, however bumpy the road, then the impact in the region and the world could be dramatic and Iraq could conceivably become a model." I wanted to get Patrick Cockburn’s response to this. Rumsfeld basically blaming Bush, saying Bush was wrong.
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think from the beginning — you have to separate two things, the invasion and the occupation. A lot of Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Including the Sunni as well as the Shia and the Kurds. But occupation was always — whichever way they tried to play it, was never going to work. The Sunni weren’t going to accept it because they had been the dominant community. The Shia wanted to be the dominant community. They’re about 60 percent of Iraqi, Shia-Arabs. And they didn’t want the U.S. to be the dominant power. These, of course, were connected, got support from Iran and Syria because, at that time, various people in Washington were saying Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow. So the occupation was always going to capsize whatever way they played it. Since then, there are people are saying, if we had done something a bit different, we could have worked. But all this talk about nation building — one nation doesn’t build another. Occupying powers normally act in their own interest, which is what happened this time around.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the West’s self-deception here and what do you think needs to happend, Patrick Cockburn?
PATRICK COCKBURN: We’re talking, kind of, at the present moment, I think that in Syria, and Iraq, the self-deception about the strength of Islamic State and thinking that it’s somehow going to implode or if you leave it alone it’s not going to expand. I think don’t that’s true, and that’s proven by events. I think also that an attempt to rebrand various organizations like the Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been advancing in northern Syria and other Al Qaeda type organizations in the South. And the idea is that somehow this will weaken al-Assad.
What really happens in Syria is that Syrians in Damascus may not much like Assad, but if they’re connected to the government — not just Christians and Alawites and Shia, but ordinary Sunni, they’re terrified of the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra or any of these other extremists taking over. Therefore, they support Assad because they’ve got no alternative. As soon as there — if there was an alternative, then things might change. But excepting — now that the whole Syrian opposition is basically dominated by jihadis and Al Qaeda-type organizations, then this means that Assad will continue to get support.
What they ought to do is bomb Islamic State and the others in all circumstances, they should get priority to fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and they’re not quite doing that. This idea of arming the Sunni tribe has been around for a long time. Maybe you could do that when Al Qaeda and Iraq was powerful in 2006, 2007, but it was never as powerful as the Islamic State was. It was never a state organization. So I don’t — you can meet these tribal leaders in Irbil and in Arman, they’re always promising great things, but, what I notice is that there isn’t much resistance locally in Mosul and Ramadi and these other cities. You don’t see assassinations and bombings on a wide scale. So I think that is really just a diversionary policy. What I think Washington and its allies should do is give priority, complete priority to fighting the Islamic State, and they haven’t really done that yet.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Patrick Cockburn, you’ve written — you’ve chronicled the little noted successes of Kurdish forces in battling against ISIL. Could you talk about that and also whether you think that the map of that region of the world has essentially been redrawn permanently as a result of the continuing conflicts between ethnic, political, and religious forces over the last 12 years there?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I was in northern Syria where there are three big Kurdish enclaves, there are about 2.2 million Syrian Kurds, about 10 percent of the population. They’ve organized themselves pretty well. They’re fighting Islamic State. While I was there they won a victory at a place called Mount Abdulaziz. They were pretty efficient compared to the Iraqi Army or militias, or, indeed, the Syrian army. But they’re redrawing it for the moment. But they have benefited, really, from both the Syrian government and Islamic State fighting fighting each other. Neither of them particularly want the Kurds to have a high degree of autonomy there. So in the long term, if either side in Syria wins, whether Islamic State or the Damascus government, that’s bad news for the Kurds.
But actually, the state they have created there is perhaps the only successful outcome so far of the 2011 uprising in Syria in that it has gotten rid of the dictatorial regime of Assad, but it hasn’t been taken over by extreme Islamists. Units of their army are made up of women, that women get 40 percent of the jobs in government, that it’s a secular society. So it’s long-term future is debatable. It’s going to come under a lot of pressure. But the Kurds have a lot of achievements to be proud of there.
