Moving this up to the top because the book comes out today and it’s fabulous. Go get it. Really, go now! You can read an excerpt here. And more on the book from AJ himself here. Order it on Amazon by clicking the image below. -ed
I don’t do book reviews as often as I’d like, mostly because I don’t get around to reading non-law books as often as I’d like. But it’s something we’re going to start doing more often at Feministe. We’re also working on developing some sort of books section of the site to post reviews and thoughts; in the meantime, if you scroll down a bit, there’s a red Amazon box on the middle column of the site that has some of our book recommendations. We selected them ourselves, so it’s not an Amazon-bot or anything, and they do all come highly recommended. Please check them out.
I did get around to reading the book Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
by AmericaBlogger AJ Rossmiller. Quick full disclosure: AJ is a friend in real life, and he gave me a copy of the book. That said, he made it very clear that there were no strings attached, and no obligation to review it or even read it. I did read it, but had decided beforehand that if I didn’t like it, I simply wouldn’t write about it. I ended up really liking it, though, so here we are. He also tried to buy an ad on the site; because I’m reviewing the book, I rejected payment on that ad, which should be going up tomorrow (in other words, no one here made any money off of it). So, while AJ is a friend and while there will be an ad for the book on this site, this review is neither a favor nor an obligation nor something I have any financial interest in doing. Ok? Ok.
Still Broken is described as “a riveting and sobering portrait of Bush-era intelligence failures and manipulations, laid out by someone who witnessed them up close and personal.” While “riveting and sobering” certainly apply, I would suggest that it’s more along the lines of “infuriating,” “mind-boggling” and “thoroughly depressing” — and simultaneously wry, engaging and easily readable.
AJ graduated from Middlebury College having studied political science with a focus on the Middle East, always with the goal of working in intelligence. The events of September 11, 2001 were, for him, a call to action, and after graduating college he decided to go to work for the Department of Defense, despite his general opposition to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. AJ and I aren’t exactly politically in line — at least from the book, he comes across as far more moderate than I am* (I don’t know whether that’s accurate in “real life” or not, as our written presentations of our ideas are rarely comprehensive) — but he is is exactly the kind of person that I would want in the Pentagon and on the ground in Iraq. He’s smart, well-versed in Middle East politics, patriotic, passionate, honest, brave, hard-working and endearingly idealistic. He is also more interested in doing his job well, gathering accurate intelligence and protecting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians than he is in pushing a particular agenda or ideology. While he makes it clear that those characteristics are extremely common amongst his co-workers and military personnel, the chain of command in the Defense Intelligence Agency manages to pervert and compromise good intel work on every level — often with disastrous results.
Congressional Quarterly also has a review up that you should check out for some background. I don’t want to give away too many of the specifics, but AJ makes it clear that the entire system is broken, from the very basics (not enough space, not enough computers, outdated equipment) to the power structure and ideological bent of the agency (analysts being told that they’re “too pessimistic” when they turn in analysis that doesn’t mirror Bush Administration rhetoric) to large-scale communication failures. The most horrific part of the book has AJ assisting with a “track ’em and whack ’em” team set on rounding up insurgents. Not only does the team round up people who simply appeared to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the “interviews” consist of army officers screaming at the Iraqi men in English, and occasionally (and at random) accusing them of lying, then screaming at them some more. The description of how the Iraqies are brought in — hands tied behind their backs, numbers written on their foreheads, made to lay face-down on the ground and generally treated in the most inhumane ways possible — is stomach-turning. It gets worse when it becomes apparent that one of the suspected insurgents is a deaf mute who is being man-handled particularly roughly because he won’t respond, and the Army guys decide he must be “faking.” During the interrogation process, several of the Iraqis beg to know what they’ve done, or what crime they’re being accused of. No one is able to give them an answer. And despite the fact that it’s relatively clear that none of the men had done much of anything, they all get sent to Abu Ghraib anyway, because the people in the field think that’s the procedure and that they lack the authority to release Iraqis they’ve captured. The assumption is that the staff at Abu Ghraib will have the time and the resources to sort through the prisoners and free the innocent ones. The problem, of course, is that the staff of Abu Ghraib assumes that preliminary intelligence work is being done in the field, and that if someone is being sent to the prison, they’re guilty of something.
AJ’s descriptions of the debriefings are the most powerful parts of the book. After describing how the detainees are blindfolded, barefoot, and cuffed in physically stressful positions, he write:
I’m no expert in detainee management, so there may have been good reasons for this posture. Nonetheless, even this relatively minor manhandling made me cringe, especially in the wake of Abu Ghraib. I also was very aware of the deep loathing of humiliation in Arab culture, as well as the psychological impact of such treatment of innocents. If these people didn’t hate us before, I thought, they certainly would now. And so would their fathers and sons and brothers and cousins.
