Look who’s listening

Dec 22nd 2005
From The Economist print edition

In the “war on terror”, George Bush can point to a number of advances in Iraq. But he has suffered setbacks at home over the wiretapping and torture of suspects

“DEFEATISM may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts.” That was George Bush’s pre-Christmas message, televised on Sunday December 18th. “Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.” It was a deft performance, in which the president offered what the Washington Post called “an olive twig” to his critics—“I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq”—even as he smilingly heaped scorn on them.

Mr Bush conceded mistakes and admitted that the occupation has proved “difficult”, but remained confident that his three-pronged strategy was working. First, American forces are training Iraqis to defend the new order. Second, a democracy is being built: witness the 10m Iraqis who went to the polls on December 15th. Third, the Iraqi economy is improving.

Progress in Iraq may be less sure than Mr Bush implied. But, after five speeches in 19 days, he is rousing his base. His approval ratings have crept back up from the mid-30s to the mid-40s—though Charlie Cook, a political analyst, thinks this is because his supporters have stopped smarting over his abortive bid to put his former personal lawyer on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Democrats are struggling to present a united front.

A faction conservatives have dubbed the “Defeaticrats”, including the party’s chairman Howard Dean and many activists, thinks victory in Iraq is impossible. They want to pull out, either straight away or over the next two years. Members of another group, typified by Hillary Clinton, are trying artfully to avoid committing themselves to anything that might turn out to be unpopular. Senator Clinton has rejected both a “rigid timetable” for withdrawal and an “open” one. A final faction, consisting of Senator Joe Lieberman, offers Mr Bush qualified support.

Despite the Democrats’ incoherence, Mr Bush appears to have lost two battles on the home front this month. First, he has failed to get the Patriot Act, key provisions of which expire at the end of the year, renewed indefinitely. Second, he has been forced to drop his threat to veto an anti-torture amendment sponsored by John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona.

Mr Bush argues that the Patriot Act, which was passed nearly unanimously after the attacks of September 11th 2001, is a vital tool in the war on terror. Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, says it allows the government too much scope to spy on American citizens by, for example, allowing roving wiretaps and scrutiny of library records.

Worryingly for Mr Bush, some of his own side agree. When Mr Feingold led a filibuster against the act on December 16th, he was backed by four Republican senators, as well as virtually the entire Democratic contingent. Fretting that “we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment,” Mr Bush challenged the Patriot Act’s opponents to explain why nearly all of them voted for it in 2001. After much further squabbling, the two sides finally agreed on a compromise on December 21st, with the Senate voting for an extension of the act, but one lasting a mere six months.

One reason for congressional distrust of the executive may be the revelation in the New York Times last week that the National Security Agency has been carrying out “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of wiretaps within the United States without court orders. The American Civil Liberties Union calls this “shocking” and “unconstitutional”—the NSA has broad authority to spy overseas, but not in America.

Mr Bush retorts that it was both legal and necessary. The wiretaps were used only against those with known links to terrorist groups and only international calls were bugged, not calls “from Houston to LA”. His authority to order such surveillance derived from the constitution and the act of Congress authorising the use of military force against al-Qaeda. (His critics dispute this.)

Mr Bush claims that in some cases his spies needed to act quickly rather than waiting for a warrant. A two-minute phone call between an al-Qaeda operative in America and one of his contacts overseas could lead to thousands of American deaths. Given that wiretap warrants can be granted retroactively, his critics wonder whether this argument adds up. Mr Bush has refused to give many details of how exactly the wiretaps were carried out, citing the need to protect operational secrecy.

Conservatives have tried to shift the eavesdropping debate on to the conduct of the New York Times, which sat on the story for a year. But the revelation fits all too easily with the idea of an administration that has paid scant attention to civil liberties.

With regard to a more controversial means of gathering information, Mr Bush has provided more clarity, albeit reluctantly. On December 15th, he agreed not to veto Mr McCain’s amendment outlawing the “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of enemy captives anywhere in the world. This was after Dick Cheney, the vice-president, had held out for an exception to be made for the CIA.

Although the administration insists that it does not “torture” anyone, it has defined “torture” so narrowly as to exclude, for example, “water-boarding”, where a captive is made to believe he is drowning. A debate on the ethics of such techniques has raged in recent weeks. Advocates, such as the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, say that since a few terrorists undoubtedly have information that could save many lives, it would be immoral not to force them to disclose it.

That sounded plausible to those who have seen Kiefer Sutherland brutally extract crucial clues from bad guys to ward off Armageddon on the television series “24”, but Mr McCain, who was tortured by the Vietcong, has pointed out that in the real world, information extracted under torture is unreliable. And other columnists have argued that even if torture does sometimes yield useful intelligence, that must be set against the probably larger volume of intelligence forgone because Iraqis and Afghans are outraged at what Americans do to their captives.

“We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” said Mr McCain. His amendment, attached to a defence bill, is expected to pass this month.

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