Glenn details Obama's most recent curtailment of the already unconstitutionally repressive rules governing detainee rights

and the sack of bollocks he sold to the american people about guantánamo...

glenn...

Last week, the Obama administration imposed new arbitrary rules for Guantanamo detainees who have lost their first habeas corpus challenge. Those new rules eliminate the right of lawyers to visit their clients at the detention facility; the old rules establishing that right were in place since 2004, and were bolstered by the Supreme Court’s 2008 Boumediene ruling that detainees were entitled to a “meaningful” opportunity to contest the legality of their detention. The DOJ recently informed a lawyer for a Yemeni detainee, Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail, that he would be barred from visiting his client unless he agreed to a new regime of restrictive rules, including acknowledging that such visits are within the sole discretion of the camp’s military commander.

[...]

The New York Times Editorial Page today denounced these new rules as “spiteful,” cited it as “the Obama administration’s latest overuse of executive authority,” and said “the administration looks as if it is imperiously punishing detainees for their temerity in bringing legal challenges to their detention and losing.” Detainee lawyers are refusing to submit to these new rules and are asking a federal court to rule that they violate the detainees’ right to legal counsel.

[...]

When the President finally unveiled his plan for “closing Guantanamo,” it became clear that it wasn’t a plan to “close” the camp as much as it was a plan simply to re-locate it — import it — onto American soil, at a newly purchased federal prison in Thompson, Illinois. William Lynn, Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary, sent a letter to inquiring Senators that expressly stated that the Obama administration intended to continue indefinitely to imprison some of the detainees with no charges of any kind. The plan was classic Obama: a pretty, feel-good, empty symbolic gesture (get rid of the symbolic face of Bush War on Terror excesses) while preserving the core abuses (the powers of indefinite detention ), even strengthening and expanding those abuses by bringing them into the U.S.

[...]

In fact, Obama’s “close GITMO” plan — if it had been adopted by Congress — would have done something worse than merely continue the camp’s defining injustice of indefinite detention. It would likely have expanded those powers by importing them into the U.S.

[...]

Now, here we are, almost four years after the vow to close Guantanamo was enshrined in an Executive Order, and the rights of detainees — including the basic right to legal counsel — are being constricted further, in plainly vindictive ways. Conditions at Guantanamo are undoubtedly better than they were in 2003, and some of the deficiencies in military commissions (for the few who appear before them) have been redressed. But the real stain of Guantanamo — keeping people locked up in cages for years with no charges — endures. And contrary to the blatant myth propagated by Obama defenders, that has happened not because Obama tried but failed to eliminate it, but precisely because he embraced it as his own policy from the start.

which goes a long way toward explaining why i must battle visceral waves of disgust whenever i receive an obama campaign solicitation...

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Detainee Processing Technique

this ought to inspire chills...

Restricted U.S. Army Internment and Resettlement Operations Manual

FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations

DETAINEE PROCESSING TECHNIQUE
4-33. Upon capture, Soldiers must process detainees using the “search, silence, segregate, speed, safeguard, and tag (5 Ss and T)” technique. This technique provides a structure to guide Soldiers in conducting detainee operations until they transfer custody of detainees to another authority or location. Complete the “5 Ss and T” technique as follows:

• Search. Neutralize a detainee and confiscate weapons, personal items, and items of potential intelligence and/or evidentiary value.
• Silence. Prevent detainees from communicating with one another or making audible clamor such as chanting, singing, or praying. Silence uncooperative detainees by muffling them with a soft, clean cloth tied around their mouths and fastened at the backs of their heads. Do not use duct tape or other adhesives, place a cloth or either objects inside the mouth, or apply physical force to silence detainees.
• Segregate. Segregate detainees according to policy and SOPs (segregation requirements differ from operation to operation). The ability to segregate detainees may be limited by the availability of manpower and resources at the POC. At a minimum, try to segregate detainees by grade, gender, age (keeping adults from juveniles and small children with mothers), and security risk. MI and military police personnel can provide additional guidance and support in determining the appropriate segregation criteria.
• Speed. Quickly move detainees from the continuing risks associated with other combatants or sympathizers who may still be in the area of capture. If there are more detainees than the Soldiers can control, call for additional support, search the detainees, and hold them in place until reinforcements arrive.
• Safeguard. Protect detainees and ensure the custody and integrity of all confiscated items. Soldiers must safeguard detainees from combat risk, harm caused by other detainees, and improper treatment or care. Report all injuries. Correct and report violations of U.S. military policy that occur while safeguarding detainees. Acts and/or omissions that constitute inhumane treatment are violations of the law of war and, as such, must be corrected immediately. Simply reporting violations is insufficient. If a violation is ongoing, a Soldier has an obligation to stop the violation and report it.
• Tag. Ensure that each detainee is tagged using DD Form 2745. Confiscated equipment, personal items, and evidence will be linked to the detainee using the DD Form 2745 number. When a DA Form 4137 is used to document confiscated items, it will be linked to the detainee by annotating the DD Form 2745 control number on the form.

