By W. Patrick Lang
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Our hottest story tonight, the great escape. Using tools made from materials their own American guards allowed them, hundreds of Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca in Iraq almost pulled off a great escape, movie- style, by tunneling out of the prison. How did they pull it off? Tunnelling the length of a football field — you`re looking at it now — under the noses of their American guards. What does this tell us about the resolve, discipline and cohesiveness of these guys we are up against. [VIDEO: Hardball’s Chris Matthews gets the answer from Middle East expert Patrick Lang.]
Patrick Lang is a former defense intelligence official who specialized in the Middle East and worked in Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Mr. Lang, I don`t know. We`re finally getting some answers tonight. The people we`re fighting in Iraq are overwhelmingly Iraqis. They`re the bad guys. They`re the members of the old regime, the hated murderous old regime of Saddam Hussein. But, as bad guys, they put together what looked like "The Shawshank Redemption" here.
Or maybe should I call it "The Great Escape" with Steve McQueen. How did they get the length of a football feel, 15 feet in the ground, with ventilating system, lighting systems, a sophisticated prison escape system and route?
PATRICK LANG, Former Chief of ME Intelligence, DIA: I think most of these guys who were involved in this are not at all from the jihadi side of things. These are guys who were once members of the Iraqi army, former Baath Party people, government people.
And when I used to travel to Iraq a lot during the Iran-Iraq war for the US Government, I was impressed that they had a lot of internal discipline and some of the officers showed initiative and knew a lot about engineering and things like this. So, I`m not actually all that surprised about this.
It is interesting that in a camp like this, they could still organize themselves into committees and plan the thing. … CONTINUED BELOW:
But it`s quite amazing. And it tells you a lot about the fact that a lot of people we are facing are in fact remnants of what was once a pretty disciplined army. The fact that we beat them so easily doesn`t really mean much in the context of the Third World. But this really shows you the fact that they are — they do have a lot of resolve to do whatever they`re going to do.
MATTHEWS: Well, the scary and the bad part is, we`re looking at what looks to be the innovation — now, obviously, they didn`t get away with it — but the enterprise in a negative sense of people who can work together in a cohesive unit and the kinds of things we see in them building this tunnel. We could also imagine them in the dark of night putting bombs together.
LANG: Oh, yes.
You know, if you look at what happened today in western Baghdad, there was an operation in which a group of about 40 of these guys in black uniforms wearing masks used a couple of car bombs to block off a street so that they could attack some police posts with machine guns, RPGs and rifles. And they slugged it out for an hour or so.
As Clausewitz, the German philosopher, said, war is the best teacher of war. And we`ve got these guys who already knew, some, quite a bit, in a hard school now. And we`re teaching them by beating the devil out of them all the time. And they`re steadily improving.
I mean, the jihadis don`t improve. They`re just going to come in and try to blow themselves up to go to heaven. But these guys, I think, who are 85, 90 percent of the insurgents, are learning steadily and will probably continue to get better at this.
MATTHEWS: You know, one of the confounding things, sitting here at this desk back in Washington and trying to get the information from the people in the field, I trust Richard Engel. He`s a young gutsy guy from NBC. I asked him again today. We are going to have a report from him tomorrow night on another subject.
But Engel tells me that the guys our troops are fighting over there, our men and women are standing up to, with the IEDs and everything else over there blowing us apart, when they can get with it sneakily, are all jihadists — not jihadists. They`re all Baathists. These are guys who worked for Saddam Hussein and want the country back to do with what they want to do with it.
Why does the president keep issuing statements saying they`re terrorists; they`re the guys that came after us on 9/11; they`re from outside; we have got to stop them there or stop them here? Nobody has ever accused Iraqis of coming to America and attacking us. Why doesn`t the president say, we`re going after Iraqi insurgents and fighting them? Why doesn`t he — why does he keep saying we`re fighting terrorists along the lines of the ones we had attack us 9/11?
LANG: Well, it has become a position of the administration to say over and over again that the insurgents don`t have any popular support. Now, you hear that over and over again.
I heard somebody the other day, just yesterday, say that, in fact, these people represent a minuscule portion of the Iraqi people. But, if you listened to Zal Khalilzad yesterday on television, he said the purpose of bringing the Sunnis into the constitution process is to split the Sunni population off from the guerrillas.
Now, you can`t have it both ways. It`s one or the other. And I think it is clear that the Sunni guerrilla, the Baathists, nationalists, whatever you want to call them, have a good deal of popular support, or they couldn`t exist. They have to have supplies and shelter and communications, intelligence, all that stuff.
So you`re right. There`s a great inconsistency with this. And we ought to get straight about this and admit what the truth is.