This view was compounded by the increasingly erratic behavior of the prisoners. They had been lying facedown in the dirt for hours at this point, long eough for both mental distress and physical deterioration to set in. As they came to the debriefing tables, I noticed that several more had begun to cry, quietly and shamefully weeping at their predicament. Part of me hated them for it, for adding open emotion into an operation that I wanted to treat and view as business. I also, perhaps paradoxically, desperately wanted them to be guilty. We had not found the usual evidence that points to insurgent activity — large amounts of weapons or ammunition, explosive materials, electronic timers, blasting caps, and the like — and I was increasingly concerned that the mission had been unsuccessful. I was further worried that some would believe them guilty regardless of evidence, or lack thereof. It’s tough to track people for months, mount an operation, and then admit that it was all useless.
It’s that kind of honesty that makes Still Broken particularly powerful. I imagine it would be easy for many people with lefty political leanings to come back from a situation like this and present themselves as the One True Hero in a sea of bad apples; it would be easy to obscure one’s own participation in a thoroughly broken system. AJ doesn’t do that. He’s very straight-forward about the necessary psychological compartmentalization that it took to do a job like his. He’s aware that a lot of bad things happened, and that he was a part of some of them. He still manages to describe them as they happened, without positioning himself as a moral authority and without the kind of emotion that I would expect myself to have. He’s able to explain the mental processes of wanting to be right even when you’re wrong in a way that not only helps you to understand his predicament, but lends a degree of sympathy to the troops on the ground who have to do this kind of soul-crushing and psychologically stressful work every day.
It’s jarring to read, but it’s particularly effective.
At one point, a detainee asks the interpretor if he can say something; the debriefer gave him permission, and the prisoner says, “When you came to our country, we hoped law would return. We still have that hope.” A few paragraphs later, AJ writes:
That day I witnessed an entire family of brothers sent away — seven in all, I think. One of them was almost certainly retarded, identified by all his other brothers as handicapped, but his interrogator felt otherwise. Off to Abu G he went.
A civilized country and a civilized people cannot presume guilt. Guilt without evidence is anathema to a functioning civil society, and rule of law is vital to win a war that is more about minds than weapons or troops. Pragmatically, a system that incarcerates scores of innocents is a broken one, destined to be fought by those it victimizes. “When you came to our country, we hoped law would return. We still have that hope.” I won’t soon forget those words.
Unfortunately, the purported goals of the Iraq war — restoring rule of law, building democracy, increasingly regional stability — all seem to have been forgotten by those in power.
The second half of the book details the time AJ spent working at the Pentagon, after returning home from Iraq. Again, the degree of intelligence manipulation and the pervasive culture of ideology over fact contributed to huge mistakes and stunning policy failures. Years after the war had begun, AJ’s team was pushed down a back hallway into a cramped office. There weren’t enough computers, leading to major inefficiencies. Higher-ranking intelligence employees intimidated and berated the analysts, until the analysts turned out intelligence that fit into the administration’s agenda. Different individuals had slightly varying dogmas, and intelligence had to be catered specifically to their personal opinions. It quickly becomes clear that the entire war effort, down to relatively low-level intelligence employees, is a debacle of massive proportions. Supporting the ideology du jour is more important than accuracy; siding with the right people is more important than doing good work. It’s not surprising — or at least it shouldn’t be — but somehow, it’s still shocking to read one individual’s account of just how deep the break-downs go.
And yet AJ is skilled at never assigning motives to people, and never drawing hard and fast conclusions as to why things are going the way they are. He writes like an analyst: He observes what’s happening, and then follows it up by giving several reasonable explanations as to why those things could be happening. The dozens of anecdotes he tells certainly lead a halfway astute reader to understand exactly why certain events are occurring and why particular decisions are being made, but AJ has enough respect for his audience to simply present the facts as he sees them, rather than force a particular conclusion.
That facts he presents, though, are overwhelming.
Still Brokenwill almost certainly make you angry; there were parts when I had to put it down and go take a walk, or watch some brain-numbing TV. But it’ll also put the war in the slightly clearer perspective, and you’ll almost definitely walk away having learned something (if nothing else, you’ll learn that AJ has really crappy taste in music).
I hope you’ll check it out. It has most certainly colored my views on this war, and it’s gotten me re-engaged in an issue that, five years in, too often feels tedious and without end.
You can pre-order Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon on Amazon, or get it in your local bookstore beginning this Tuesday. Congrats, AJ, for the fantastic book.
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*But, let’s be honest, who isn’t?