coming soon to a neighborhood near you...

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Chris Hedges: If there is no rolling back of the NDAA law we cease to be a constitutional democracy

reading chris hedges is always a depressing proposition but, as hard as it is to read, it's also the cold shower of truth and reality...

I spent four hours in a third-floor conference room at 86 Chambers St. in Manhattan on Friday as I underwent a government deposition. Benjamin H. Torrance, an assistant U.S. attorney, carried out the questioning as part of the government's effort to decide whether it will challenge my standing as a plaintiff in the lawsuit I have brought with others against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), also known as the Homeland Battlefield Bill.

The NDAA implodes our most cherished constitutional protections. It permits the military to function on U.S. soil as a civilian law enforcement agency. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus for citizens. The law can be used to detain people deemed threats to national security, including dissidents whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, and hold them until what is termed "the end of the hostilities." Even the name itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian concept that endless war has to be waged within "the homeland" against internal enemies as well as foreign enemies.

[...]

It is in conference rooms like this one, where attorneys speak in the arcane and formal language of legal statutes, that we lose or save our civil liberties. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they "substantially supported" terrorist groups or "associated forces."

[...]

Totalitarian systems always begin by rewriting the law. They make legal what was once illegal. Crimes become patriotic acts. The defense of freedom and truth becomes a crime. Foreign and domestic subjugation merges into the same brutal mechanism. Citizens are colonized. And it is always done in the name of national security. We obey the new laws as we obeyed the old laws, as if there was no difference. And we spend our energy and our lives appealing to a dead system.

will we ever break this downward spiral...?

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Glenn talks about immunity and disdain for the rule of law by the U.S. gov't and compares it to recent developments in Pakistan

worth reading...

It is virtually impossible to imagine the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the CIA to disclose documents about its treatment of detainees or, even more unrealistically, to permit the victims of CIA abuse to have their grievances heard in court. Anyone who doubts that can simply review the past decade of full-scale immunity bestowed by the Justice Department and subservient American federal courts on all executive agencies in the War on Terror. We should think about that the next time some American pundit, politician, or media figure righteously holds forth on how undemocratic and oppressive is Pakistan as opposed to the U.S.

is the u.s. a great country or what...?

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The extremists on two sides of a conflict are almost always identical

i've said for years that there is a frightening similarity between extremists of all stripes... islamic religious extremists are a mirror image of christian religious extremists... there isn't even a sliver of daylight between republicans and democrats... the bigotry of some people in the black and hispanic communities can easily rival that of whites...

glenn, in his usual masterful and thorough way, makes the same case for those who ceaselessly push the war on terror and those who ceaseless wage the war of jihad...

The Enemy — which America’s warriors maintain and glorify with their endless we-are-at-War! fixation and in whose name Endless War is waged and civil liberties are destroyed — is, indeed, “on many counts the projection of the self.” There’s a good reason why Al Qaeda members and American would-be warriors are both equally desperate to maintain the we-are-at-War! mindset: it’s what gives them purpose and justifies everything they do.

i've only excerpted a small portion of glenn's post... it's well worth reading in its entirety as it sets forth a compelling perspective on these two events from thursday...

(1) the Democratic-led Senate rejuvenated and expanded the War on Terror by, among other things, passing a law authorizing military detention on U.S. soil and expanding the formal scope of the War; and (2) Obama lawyers, for the first time, publicly justified the President’s asserted (and seized) power to target U.S. citizens for assassination without any transparency or due process.

interesting times, eh...?

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More on Afghanistan: Bagram, worse than Guantánamo but further away and, thus, less visible

i've posted on bagram many times... one of these days, the shit will hit the fan over bagram and it can't come too soon... when i'm in kabul, i shudder every time i think of what's going on there, just 80km up the road...

from john hanrahan at nieman watchdog...