MATTHEWS: What did you think when you picked up the paper today, Pat, and you saw that tunnel in "The Washington Post" that the bad guys built over there, these insurgents who are in our prison detention camp, having the wherewithal, the materials, apparently, cinder blocks, milk — they used the milk they were given, quite generously, you would have to say, by our people, our guards, to harden up the walls.
They used cinder blocks, obviously, also to sustain the walls. They got flashlights strung all the way through that football field length of tunnel. These guys are right out of "Great Escape` with Steve McQueen and the rest of them.
LANG: Yes, I didn`t want to offend any Steve McQueen fans, but that was what I immediately thought of, because the only way you could do something like this, is to have a quasi-military organization created by the prisoners that assigns creates a digging committee and a concealment committee and a this committee and a that committee.
And for all that to work inside the jail, where they could go to the American guards at any time and inform on the whole thing, indicates a military sort of organization with a great deal of internal discipline. And, you know, the only way they ever really found this thing initially was that a satellite photograph showed the color of the dirt in the compound was a different color from that outside, because the disposal committee was littering the grounds with this stuff.
So, I think this is an impressive thing, actually. What it says to me is that this is going to continue to be a tough fight. It is not going to be just a matter of the constitution going down easily. These guys are going to hang in there. They`re going to fight for a long time.
MATTHEWS: You know, Ken Adelman, the arms expert and Shakespeare expert, I must say — he is a friend of mine — made it very clear that the initial fight in taking over that country from the Saddam regime and chasing him out of town into a spider hole were basically — was basically a cake walk.
And I think a lot of people don`t like that term because people got killed, but it was fairly quick and effective. Why were they so bad in defending their country against the onslaught by us and the other coalition forces and yet are showing such resilience in this guerrilla war that is being fought against — or a civil war, if you will, that is emerging over there?
LANG: When I used to talk to their officers a long time ago, they used to say that the one thing they knew was that they could never fight the United States, that there was no possibility they could ever win against us, and that to try and do so was futile.
So, I really think that they didn`t really very seriously try to fight our main armored forces until they got into the area of Baghdad. And in the big brigade sized Thunder Runs down — going downtown by the 3rd Armored Division, all of our hundreds of armored vehicles, every single one of them, had hits on them from anti-tank weapons.
But I think the main idea in this war from the Iraqi planning point of view was from the beginning a kind of stay-behind operation. In other words, that they were going to launch a guerrilla resistance once the country was occupied. So, I think there`s some method to all this. I think we were a little bit deceived by the ease of our achievement at the beginning.
MATTHEWS: Why do you think they stood up to us and refused to participate in all the demands made by President Bush and the other allies if they couldn`t beat us and they were that smart?
LANG: I`m not sure they…
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: And they may still be smart, but they weren`t smart enough not to avoid this war.
LANG: Yes. Yes. I know that.
But I`m not so sure that they saw it exactly that way, because, if you look at the records of what the international inspectors were doing on the ground in there, they encountered some delays and things of that kind. But, in general, if they asked to go someplace, they ended up going there.
As we know, in fact, the Iraqis didn`t have anything to hide in the way of WMD things, because we looked all over the country for it and we couldn`t find it. You know, it is really difficult to prove a negative, isn`t it?
MATTHEWS: Yes.
LANG: If you`re going to try to prove you don`t have a nuclear weapons program and you don`t have one, it is pretty hard to prove that.
MATTHEWS: Do you think we`re winning this war against the insurgency?
LANG: I think that, if we want to wear these people down, the Iraqi nationalist Baathist insurgents, that we`re looking in fact at a campaign that will last six or seven more years, because it will require a process of grinding them down while the government is developed.
MATTHEWS: Thank you.
(CROSSTALK)
LANG: The jihadis are different, you`ll never beat them — you`ll never beat them in Iraq. They are an international movement and will have to be defeated on a world wide basis.
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Patrick Lang."
MSNBC Hardball transcript, Aug. 24, 2005
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio
There have been several break-out attempts at Camp Bucca and tunnels built before this one … but this has to be the most sophisticated, large-scale one to date.
I wonder what the conditions are at Camp Bucca these days. They had some severe human rights problems there…. which I wrote about in diaries at Daily Kos a few months ago.
It’s a huge prison. Largest in Iraq, as I recall … thousands more prisoners than Abu Ghraib.
Most of the prisoners live in tents with no climate control of any kind. It has to be horrible just on that basis alone.
fascinating details …
Matthews: they used the milk they were given, quite generously, you would have to say, by our people, our guards, to harden up the walls.
They used cinder blocks, obviously, also to sustain the walls. They got flashlights strung all the way through that football field length of tunnel….