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick, last month The Daily Beast featured an article criticizing your Syria reporting. The author, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad alleges you discount any Syrian nationalist opposition to the al-Assad regime and that your position is, "Bashar al-Assad is at war with jihadi terrorism; the West has erred in supporting his opponents; and to support the opposition is to support ISIS." Ahmad goes on to say, "For Cockburn, the situation in Syria is stark: you are with the regime or you are with the terrorists. He is an enthusiast for the war on terror—Bashar al-Assad’s war on terror. He criticizes the U.S. for excluding from its anti-ISIS coalition 'almost all those actually fighting ISIS, including Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds and the Shia militias in Iraq.'" Ahmad later accuses you of "turning a blind eye to the regime’s ongoing slaughter of civilians." He says, "He is helped in this by the obtrusive barbarism of ISIS, which uses spectacle in the place of scale to force media attention. ISIS has been a godsend for the regime. It has helped divert attention from its crimes — and regime-friendly journalists have obliged in the deflection." Patrick Cockburn, your response?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Oh, I get a lot of this. Anybody who’s gonna report the Syrian civil war, or the Iraqi civil war is going to be accused by one side or the other of being partisan. And what happens in the Middle East has always happened, but is happening worse now, is when you analyze something and you say this is the situation, that I don’t think Assad is going to go down, both sides are incredibly brutal in this Civil War, then people think you’re justifying it. They mistake analysis for justification. I have had that, really, since 2011. I remember a rather nice Syrian I knew in Lebanon. I had just been in Syria and I had reported that Assad, for various reasons, was not going to collapse as a lot of media was saying. And as I came back into Syria, I switched on my telephone and there was the same guy shouting at me, shouting, shame on The Independent, shame on you. It was just that I had reported the situation as I saw it. Objectively. But he sort of wished that reality was different, and that’s why he was shouting at me. And this is the same sort of stuff. I can understand the passions involved, that both sides commit appalling atrocities using maximum violence, whatever they have against civilians. This is true of the Assad government dropping barrel bombs on civilians. It’s true of the Islamic State; 500, 600 members of another tribe in Syria were massacred. So I can understand how people feel like that. It’s part of the war, so I get attacked like that. I’m sure I will be attacked again. And there’s nothing much I can really do about that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Malcolm Nance, in closing, I’d like to ask you, here we are 12 years after the U.S. invasion in Iraq, and you’ve been — participated in — were involved in much of the regime change that occurred there. What’s your assessment of the failures of the United States in Iraq and its responsibility for the current situation?
MALCOLM NANCE: To take nothing away from the people who fought that war, that war should never have been fought. I’m saying this not as someone who writes books, I’m saying this as an intelligence professional. Invading Iraq after 2003 would have been akin to invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It had nothing to do with 9/11. The intelligence did not support it.
I had an incident — not an incident, but an event which occurred about six months before the invasion and I met a very high-level intelligence person who was a personal friend of Colin Powell and he said, Malcolm, what is your assessment of this? They’re talking about the communications intercept that we got from the Iraqis, that the president had put out to justify part of the war. I said, I have been doing this for decades. I just don’t see it. The intelligence is not there. We don’t have direct links to 9/11. Afghanistan, where I have just come back from, is full of Al Qaeda. They had gone over the mountain to Pakistan. This is a strategic mistake. It’s done. And what we need to do now is we have fostered the Iraqi government, we have tried to help them facilitate their growth, we have tried to help democracy — despite what Donald Rumsfeld says.
However, we are at the point now where the Pandora’s box is open and we have unleashed a group which has taken Al Qaeda ideology to its exact extreme. They have carved out exactly what Osama bin Laden had been saying from his three decades, that he wanted. He wanted an Islamic Caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. They have achieved that nominally. They control the roads, they control the few cities. But right now we are doing a linear battle using forces we know that can’t fight or won’t fight. Some Iraqi units are brilliant, like the Golden Division, the Iraqi special operations forces. But what we have, is we have a situation where we are going to have to take them on.
Does it require U.S. troops? I don’t believe it does. Will it require training? Yes. We are going to have to create forces that are going to have to go after ISIS where ISIS lives. Right now we’re trying to take back Ramadi and Mosul, but ISIS doesn’t live on every road in between there. You have to cut them off, you have to isolate them. The strategic policy of the Pentagon right now is do it from the air. It can’t be done from the air. We’re going to have to get a lot more air power and people who are going to go in there and confront them and cut them off.
AMY GOODMAN: So why are you talking about anything different than happened 12 years ago, if you’re talking about re-engage, already thousands of troops are there now. President Obama, probably, today is announcing another 500 troops.