The system of dealing with Bagram prisoners through detainee review boards (DRB), although improved upon since President Obama took office, violates universal standards on detention in that it “does not provide detainees the minimum level of due process required by international law,” according to a human rights organization’s recent report. Thus far, the report, issued May 10 by New York- and Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization Human Rights First (HRF), has been ignored by almost all the mainstream print and broadcast news media.

As Human Rights First states, the ever-growing number of Bagram detainees – most of whom are Afghans – have far fewer rights than their counterparts at the much more controversial Guantanamo Bay prison. Thanks to a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Guantanamo detainees “have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court and to representation by a lawyer,” something Bagram prisoners are denied, the report notes.

The system has resulted in detainees being incarcerated at Bagram for eight years or more, “based largely on evidence they have never seen and with no meaningful opportunity to defend themselves,” the report says. Additionally “a significant number” of the approximately 41 non-Afghan detainees “have been recommended for release by a Detainee Review Board but remain in detention at...[Bagram]..without explanation.”

In an interview with Nieman Watchdog, the HRF report’s author, Daphne Eviatar, put that figure of 1,700 detainees into context, noting that it is “almost triple the number of detainees who were at Bagram when President Obama came into office two years ago, and is 10 times greater than the number of prisoners currently being held at Guantanamo.” In addition, it is more than twice the total number of detainees – 779 – who were ever held at Guantanamo. More than 1,300 individuals were arrested and incarcerated in Bagram in 2010 alone, compared to some 500 in 2009. Eviatar is senior associate in Human Rights First’s law and security program. (Click here for a video on Bagram by Eviatar.)

Besides violating international law, the current system “flies in the face of the well-founded wisdom of our top military leaders in the region who havehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif warned repeatedly of the dangers of denying Afghan detainees due process,” Eviatar said in releasing the report. “Beyond the imprisonment of many likely innocent people, the lack of due process erodes support for U.S. forces in Afghanistan and ultimately undermines U.S. goals there.”

There have been past indications that a majority of the Bagram detainees are being wrongfully held. In August 2009, various news outlets reported that U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Major General Douglas M. Stone had been assigned to investigate detention practices in Afghanistan and had issued a still-unreleased 700-page classified report. As National Public Radio reported at the time, Stone told senior military officials that as many as 400 of the 600 detainees then held at Bagram could be released.

as in the previous post, imagine if you will what it would be like for any of us to have innocent family members killed or "disappeared" at the hands of a foreign power and not being able to do a damn thing about it...

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The money quote: "...patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a military tribunal"

the nyt does another unchallenged dump of secret documents while bradley manning is being tortured for doing the same thing...

A trove of more than 700 classified military documents provides new and detailed accounts of the men who have done time at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, and offers new insight into the evidence against the 172 men still locked up there.

Military intelligence officials, in assessments of detainees written between February 2002 and January 2009, evaluated their histories and provided glimpses of the tensions between captors and captives. What began as a jury-rigged experiment after the 2001 terrorist attacks now seems like an enduring American institution, and the leaked files show why, by laying bare the patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a military tribunal.

and 172 of them are still there... how incredibly sad...

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Bradley Manning being moved to Leavenworth

no mention of whether or not he will get to see any outside observers there... it will be certainly a more inconvenient trip...

The Army private suspected of giving classified data to WikiLeaks is being moved to a state-of-the-art facility at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where Pentagon officials said more extensive mental, emotional and physical health care will be available.

[...]

The new facility, they said, will be more open, have more space, and Manning will have a greater opportunity to eat and interact with other prisoners there. They added that the move was in Manning's best interest because Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional Facility has a broader array of facilities, including trained mental, emotional and physical health staff.

Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, who is in charge of the medium-security detention facility at Leavenworth, said Manning will undergo a comprehensive evaluation upon his arrival to assess whether he is a risk to his own or others' safety. The 150 inmates there — including eight who are awaiting trial — are allowed three hours of recreation per day, she said, and three meals a day in a dining area.

She said the facility, which opened in January, is designed for long-term detention of pretrial inmates. Officials agreed that Manning's case, which involves hundreds of thousands of highly sensitive and classified documents, is very complex and could drag on for months, if not years.

