I think we should leave this to Fox Force Five.

For the past three years, U.S. forces have recovered mortar fragments bearing Chinese inscriptions. Recently, U.S. forces lost 4 helicopters downed by an unknown device from unknown origins. The question of the day: Are these weapons coming from Iran or China? Are the Chinese supplying insurgent factions directly or through diverter-distributors? We hear anti-Iranian rhetoric daily, but most folks are not aware of the arms supplies from China. Does that mean the Chinese lock on Walmart and our national debt puts them beyond reproach?

In thinking about this, and Katherine's remarks in the earlier thread about how hard it is for stories like this to gain traction and get linked to, I am stuck by how the structure of the problem itself works to hinder the discussion.

The very fact that all of this is so bureaucratic and byzantine makes it even harder to track down and codify each new development, explain why it's a problem, and so on.

Let's assume that out of 300 million Americans, a small fraction will be sympathetic to the issue and an even smaller fraction will be engaged enough to read about it in depth. One way to springboard from engaged group to the larger, sympathetic group is to have an umbrella phrase under which posts can be grouped.

In the same way that the '80s gave us "Abortion stops a beating heart," I think we need the one-sentence summary that represents, even superficially, the major concerns. Torture is always wrong? Torture by any name is wrong? Rule of law: it's the American way? I dunno. I'm not succinct enough to be good at it.

I'm sure other people are already doing this -- what have they come up with?

The very fact that all of this is so bureaucratic and byzantine makes it even harder to track down and codify each new development, explain why it's a problem, and so on.

Right: note the changing numbers on the task force. I'm trusting that Katherine has done the research and reading necessary to be certain that Task Force 34-12-45-18-hike! is one continuous organization, but I'm concerned about that, and anything anyone writes about it is going to either be cumbersome, or be less credible because of worry on that point. I'm assuming that effect isn't accidental.

Oh, and, um:

And while Task Force 15 is new to her

s/b And while Task Force 16 is new to her

Does that mean the Chinese lock on Walmart and our national debt puts them beyond reproach?

I would guess so. Bear in mind that Cheney's mini-me in Britain openly intervened to halt a police investigation recently because it was commercially inconvenient to a major arms dealer.

right...there's a trade off between accurately documenting and boring people to tears, too.

In most cases, I am just stringing together public documents and newspaper reports, so if you look at all the links it's right there, but who wants to do that? Hard enough to convince people to write a post that long. (it's not so elegantly written, either).

read a post that long.

5: I don't think so. 15 seems to be the old TF, but the number 15 is a new designation -- she's deducing the connection.

7: Yeah -- if they move things around enough, you either have to be an expert to understand what's going on at all, or you have to have experts who you really trust to have done the legwork for you.

5: no, Task Force 15 is new to me under that number but based on the description it sounds like it's 20/121/6-26/145. Last I heard from the NY Times story on Camp Nama it was 145.

Task Force 16 is also new.

Human Rights Watch refers to it as 20/121/6-26/145 in one of their reports.

You can bank on HRW when it comes to this stuff. They are so thorough, and so careful. That's what I find frustrating: I link to a 55 page, extensively footnoted report from probably the most reliable human rights organization on the planet, which I helped research (see this acknowledgments) and moreover went through their internal source checking and legal review, but it's just a weblog....even if people read it, which they won't, it would be given less weight than a transparently false official denial in the Associated Press.

note the changing numbers on the task force

Task forces are, by their very nature, ad hoc and relatively temporary. That there are task forces with different numbers, but itself, means, I imagine, approximately nothing. This is not to say that there might not be additional evidence of something more sinister. But that there are task forces with different designations and that they change does not mean much.

The problem is not bureaucratic or byzantine. It is simply a black ops program. That is why is difficult to write about TF 6-26, TF 121, TF 145, etc. You should also read about the CIA's Special Activities Division, which is a paramilitary program. As always, wikipedia has some information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_121

We need Seymour Hersh to write an article about them, because it seems as though only he has sources within the Defense Department that might provide new information. No offense to Katherine, but she just compiled a bunch of old information.

"but she just compiled a bunch of old information"

But I think we are watching a significant change in progress, with Willy Voet being an important example of the process.

It is frightening to think of how little information and analysis would exist of the Bush admionistration activities without the blogosphere. Now there have always been adversarial watchdog groups, I am remembering several reporting on Central America during the 80s.

But even if Joe Kein, for example, is not quite ready tio use Katherine as a source, he, or somone like him or under him, is possibly reading the blog. The important difference between the leftist groups of the Reagan years and the blogosphere is that Joe Klein, as he grows to understand blogs, knows there is some degree of something approaching "peer review". Katherine will be vetted by her readers and commenters, and so Klein will give just a little more credence to her post.

Again Klein may not repeat or mention it, but when a couple important Iranian diplomats are assassinated or disappeared in Iraq, he will remember it.

The CIA ghost plane business was arcane, byzantine, detailed, and full of numbers, but the research planespotting nerds did help to break that story. Germany is using some of that research in its indictment, I believe.

So the good original work drawing these connections together doesn't always disappear into the ether. Have hope, Katherine!

"We need Seymour Hersh to write an article about them"

And I have a lot of respect for Seymour Hersh, but I simply do not trust Hersh's unnamed sources. Even if, or especially if, they are Gates, Casey, and Rice.

I put little faith in that "old journalism" of Ricks and Suskind.

Uh, Seymour Hersh did. The Human Rights Watch report contains more information and is better sourced (including eyewitness testimony, by the way--pseudonymous, but far more detailed than what Hersh had anonymously.)

"Old information" my a**. Did you know it? It's true or it's not true. This is the attitude that makes the stories impossible to break: first it's un-verified, then when you put everything together from a variety of sources to verify it, it's "old information."