MALCOLM NANCE: The President is in damage control mode. What we have is flooding here; uncontrollable flooding in a situation that didn’t need to be underwater. And so what he is trying to do is incrementally do this so that he doesn’t have to introduce large forces that will get attacked. If we had stayed in Iraq after 2011, we would be well past the 4693 dead that we had in that war. We would be pushing 6000 dead troops at this point. ISIS and all these other groups would be attacking us on a minute to minute basis, and that is all you would be hearing about is the failure of us not to get out of Iraq.
Now we have to the Iraqis and where we can in Syria and work with our Arab partners to try to degrade this organization to the point where they will lose their mobility. And it’s interesting, Patrick Cockburn, had just mentioned about supporting everyone in Syria now is rallying around the Assad government, and that’s very true. A government we wanted to see gone two years ago. But, the alternative, other than the Free Syrian Army groups and Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra is ISIS. And they are absolutists. They are going to eliminate anyone in their path. So now we have a completely different dynamic than we had 12 years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: Well this is a discussion we will certainly continue on Democracy Now! I want to thank Patrick Cockburn, in London, Middle East correspondent for The Independent just back from the Syria and Iraq, and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired counter-terrorism intelligence officer and U.S. combat veteran. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Louisiana. What will happen with Albert Woodfox, the man, the prisoner, who has been held longer than any prisoner in solitary confinement in this country, for 42 years. Stay with us.
Will Albert Woodfox Be Freed? Louisiana Fights Release of Longest-Serving U.S. Prisoner in Solitary
Louisiana has delayed the release of former Black Panther Albert Woodfox, the longest-serving U.S. prisoner in solitary confinement, after appealing a judge’s order for his freedom. Earlier this year a Louisiana grand jury re-indicted Woodfox for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, a crime for which he and his late, fellow Angola 3 member Herman Wallace maintained they were framed for their political activism. Wallace died on October 1, 2013 just three days after he was released from prison. On Monday, Federal Judge James Brady not only called for Woodfox’s release, but also barred a retrial. Woodfox’s two previous convictions in the case were both overturned. But on Tuesday, Louisiana filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit, and that court issued a stay on Judge Brady’s order until 1pm this Friday. Woodfox’s lawyers have until 5pm today to file a response. We are joined by Woodfox’s attorney, George Kendall, as well as the Angola 3’s Robert King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the late Gil Scott-Heron singing "Angola, Louisiana." This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I am Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we end today’s show looking at the pending release of the longest serving US prisoner in solitary confinement. On Monday Federal Judge James Brady ordered the immediate release of Louisiana prisoner and former Black Panther Albert Woodfox. Earlier this year, a Louisiana grand jury re-indicted Woodfox for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, a crime for which he and his late fellow Angola 3 member, Herman Wallace, maintained they were framed for their political activism. Wallace died on October 1, 2013 just three days after he was released from prison. On Monday, Federal Judge James Brady not only called for Woodfox’s release, but also barred a retrial. Woodfox’s two previous convictions in the case were both overturned.
AMY GOODMAN: For the past forty years, Albert Woodfox has been kept in a six by nine cell for 23 hours each day. At the facility where he is currently housed, he is only allowed out of his cell three days a week. Judge Brady said his order to release Woodfox was based on five factors. "Mr. Woodfox’s age and his poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light of the unavailability of witnesses, this court’s lack of confidence in the state to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over 40 years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over 40 ago." Well, Louisiana has now filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and that court has issued a stay on Judge Brady’s order until 1:00 p.m. this Friday. It gave Woodfox’s lawyers until 5:00 p.m. today to file a response to the state’s appeal. In a minute, we’ll get the latest news from his lawyer. But first, this is a clip of Albert Woodfox speaking in his own words on a prison pay phone in the 2010 documentary, "In the Land of the Free."
ALBERT WOODFOX: I thought that my cause, then and now, was noble so, therefore, they could never break me. They might bend me a little bit, they may cause me a lot of pain, they may even take my life, but they will never be able to break me.
AMY GOODMAN: Those the words of Albert Woodfox. For more we are joined by two guests. In New Orleans, Louisiana, George Kendall is Albert Woodfox’s defense attorney. In Austin, Texas, we are joined by Robert King, member of the Angola Three who spent 29 years in solitary confinement for a murder he did not commit. He was released in 2001 after his conviction was overturned. He’s written a book about his experience, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King." We welcome you both of you back to Democracy Now! George Kendall, you ’re in New Orleans. What is going on? The judge demanded that Albert Woodfox be immediately released, but that is not happening as of this moment.