Johnson said that Manning, who has been at Quantico for more than eight months, can be moved now because his interview in the Washington region to determine his competency to stand trial has been completed. That interview lasted one day and was done April 9.

eight months in inhumane conditions for a one day interview... shit...

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Bullshit

ain't buyin' it...

Obama Defends Detention Conditions for Soldier Accused in WikiLeaks Case

President Obama has defended conditions in a Marine Corps jail for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The president said Friday that he had been assured that such measures as forcing Private Manning to sleep without clothing were justified and for his own safety.

Bradleymanning.Org/Handout/
European Pressphoto Agency

“With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “They assure me that they are.”

“I can’t go into details about some of their concerns,” he added, “but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.” He appeared to be referring to fears that Private Manning might harm himself, though the private, his friends and his lawyer have all denied that he is suicidal.

why doesn't obama motorcade his ass down to quantico and see for himself...?

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Glenn: Obama's Executive Order only reinforces what he's done from the start of his Presidency

what with the time zone difference, i didn't get to see glenn's response to the new obama executive order on military tribunals and guantánamo until this morning but it's pretty much as i expected...

Obama -- for reasons having nothing to do with Congress -- worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they're talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully "bolsters" the Bush War on Terror template. Indefinite detention and military commissions are continuing because Obama worked from the start for that goal -- not because Congress forced him to do so.

As as happened over and over, while progressives and civil libertarians are furious about the new Order, former Bush officials and right-wing Warriors are ecstatic. The anti-Muslim McCarthyite Rep. Peter King (R-NY) issued a statement this morning, as quoted by The Post, which lavished Obama with praise: "I commend the Obama Administration for issuing this Executive Order. The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush Administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorists until the cessation of hostilities." That perfectly captures the legacy of Barack Obama on civil liberties.

somewhere in a corner of my heart, i keep wanting to believe in obama but my conscious, rational mind has long since despaired of him take action on making things right, things that so desperately need to be made right...

i guess i share matt damon's disillusionment...

Matt Damon: Obama Has 'Rolled Over To Wall Street Completely'

[...]

"I think he's rolled over to Wall Street completely. The economy has huge problems. We still have all these banks that are too big to fail. They're bigger and making more money than ever," Damon said in an interview with the U.K.'s Independent.

Damon also zeroed in on the Bush tax Cuts that Obama recently extended, a move which has been met with significant criticism.

yes, rolling over to wall street is a huge issue but the disregard for the constitution and civil liberties is flouting the essence of who we are as a nation...

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Statement from The Constitution Project on resuming Guantánamo tribunals [UPDATE]

the obama administration sinks ever lower...

White House Says Military Tribunals Can Resume at Guantánamo

President Barack Obama issued an order on Monday approving
the resumption of military trials for detainees at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, The Associated Press reported.

The order ends a two-year ban on new cases. President Obama
took office promising to close the detention center and
prosecute suspects held there in domestic civilian courts,
but the plan was blocked by controversies over where to hold
the suspects and try them.

the constitution project responds...

The Constitution Project (TCP) issued a statement in reaction to the release of an executive order that would establish a regular review process for Guantánamo detainees who will not be released or tried, and an order to Secretary Gates to refer new charges to the military commissions system.

According to TCP Policy Counsel Mason C. Clutter, "Continuing to arbitrarily hold the detainees without charge for an indefinite period of time is inconsistent with our Constitution and the rule of law. While creating a system of periodic review for the Guantánamo detainees whose habeas petitions have been denied is a welcome improvement over current circumstances, the remaining detainees must be held in a manner consistent with the law of war, brought before a court to face criminal charges, or released. These are the only options available to us that are consistent with our constitutional obligations."

Ms. Clutter further observed, "TCP is pleased that President Obama remains committed to using Article III courts, but is very disappointed that he has decided to give new life to the military commissions without proceeding with parallel prosecutions in our proven civilian criminal justice system. Our civilian criminal justice system remains the most effective tool in America's fight against terrorism, with a track record of handling more than 400 terrorism related cases compared to only 6 cases completed in the military commissions. We urge the President and Congress to work together to repeal current legislation and prevent future legislation that would prohibit the administration from using civilian criminal courts."

In 2009, TCP released Beyond Guantánamo: A Bipartisan Declaration advocating for the use of our traditional federal criminal courts to try the remaining Guantánamo detainees and opposing a system of indefinite detention without charge. The bipartisan Declaration was signed by nearly 140 prominent experts, including former federal judges, prosecutors, diplomats, military and intelligence leaders, and 9/11 victim family members.

i'm sure glenn will weigh in soon and, when he does, i will post an update...