They deserve their due, as Pat gives them:
So, I think this is an impressive thing, actually. What it says to me is that this is going to continue to be a tough fight. It is not going to be just a matter of the constitution going down easily. These guys are going to hang in there. They`re going to fight for a long time.
find it terribly, sadly ironic that the Iraqis that are imprisoned seem to be more innovative, capable, and organized than the ones that we’re training to keep them there?
Or (per haps more to the point) our current administration?
Besides the attributes you list, they’re also committed. And we all know how commitment enhances success.
and I often find myself imagining how war supporters would react if our country were invaded by a foreign country.
If there were one way to allow everyone to envision just how wrong Bush’s policies are, maybe having Americans picturing China invading and killing 100,000 people and having the resistance called “insurgents” or “terrorists” could do it.
Bone-Crushing Abuse But Army Disciplines Mud-Wrestling,” March 28, 2005, by susanhu :
If we the public could get the kind of thoughtful coverage and analysis provided by people such as Patrick Lang on a regular basis in the MSM, I think the Bush regime would eventually have a much harder time perpetrating their constant deceptions on us.
The other thing great about Pat Lang is that when he’s on these talking head shows, he takes control of the dialog when he’s asked a question. He doesn’t allow the commentators to lure in him to the kind of shallow and substanceless responses that almost all talking heads engage in all the time. If our hapless Democratic talking heads could master this simple talent, the Democratic party might actually begin to rise above having it’s ass kicked by the Repub talking heads all the time.
Lies are a whole lot easier to get people to believe because lies can be custom fitted to correspond to what people want to be true. But truth well articulated goes a lot farther in the end, even if we don’t always recognize it. Truth gives us the ability to go grow and evolve in harmony with our environment. Lies, when we follow them, are always an impediment to that growth. This is why someone like Pat Lang should be representative of the standard we expect from those who would seek to analyze and describe the significance of the major issues of the day.
He doesn’t allow the commentators to lure in him to the kind of shallow and substanceless responses …
There may be many reasons for that. He knows his stuff, and they know that too. And he’s not pushing those dreadful, annoying talking points like so many politicians do.
He also has an active mind. The interesting interjection of the contrast between a jihadi type and the Baathist/whatever-they’re-called insurgents is important. The insurgents are LEARNING. Obviously.
t truth well articulated goes a lot farther in the end, …
And let’s just pray that he and Larry Johnson and others get a lot more air time, in a lot of venues!
As you say about Pat Lang;
I don’tknow if you remember but Pat Lang was a fairly frequent guest on the talking head shows for maybe a little over a year after the invasion of Iraq. By the end of that stretch of time it was clear to “reality-based” people that both the war and the rationale for starting it were completely screwed up, but the media wonks weren’t ready to entertain the idea that they all had been so willing to go along with the Bush Regime’s propaganda that they wound up being dupes. It was around that time that Pat Lang virtually disappeared from the talking head circuit, and I surmise it was because he was unwilling to pretend the media had played a responsible role in the whole debacle.
I’m glad he’s back now. I read his blog everyday and I think he is by far the most responsible one amongst all the so-called “experts” as far as delivering accurate info regarding the MidEast.
On a different note entirely, I live a block from the Atlantic Ocean in S.Florida and hurricane Katrina is coming right at me. The power went out about an hour ago, (and with it my broadband internet). So I dug out an AOL 1099 hours free disk and loaded it into my trusty laptop so I could post this comment. What a thrill.
I’m enormously appreciative of technology for many reasons, but I still wonder how it is that we can send men to the moon and spaceships to the outer planets but we still haven’t found a way to keep the powewr on in large storms. Go figure.
Would love to see both Pat Lang and Larry Johnson run for office. You know, the kind of people that tell the truth, live in integrity and stand behind their actions and words. You know the kind of person that knows what the hell they are talking about and not just some platitudes or talking points. The kind of person that loves their country more than the sound of their own voice spewing meaningless crap.
That’d be a trip. I’d sign up just for the ride! :):)
Larry on the podium:
BOB NOVAK: COLOSTOMY BAG EXTRAORDINAIRE
Someone posted in reply to that post by Larry, “What awful stuff. Mr. Johnson’s stridency and vulgarity negates any valuable analysis he might have to offer.” (I can already hear Craig Crawford and the other yapping heads pontificating like that person.)
someone said that here on the diary last night?
Would love to see both Pat Lang and Larry Johnson run for office.
I am just happy they both signed on here to frontpage. It has made Booman Trib one of the best pages to turn to to get an informed view.
Booman, susanhu, etc., are great bloggers (and the reason I signed up here!), but the experience and understanding that Larry Johnson and Pat Lang bring to the table is invalueable.
Besides… Don’t they seem just a bit too honest in their opinions to ever be politicians?
lol jk (kindof sortof)
Folks,
I’ve done government, Let Larry do it.