GEORGE KENDALL: Judge Brady issued a very thoughtful opinion that looked at all of the circumstances in this case, and using the power he has as a federal judge, said enough is enough. Mr. Woodfox needs to be released. The state of Louisiana is unwilling to let this case go. It filed an immediate appeal in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, as you reported, that court has issued a temporary stay until Friday at 1:00 p.m. It has given us until 5:00 p.m. today to file our brief. We were up all night and we will file a very good, strong brief by 5:00 and we are hopeful that court will dissolve the stay on Friday afternoon so Mr. Woodfox can come home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Robert King, your reaction more than a decade after you were released and your conviction overturned, your fellow Angola 3 member still in prison, and your reaction to the latest developments?
ROBERT KING: Well, we think it is a pretty astounding decision for the judge to take that position. But, you know, I spoke with Albert recently. We are still cautiously optimistic about what could happen, the process that we still need to go through, but I am elated that the judge made that decision. It 's about time, long overdue. Judge Brady decided that Albert should be freed. He spent 40 years in solitary confinement, 43 years and counting because he is still in solitary confinement. He is isolated, even though he is no longer in prison. I think the judge made the right decision, but again, you know, we are cautiously optimistic. I hate use that term. We should not have to be; but you know, knowing this case, this case has had many ups and downs and many hurdles to jump and there still may be a couple more. But we're hoping that by Friday this is indeed, this temporary stay that was granted and that Albert would be released.
AMY GOODMAN: George Kendall, Teenie Verret, the widow of the prison guard that Louisiana says was killed by Albert Woodfox, Brent Miller and Herman Wallace. Verret was just 17 when her husband Brent Miller was stabbed to death in 1972, the prison guard. She said a few years ago, she did not believe that Woodfox and Wallace were guilty. She said at that time that they should be released. George Kendall, describe what Robert King just said that Woodfox is not in the prison, he is in jail. But how he’s being treated, even now — body cavity searches and the civil lawsuit that has been filed.
GEORGE KENDALL: Right, well he was moved in February of this year from the Louisiana prison system to a Parish detention center to await his retrial. He was very quickly re-indicted; but he remains, as Robert King just told you, he is in a cell 23 hours a day, three days a week and 24 hours a day the other four days a week and, unlike at Angola where at least he was behind bars or at Wade Correctional Center where he spent the last four years without any disciplinary charges whatsoever, he current is housed behind a steel door and so this really is, his ability to have contact with neighbors and all is virtually nonexistent. So he is under even more harsh conditions awaiting this new trial than he was in the Louisiana prison system.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How do prison authorities justify 40 years of isolation? I mean, forget about the injustice of the actual case itself, but the solitary confinement?
GEORGE KENDALL: They have long said that the only reason they give is that he will remain there because of the original reason for his placement there, and that was the suspicion that he was involved in the murder of Mr. Miller. What these units are supposed to be for our temporary housing, that if somebody misbehaves in a significant way, they go to one of these tiers where they spent 23 hours a day in a cell for weeks, sometimes months, sometimes a few years; but when you demonstrate good behavior, as Mr. Woodfox has for decades, as Robert King did for decades, as Herman Wallace did for decades, he has remained in 23 hour a day lockdown. There is no penological justification whatsoever. The reason is because no warden in the system wanted to be the one who released who many correctional officers feel were the killers of Brent Miller back into the general population.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet, when Herman Wallace was released on his deathbed, dying of cancer in 2013, a federal judge had to threaten the warden if he didn’t release him, he, the warden would be imprisoned. Robert King, we only have a minute, but you served solitary confinement for 29 years. This is 42 years now. You all had tried to form a chapter of the Black Panther Party which is the reason that you felt that they felt they were charged with the prison guard’s murder. Can you wrap by saying your thoughts on him in solitary confinement, Albert Woodfox?
ROBERT KING: Well, I think it’s, you know, it is unjustified, Albert Woodfox, 43 years and counting in solitary confinement; and, again, he is still in solitary confinement. There is no validity for that, no penological justification in keeping him there. I did only 29 years in solitary confinement.
AMY GOODMAN: Only.
ROBERT KING: I have been out now, you know, 14 years going on 15. Albert has done 14 years more than I have done in solitary.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with Albert Woodfox’s words back in 2010.