[UPDATE]

while we're waiting for glenn, here's marcy's take...

If detaining someone indefinitely is “necessary to protect against a significant threat to the security of the United States,” Obama says, he can do it.

So I say, fine! Let’s indefinitely detain the banksters that crashed our entire economy. They fairly routinely hold the workers and taxpayers of this country hostage these days, just like terrorists do. And when you account for the number of people they’ve left homeless and hungry, the damage they have done may well surpass that of the attack on 9/11. Clearly, the banksters are a “significant threat to the security of the United States”–they’re the biggest threat to the security of the US. And the genius of Obama’s EO is it doesn’t even require the detainees, themselves, represent a threat. Rather, if their detention is necessitated by the security threat, we can detain them. We don’t have to trouble with sorting the good banksters, like Jamie Dimon, from the bad banksters, like Dick Fuld. We can detain them all, just to make sure we don’t accidentally miss any. (Sorry Bill, we can’t take any risks, so this includes you too!)

Simple as that. Our biggest security threat solved!

indefinitely detain the banksters...?!?!? wow...! i LIKE it...!

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Accountability...? What's that...? An emptywheel rant...

this is a follow-on to the previous post and this one...

marcy is righteously indignant over the unbelievable cover-up of our country's worst excesses and the apparent lack of any accountability whatsoever...

Of course no one will be charged for destroying the evidence of torture! Our country has spun so far beyond holding the criminals who run our country accountable that even the notion of accountability for torture was becoming quaint and musty while we waited and screamed for some kind of acknowledgment that Durham had let the statute of limitations on the torture tape destruction expire.

[...]

I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.

lord help me, i am SO-O-O-O-O-OOO sick of posting about a lack of accountability...

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Sometimes, reading the news is just a flat-out bummer

'specially when all it does is show that there's absolutely no accountability ANYWHERE for ANYTHING that matters... now, if somebody falls a month or two behind in house payments, well, gee, that's an ENTIRELY different story...

No Charges Over Destruction of Interrogation Tapes, Justice Dept. Says

A federal prosecutor will not bring criminal charges against any of the Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in destroying videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of Al Qaeda detainees, Justice Department officials said on Tuesday.

After an investigation spanning nearly three years, John H. Durham, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, has decided to clear the C.I.A. undercover officers and top lawyers at the agency for their roles in the destruction of the tapes.

Jose A. Rodriguez, the former head of the agency’s clandestine service, ordered his staff in 2005 to destroy tapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes had been kept in a safe in the agency’s station in Thailand, where the interrogations were conducted in 2002.

Mr. Rodriguez took responsibility for the destruction of the tapes, according to current and former government officials, and said that C.I.A. lawyers had authorized his order. The agency withheld the fact that the tapes had been destroyed from Congressional oversight committees, federal courts and the Sept. 11 Commission, which had asked the agency for records of the interrogations.

The announcement that there will be no charges in the destruction of the tapes leaves unanswered whether Mr. Durham will bring other charges related to the death or mistreatment of detainees in the hands of the agency, or to any false statements made by officials to investigators about harsh interrogations. The anti-torture act has an eight-year statute of limitations, and there is no time limit for murder charges.

Documents released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that the C.I.A. destroyed the tapes on the morning of Nov. 9, 2005. The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges of obstruction of justice related to their destruction expired on Tuesday.

Robert S. Bennett, Mr. Rodriguez’s attorney, said in an interview that he was pleased that the Justice Department “did the right thing.”

Mr. Rodriguez is “a hero and a patriot, who simply wanted to protect his people and his country,” Mr. Bennett said.

In August 2008, when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to include looking into whether crimes were committed in the interrogation program, he also stressed that the Justice Department would “not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.”

"a hero and a patriot...?" fuck me...

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If my passport didn't say I was a U.S. citizen, I'm not sure I'd know otherwise

cuz the country i thought was my own would never have supposedly intelligent, former senior government officials spewing this kind of bullshit...

former bush administration attorney general jack goldsmith in today's nyt...