One of the funny things about the tunneling story is about “milk.” Arab men rarely drink milk.
I remember issuing pasteurized milk, some of it chocolate, to Stiengan Montagnard women in 1968. They were refugees in all the fighting going on the Cambodian border. We were feeding them and trying to take care of their kids. They would eat all the other foodstuff and drink everything but the milk. Every one of them I ever saw would open the cans, taste it, spit it out and pour the contents of these #10 cans out on the ground so that they could keep the cans to use for cooking vessels.
In the big Kurdish revolt after the First Gulf War, the refugees were given a lot of MREs which are very expensive Army field rations. Mostly they threw them away.
The Point: We know so little about these people that even the simplest things can lead to “unforeseen consequences,” like milk used as a bonding agent by people who have little other use for it.
Imagine the potential for mischief when a foreign power meddles in the social and political structuring of ancient and alien societies. pl
The bit about milk instantly reminded me of a kindergarten arts and crafts pasting project. Simple enough for a kid, and effective!
Awesome interview…
I thought you did a great job of steering the conversation to important facts.
Now, all we need to do for our part is to write glowing letters to Tweedledumb about how this is one of the best and most informative interviews we have seen him do in years!
Hey, it can’t hurt your career if we promote you, (LOL) and it helps us ALOT when the TV “news” actually carries views that are based on facts, and doesn’t fill up the airwaves with more stupid talking points.
I can just see the average viewers sitting at home saying “Civil War? More Jihadists everywhere? They are getting better trained NOW?!?!? WTF have we done? Why wasn’t this on the news before?”
Though, I suspect Oxy-Rush and Bill O’liely will explain away most of their fears on their next broadcasts.
Great idea!
hardball@msnbc.com
Let’s all write.
Writing to news orginisations when they actually do something right (for a change) should be SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for all of us around here…
Especially when it involves someone that is actually doing a great job helping “us” figure this all out with awesome blogs.
They sound like the Viet Cong in their resourcefullness, determination and that their hearts are in the fight for the long run.
Note that in the online version they edited your last statement:
Leaving the impression that this will ALL be over in 6 or 7 years…
I hate when they edit important content and it really changes the viewers perceptions of what is being said!
Tweedledumb stikes again…
LANG: The jihadis are different, you`ll never beat them — you`ll never beat them in Iraq. They are an international movement and will have to be defeated on a world wide basis.
This is from Pat’s own blog — same as what you quote above. Or, did you hear him on Hardball, and hear him say something different?
If these words are from the actual transcripts of the show (according to Pat Lang’s Blog and the diary text up there ^^^)
Well… If you go and check the video at MSNBC… The interview ends with Lang saying this (and the Matthews reply):
Does this change the meaning of what Lang was saying to the average viewer that only sees the partial quote for that last answer in the online video? I think it does.
Does it sound like “purposeful” editing to you? I think it does.
I never saw the thing when it was first broadcast… I am only going by these transcripts that are posted and the online video available at MSNBC.
I truly appreciate your doing that, however it turned out.
For one thing — and this ticks me off — I cannot view any video at MSNBC. I get the message that they don’t support my operating system (Mac).
That’s such bull. I have Windows Media player on my Mac. But leave it to Microsoft.
So, your eyes and ears are VERY welcome since I can’t do the same checking that you can.
I just went back and checked and I was wrong… The complete final comment was there in the video this time.
It must have been my computer choking form being on too long. I swear it ended without the final comment last time… lol
These prisons are really Sunni Concentration Camps. There is such a desperate manpower shortage that a battalion of the 82nd Airborne is now shipping out to Iraq to be Guards in these prisons.
By planning or incompetence the USA is fighting colonial war against a Sunni insurgency with the Kurds and Shiites on the sidelines. If the US intention is to man the permanent bases decades into the future, the Sunni insurgency has to be put down. The only way to enforce peace is by ethnic cleansing and concentration camps and the draft to get the hundreds of thousands more troopers over there. Anything less, sooner or later, Americans will tire of the costs and the voluntary army will collapse. Rational leaders would look for a negotiated way out. But, that apparently will not happen until far into the future.
Great post! God I love a good prison break (er attempted one)…
Maybe it’s because, even though I’m pretty much a law abiding citizen (sans speeding and the ocassional green), I want to believe if America was invaded by Iceland or something and Bjork put me in her jail that I could be like Camp Fucya and dig a hole to the nearest Dairy Queen…
I’m just hoping these guys belong in jail… what would be the point of invading another country just to put innocent people in jail? what are we not having enough fun doing that in our own country?
I’ll shut up now.
Oh don’t stop … I was really gettin’ in to Bjork invading our country.
I’ve tried hard, but I can’t get Catnip to do it, so Bjork will do just fine!