ALBERT WOODFOX: Our primary objective is that front gate. That is what we are struggling for, and we are actually fighting for our freedom. We are fighting for people to understand that we were framed.
OPERATOR: This call originates from a Louisiana correctional facility and may be recorded or monitored.
ALBERT WOODFOX: That we were framed for a murder that we are totally and completely and actually innocent of.
OPERATOR: You have 15 seconds left on this call.
ALBERT WOODFOX: Let me call you back.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Albert Woodfox from the 2010 documentary "In the Land of the Free." And that does it for our show. George Kendall and Robert King, thanks so much for being with us.
Headlines:
U.S. Weighs Sending Hundreds of New Troops to Iraq
The Obama administration is considering a plan to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq by sending up to 500 more military personnel and establishing a new military base in Anbar Province. The United States already has about 3,000 troops, including trainers and advisers, in Iraq. The new forces would help train Iraqi forces in retaking the city of Ramadi, which fell to the self-described Islamic State last month.
Appeals Court Upholds Harsh Texas Anti-Choice Provisions
A federal appeals court has upheld harsh anti-choice provisions in Texas, threatening to leave the state with fewer than 10 abortion clinics. When the sweeping anti-choice law passed despite a "people’s filibuster" at the state legislature in 2013, Texas had more than 40 clinics. Since then more than half of them have closed. Now, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Texas can enforce provisions requiring abortion facilities to meet the standards of hospital-style surgery centers and forcing providers to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The ruling exempts a clinic in the South Texas city of McAllen, on the grounds that forcing women to travel 235 miles to the nearest clinic would be an undue burden. But it remains unclear if the clinic can stay open. If the rules take effect, an estimated 900,000 reproductive-age women will live more than 150 miles from the nearest open abortion facility in the state. Abortion providers plan to appeal to the Supreme Court before the decision takes effect in about 22 days. In a statement, Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights said: "Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale."
Texas Police Officer Resigns over Pool Party Incident
A Texas police officer caught on video aggressively confronting African-American teens at a pool party has resigned. Widely viewed footage shows
Eric Casebolt wrestling an African-American teenage girl in a bikini to the ground, pulling her hair, and sitting on top of her. Casebolt also pulled his gun on other teens. On Tuesday, McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley apologized for Casebolt’s actions and said he had stepped down.
McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley: "Eric Casebolt has resigned from the McKinney Police Department. As the chief of police, I want to say to our community that the actions of Casebolt, as seen on the video of the disturbance at the community pool, are indefensible. Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support his actions. He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident."
The incident remains under police investigation, meaning Casebolt could still face charges.
Los Angeles Police Oversight Board Reaches Mixed Decision in Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Ezell Ford
A Los Angeles police oversight board has issued a mixed ruling on officers’ fatal shooting of an unarmed African-American man last August. Police claim Ezell Ford, who suffered from mental illness, tried to grab an officer’s gun during a confrontation. But his family members and at least one eyewitness say he was complying with the officers and lying on the ground when he was shot. On Tuesday, the LAPD’s civilian oversight committee faulted one of the two officers for deadly force but cleared the other. Steve Soboroff of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners announced the decision.
Steve Soboroff: "Regarding the use of force or firing of the weapon, the police commission unanimously found that the use of force by one police officer two, was administrative disapproval, and one police officer two, in policy, no further action. The determination as to criminal culpability for the involved officers is the responsibility of the Los Angeles County DA, and not within the authority of the chief of police for this commission."
The findings will be referred to prosecutors. During the hearing, Ezell Ford’s mother, Tritobia Ford, pleaded for justice.
Tritobia Ford: "We deserve fairness, I’m asking you, I’m begging you, please. Please. My son would never grab for a gun. He wanted to live, that’s all he wanted to do was live. He walked. He walked the streets. I didn’t want him to walk the streets around there because I know it was unsafe, but that was his right. And he didn’t deserve to die for it."
Ford’s family has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the LAPD. Outside the hearing, protesters voiced anger that one officer was cleared.
Cheyenne Berry: "Frustrated, upset, confused, wondering why this system still exists that unarmed people of color are still being gunned down, and mentally ill people of color are still being gunned down, it just doesn’t make sense."