THE Obama administration wants to show that federal courts can handle trials of Guantánamo Bay detainees, and had therefore placed high hopes in the prosecution of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa. On Wednesday a federal judge, Lewis Kaplan of the United States District Court in Manhattan, made the government’s case much harder when he excluded the testimony of the government’s central witness because the government learned about the witness through interrogating Mr. Ghailani at a secret overseas prison run by the C.I.A.

Some, mostly liberals and civil libertarians, applauded the ruling, saying it showed that the rule of law is being restored. But many conservatives denounced it as proof that high-level terrorists cannot reliably be prosecuted in civilian courts and should instead be tried by military commissions.

The real lesson of the ruling, however, is that prosecution in either criminal court or a tribunal is the wrong approach. The administration should instead embrace what has been the main mechanism for terrorist incapacitation since 9/11: military detention without charge or trial.

[...]

[W]hile it is more difficult than ever to keep someone like Mr. Ghailani in military detention, it is far easier to detain him than to convict him in a civilian trial or a military commission. Military detention proceedings have relatively forgiving evidence rules and aren’t constrained by constitutional trial rules like the right to a jury and to confront witnesses. There is little doubt that Mr. Ghailani could be held in military detention until the conflict with Al Qaeda ends.

gosh, it all sounds so REASONABLE doesn't it...? until, of course, you read that last sentence and it suddenly dawns on you that plans don't call for the conflict with terrorism to EVER END... everything we read, everything we're told, says that we're in a forever war*, a war that cannot be won and will not end...

oh, yeah... don't forget that other little niggling bit goldsmith didn't bother to address... is mr. ghailani actually a terrorist...? after all, if the aumf put us at "war" with terrorism and if mr. ghailani is - presumably - a terrorist, how was that determined...?

if we're in an endless war and terrorism is the declared "enemy," then pow's have nothing to look forward to except a lifetime of detention... their lives are essentially over...

is the u.s. a great country or what...?

* [I]n November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program and told viewers: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."

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A partial and incomplete explanation of why I'm less than interested in voting in November

cenk uygur talks about the total fail of the democratic strategy as orchestrated by rahm emanuel...



cenk focuses on how obama has failed on various domestic issues but manages to skip the most egregious abuses perpetrated by the biggest political, policy and leadership disappointment of my lifetime (domestic surveillance, detainee rights, state secrets privilege expansion, etc., etc.)...

i'm not going to sit here and vow that i'm not going to vote in november but i can tell you that, since i will be out of the country, i will have to expend a certain amount of energy that i'm not sure i care to expend to arrange for absentee voting... the only thing that will motivate me to bestir myself is so that i can vote for the odious harry reid to keep the mental-patient-on-unsupervised-release, sharon angle, from becoming my united states senator...

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The American hikers detained in Iran - a "no-context" triumph for an NYT op-ed

ya gotta love our so-called news media... they never hesitate to step forward with stories and opinions unequivocally stating facts and taking strong positions... yes, they want to appear like they're doing their job and, to all appearances, they are... what isn't apparent, principally because it's almost never there, is the context so vitally necessary to truly understanding anything presented as "news" or "opinion"...

take today's nyt op-ed, calling on iran to follow its own rule of law and to release the three detained american hikers apprehended while hiking along the iran-iraq border (see my previous post here)... now that the hikers have finally been charged, after a year in confinement, with "illegal border crossing," the piece very reasonably lays out a strong argument that iran should observe its own law, a law which states that such an offense is punishable with a fine but not jail time... the piece goes on to lament that iran seems to be treating the three as pawns in its ceaseless game of taunting the united states...

never once in the piece nor in any other mainstream news media reports i've read on the detainees is the broader context mentioned, context that would point out that unlawful detention, detention without charges, and detention under potentially damaging physical and emotional conditions is precisely what the united states itself has been doing and continues to do, all under the justification of our superior moral authority: u.s. = good; iran = bad...

perhaps an even bigger piece of unmentioned context is how united states behavior is mirrored, emulated and even aspired to by other countries... the united states is always pushing its status as a role model in the world of nations and, while there are some who would snicker at such a boast (and i'm frequently one of them), the truth is that the united states does indeed set the bar for nation-state behavior in the foreign policy arena and, to a lesser extent, the internal domestic policy arena as well... i've heard officials of other countries, first-hand and in so many words, say, "well, what's the problem...? YOU do it, why shouldn't we...?"

lack of context in news and opinion reporting, reporting we should be able to rely on as not only factual but textured, complete and fully informative, is a very slippery slope... we need look no further than andrew breitbart's recent deliberate omission of a key part of shirley sherrod's speech to see just how dangerous and manipulative the absence of full context can be, but what we fail to realize is that the breitbart scam is only the tip of a very large iceberg...

why are we given so little context...? i don't think anyone with half a brain could miss the answer to that one... if we did have the full context or even half of it, we might arrive at very different conclusions about the meaning and implication of news events than we do currently... people are not stupid and, in fact, far from it... we are fully capable of rational thought and forming our own conclusions based on information and evidence at hand... when deprived of that information and evidence, we will form conclusions based on the information and evidence we're given... and that, my friends, is the whole idea...