And I didn't know it - certainly not to draw the connection to the new task force.

12: I agree there don't have to be any nefarious reasons behind changing numbers of a task force. The fact remains that the nature of the system - that temporary groups are created and dissolved and yet the people who comprised them go on to work together again and again - can disguise the permanency of the problem.

Look, if a rock group disbands and gets together under a new name, no big deal. If a paramilitary group does it, that just adds one more logistical burden to the tasks of arguing against these issues in public -- the "just a few bad apples" defense.

The last time I mentioned torture to an acquaintance, I was roundly informed that "You just don't get it. These people want to kill you, me and every other American if they can." You can't get a more fundamental disagreement in worldview -- this person was utterly convinced that anyone who might be tortured was a terrorist.

That wasn't to contest that Hersh is much better than me or that his stories are more important, by the way....but the story is important or not, verifiably accurate or not, newsworthy or not. I don't have CIA contacts. Being the walking index of gov't documents and news stories on torture/rendition/GTMO/etc., being willing to type every variation in transliteration of an Arabic name into Lexis, is simply a niche I can fill. And while it's relatively rare to figure something out that's *entirely* new (though it happens), you can make connections others don't. And even if you don't--this post really doesn't break any new ground; that happened last year--the chasm between what's been publicly reported in a footnote to some government report or some story on page 18 of the Saturday edition of a daily, and what's actually publicly known is so wide that it's still useful.

I agree there don't have to be any nefarious reasons behind changing numbers of a task force. The fact remains that the nature of the system - that temporary groups are created and dissolved and yet the people who comprised them go on to work together again and again - can disguise the permanency of the problem.

This is certainly true.

Katherine will be vetted by her readers and commenters

And, she provides links and evidence. Which goes back to the issue of not trusting anonymous or pseudonymous sources/authors: if the evidence is there, readers and commenters will trust the author. And should.

Feh. There is no need to change the task force numbers if you're using the same people to do the same job (it's the same job, since they haven't succeeded at yet). On fact, it's probably not even called a Task Force. Changing the Task Force name would be snow. Of course, unless I am misreading it, the Task Force numbers all come from reporters who are told the task force numbers by the Pentagon, meaning that the Task Force numbers are probably just made up to describe a group with a real name. That group probably has been operating in Iraq from the word go, is probably the group that delivered Ahmed Chalabi and his 10,000 closest pals to Iraq right after war, and that group has an official, innocuous name (like ... 'the Phoenix Program'?) which is unconnected with all this crud. The head of the group is working out of the Green Zone, and he tasks various people at his disposal with specific ops, most or all of which should bear the name "Beating Assorted Iraqis Into Confessing to Being Al Queda (or Baathist)".

Task Group 16 is probably yet another name for the "Beating Assorted Iraqis Into Confessing to Being Al Queda (or Baathist)" group, part or all of which has been retasked (aha!) with "Beating Assorted Iraqis Into Confessing to Being Iranian".

(There is a Petagon office of disinformation; one should act then as if all leaks and all reporters are inherently untrustworthy until proven otherwise. Many of them will be planted.)

m, it's always worse than you think

"...is probably the group that delivered Ahmed Chalabi and his 10,000 closest pals to Iraq right after war...."

On what planet did that happen?

Shorter Willy Voet: Old media reporters are better at breaking stories. New media reporters are better at analyzing stories.

Katerine: I wasn't trying to imply that what you accomplished isn't useful. I think making connections between news stories is very important. My point was that, in this case, I just don't think it's going to be very fruitful. So-called "Operators" inside TF121, etc and certainly the chain of command higher up in the DD and CIA are going to be very reluctant to speak about these missions. They certainly will not speak to a blogger. I personally get worried about these articles because they can be very gossipy. I think more fruitful work on the war can done on a more quotidian level because reporters will always have more access. Sure, it's not going to be as much of a scoop, but, if your goal is to write an "anti-war" article, then it's going to be way more informative about how common infantry soldiers basically have absurd missions such as "search this block of houses" or "watch this street" and how these goals are impossible to accomplish. It will also be much easier to find evidence of abuses on this level. "Day in the Life" stories on Iraqis, I think, would also be much more persuasive to the public to oppose the war.

"Joe Klein, as he grows to understand blogs, knows there is some degree of something approaching "peer review." Katherine will be vetted by her readers and commenters, and so Klein will give just a little more credence to her post."

Peer review only works in the peers are also experts. No one here can truly determine with any degree of certainly how trustworthy any of Katherine's claims. The blogosphere is very poorly equipped to deal with secret organizations because we are all a bunch of arm-chair quarterbacks. Perhaps wikileaks or something similar will change that, but without that you have to have serious insider access to make serious claims about secret programs. Basically, the blogosphere works incredibly well when facts are on the record, because then people like Katherine can use different databases to compile the facts and portray an event without the bullshit he-said-she-said NY Times reporting. But off the record accounts of events half-way around the world will just be he-said-she-said without as much insider access as the Times.

"Did you know it? It's true or it's not true. This is the attitude that makes the stories impossible to break: first it's un-verified, then when you put everything together from a variety of sources to verify it, it's "old information.""

I had read most of the articles you linked to. I am inclined to believe that most of the claims are true. And you add more evidence by compiling information from a number of sources. You are perhaps right that a niche the blogosphere can fill is compiling numerous accounts of an event and attempting to provide a corroborated view. I just don't think it will ever be successful when covering black ops. You simply need insider access to cover covert activities.

I think the blogosphere was very effective covering Abu Ghraib precisely because there was so much information about it (and some, of course, coming straight from the torturers). Compilation stories about Abu Ghraib also build up evidence demonstrating that the chain of command was aware of torture.