Keith James: "I mean, look, Ezell Ford was gunned down, Brendon Glenn, gunned down, Charlie Africa, gunned down, you know, one after the other, Omar Abrego beat to death four blocks away from where Ezell Ford was killed, just nine days before. This has to stop."
Community Leaders Invoke Special Law to Seek Charges in Tamir Rice Case
Community leaders in Cleveland have taken legal action to bring charges against the officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last November. Rice was playing with a toy gun when police pulled up and fatally shot him within two seconds of their arrival. They failed to provide medical help and tackled Tamir’s sister to the ground as she tried to help him. Investigators submitted their findings in the case last week. But after more than six months, community leaders said Tuesday they are tired of waiting. In a court filing, they invoked a rare Ohio law that allows citizens to ask judges for charges, bypassing police and prosecutors. Church pastor Jawanza Colvin said citizens are seeking justice themselves.
Pastor Jawanza Colvin: "We believe that officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback caused the death of Tamir Rice in deeds which were unconscionable, reprehensible and yes, criminal. So today, as citizens we are taking this matter and the matter of justice into our hands using the tools of democracy as an instrument to ensure that every person regardless of their race, religious, sex, orientation, social class, or profession is ensured that their rights as victims, citizens, and human beings are respected in the courts and throughout society."
Last month Cleveland agreed to increased racial bias training and tough limits on the use of police force after a federal probe uncovered a pattern of unlawful abuses. A Cleveland judge also acquitted a white police officer who fired 49 shots at two unarmed African Americans in their vehicle.
Louisiana Appeal Delays Release of Angola 3 Prisoner Albert Woodfox
Louisiana has delayed the release of former Black Panther Albert Woodfox, the longest-serving U.S. prisoner in solitary confinement, after appealing a judge’s order for his freedom. Earlier this year, a Louisiana grand jury re-indicted Woodfox for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, a crime for which he and his late, fellow Angola 3 member Herman Wallace maintained they were framed for their political activism. Wallace died on October 1, 2013, just three days after he was released from prison. On Monday, Federal Judge James Brady not only called for Woodfox’s release, but also barred a retrial. Woodfox’s two previous convictions in the case were both overturned. But on Tuesday, Louisiana filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit, and that court issued a stay on Judge Brady’s order until 1 p.m. this Friday. Woodfox’s lawyers have until 5 p.m. today to file a response.
Arkansas Ordered to Recognize Same-Sex Marriages from 2014
A state judge has ordered Arkansas to recognize same-sex marriages performed during a brief window a year ago. Some 500 LGBT couples obtained licenses in the days after a state judge struck down a ban on marriage equality. But Arkansas justices then put those unions on hold pending the outcome of a state appeal. In a new ruling, Judge Wendell Griffen of Little Rock ordered officials to accept the tax filings and spousal health coverage applications of LGBT married couples.
Guam Becomes 1st U.S. Territory with Marriage Equality
The island of Guam meanwhile has become the first U.S. territory to recognize same-sex marriage. LGBT couples began applying for marriage licenses on Tuesday after a marriage equality ban was struck down. The weddings can begin five days after the license application.
Pentagon Bars Anti-LGBT Discrimination
The Pentagon has updated internal policies to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the change.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter: "I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense has completed the process for updating its military equal opportunity policy to include sexual orientation. The department, like the rest of the federal government, treats sexual orientation-based discrimination the same way it treats discrimination based on race, religion, color, sex, age, and national origin and I’m very proud of the work the military services have put into this over the last several months, because discrimination of any kind has no place in America’s armed forces."
Hastert Pleads Not Guilty to Concealing Alleged Sexual Abuse Payments
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has pleaded not guilty to charges of hiding large cash withdrawals and lying about it to the FBI. Hastert was allegedly making payments to a former student to conceal sexual abuse that occurred during Hastert’s previous career as a high school teacher and coach in Illinois. Appearing in a Chicago court, Hastert was ordered to surrender his passport as part of his conditions for pre-trial release. It was his first public appearance since being indicted last month. Dennis Hastert is the longest-serving Republican House speaker in history.
Mississippi Drops Charges Against Graduation Cheerers
Mississippi authorities have dropped charges against three people who faced prosecution for cheering at a high school graduation. The defendants had been accused of disturbing the peace for yelling out as their loved ones walked the stage. But the charges were dropped Tuesday following a national outcry. Some critics had argued prosecutors had pursued the case because the two adult defendants are African-American.
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