Since their detention, the Americans have been denied access to their lawyer and allowed only one telephone call to their families and one visit from their mothers. There is particular worry now about Ms. Shourd, who spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement — the reason is unclear — and has a precancerous condition on her cervix and a breast abnormality, both of which require monitoring. The Iranians are withholding results of her medical tests.

It’s hard not to compare the hikers’ experience with that of Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who recently returned to Tehran. He claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had abducted him in Saudi Arabia. American officials said he was an informant who defected and then got cold feet.

Given the shady world of espionage, we may never know the truth. What we do know is that he was allowed to leave this country and was last seen embracing his family in Tehran. It’s long past time for the three Americans to have the same opportunity.

what about the host of detainees the united states has kept sequestered in places like bagram and guantánamo for years without charges and without any family visits at all...? don't they deserve the same opportunity...? don't they deserve the same empathetic treatment from the nyt...? isn't it important that we see the similarities between the our treatment of detainees and that of iran...?

yes, the circumstances of the hikers and the detainees in guantánamo are different but what isn't different is that we're dealing with real, live human beings... you can't call for decent treatment and following the rule of law for one set of human beings and not recognize that all human beings deserve that same treatment... yet it is the position of organs like the nyt, faithfully mirroring the position of our government, that OUR detainees are somehow in a lesser category, somewhere between wild animal and human... and yet we can still ask with perfectly straight faces, "why do 'they' hate us?"...

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Things that make me crazy

i was driving back from a lunch meeting and listening to an interview on public radio international with two of the mothers of the american hikers that have been detained without charges for over a year in iran... the mothers had been allowed to visit their children in tehran in may and, at the time, made a direct appeal to the iranian government for their release without success...

nora shourd, the mother of sarah shourd, one of the detainees, was particularly distressed that her daughter had been kept in solitary confinement for most if not all of her time in prison and was suffering from severe loneliness and appeared to her to be clinically depressed... in so many words, mrs. shourd called her daughter's treatment torture and was appalled that, as a u.s. citizen, she could be subjected to such degradation and made to endure so much personal suffering when she had committed no crime...

as a parent, i would be equally outraged and absolutely beside myself with worry if one of my children was in a similar situation... in fact, i can't imagine any parent anywhere in the world who wouldn't feel the same... but i also couldn't help but think of the parents of all the detainees held by the u.s. in equally troubling circumstances, also without charges, not for one year, not for two years, not even for five years, but for seven, eight, nine and, for some, going on ten years... is anyone interviewing THOSE parents...? did the interviewer even mention that the u.s. is doing the very same thing, only a great deal more of it...? did the mothers bother to acknowledge that there are a lot of mothers around the world struggling with the same situation...? no... of course not...

makes. me. crazy.

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Glenn: "The administration has substantial leverage ... on those issues ... actually important to them"

glenn greenwald has been engaged in a lengthy online and highly public debate with other so-called liberals and progressives (i would call them obama "apologists") who insist that obama isn't or can't fulfill much of his promised agenda because he is crippled by the essential powerlessness of the presidency... i happen to be in complete agreement with glenn... talkin' the talk without walkin' the walk is bad enough but when you're doing neither, it's inexcusable...

from time immemorial, people have been able to deduce one's real intentions and motivations from the behavior the person displays... as glenn so rightly points out, what are we hearing about closing guantánamo, about a genuine effort to restore human rights to detainees, about accountability for 4th amendment constitutional violations, about REAL - as opposed to cosmetic - financial reform, about the serious development of alternative energy resources, about a dedicated effort to get our country back from the corporations...? damn little... and what does that tell you...? it can only be one thing... the obama administration has chosen not to exert any effort in those directions whether or not they could be successful in influencing them...

The administration has substantial leverage to influence what Congress does, but they use it only on those issues that are actually important to them. And in those White House actions, one finds their actual priorities. The White House applied vast pressure on Congress to get what it wanted by having a war-funding bill enacted without conditions, demanding progressive provisions be stripped out of the financial reform bill, preventing drug re-importation from being enacted in order to please the pharmaceutical industry, negotiating the public option away with industry interests, and (to their credit) blocking funding for obsolete fighter jets. They exerted great influence over Congress because those were important priorities for Obama. By contrast, they do nothing on a whole slew of issues which they claim they support and which were at heart of the Obama campaign -- such as closing Guantanamo -- thus conveying to Democrats in Congress that they do not really care about such measures (or even oppose them) despite their public assurances to their base that they continue to support them.

at this point, as far as i'm concerned, there is no defense anyone can mount on behalf of the obama administration... actions have always spoken louder than words... much, MUCH louder, in fact, and i've re-learned a lesson i've re-learned so many times in my life as to be downright embarrassing: only pay attention to what a person says when and if it's backed up by congruent action...

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It's a beautiful Saturday morning here in the high desert

i got back from scotland and the outer hebrides one week ago today, welcomed by cold, snow flurries and a full week of cloudy, chilly, damp and generally miserable weather... today, finally, the sky is clear, the sun is shining brightly and the temp has jumped from the upper 30s to the mid-50s and it's only 10:30... i'm listening to glorious celtic music with a melancholy tinge, perhaps befitting how i'm feeling about being back in the u.s. and continuing to witness the pathos of the erosion of everything we stand for...

glenn greenwald...

The first paragraph of today's New York Times article by Charlie Savage:

The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday.

The Report itself, in a matter-of-fact-tone, describes the individuals to be kept in a cage indefinitely without charges this way:

They can't even be prosecuted in the due-process-abridging military commissions we invented out of whole cloth for those who can't be convicted in a real court. In other words: of course we'll provide a fair tribunal for proving your guilt -- as long as we're certain we can convict you -- otherwise, we'll just imprison you indefinitely without charges. All this even though 72% of Guantanamo detainees have been found to be wrongfully held since the Supreme Court compelled habeas hearings in 2008. And then there are the numerous Yemeni prisoners who have been cleared for release but who will be kept in a cage anyway because we arbitrarily decreed that we're not going to release even innocent prisoners back to Yemen.

[...]

Yes -- being as sentimental as I am -- I, too, harbor nostalgia for that "older principle of accountability under the law": you know, that idealized time when everyone was entitled to be charged with crimes before being imprisoned forever (rather than only those for whom prosecution was "feasible") and when Presidents weren't actually allowed to target American citizens for murder without at least some due process being granted. Anyway, did Sarah Palin post something to her Facebook page today? And isn't that Glenn Beck crazy?

i never thought i'd come to the day when i'd be embarrassed and ashamed to identify myself as a liberal, democrat and progressive...

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Back in Amerika

yeah, it was only two weeks... two months outside the u.s. is more my average but, given where i was traveling amid the beauty, the magic and the timeless and tangible antiquity of the outer hebrides, coming back to the same sad state of affairs is particularly disheartening...

glenn greenwald, as per usual, zeroes in on the amazing and, no surprise, virtually ignored depth of obama's deceit...

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole." In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

Immediately following Boumediene, the Bush administration argued that the decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram -- including even those detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned. Amazingly, the Bush DOJ -- in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention -- contended that if they abduct someone and ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind. In other words, the detainee's Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged. One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers "told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team."

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram. I reviewed that ruling here, in which Judge Bates explained that the Bagram detainees are "virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene," and that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same: namely, "the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely."

But the Obama administration was undeterred by this loss. They quickly appealed Judge Bates' ruling. As the NYT put it about that appeal: "The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight." Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

So congratulations to the United States and Barack Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind.

with my work in kabul, i've spent no small amount of time contemplating what was taking place less than 100km from where i sat at my desk, trying to make a constructive difference in the midst of utter tragedy...

despite the many positive changes this president has made, there is no way i can find it in my heart to support an administration that consciously and deliberately tramples on the most fundamental principles my country supposedly stands for... as long as the united states continues to say one thing and do another, particularly when it is as egregious as this, we expose ourselves to the revenge of those who are being crushed under the heels of our boots...

or is that the plan...?

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