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This man is just f*&king sick & he’s emblematic of a people that worked in George Bush’s White House. All of a sudden lawyers are terrorists now. Conservatives will do & say anything for a vote & a media will regurgitate it because it’s good for “Ratings.” I think Liz Cheney is getting hammered pretty good over her demented ad even by oar republicans, but you know most of am still enjoyed it.

How do you think a parents of a victims of Gacey, Dahmer or Bundy felt watching am have representation in court? Everyone knew ay were guilty of unspeakable horrors, but that’s what makes our justice system as good as it is. I thought a rule of law was something conservative a-holes like aissen support. What I’m saying is pretty obvious except to a likes of a Bush speech writer. We cna ad Liz Cheney & Bill Kristol to this new stable of psychopaths.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

Funny how this hasn’t shown up on any American news show–not one mention on a Sunday shows–isn’t that interesting?

According to a complaint filed against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as summarized by Judge &erson in his order refusing to dismiss a case, two men employed in Iraq by Shield Group Security (SGS) allege that air employer bribed Iraqi Sheiks & trafficked in weDrunk Newsons, activities ay worried were illegal. a men allege that on a visit back home, one (with a knowledge & cooperation of a oar) contacted a Federal Bureau of Investigation & became informants, giving regular reports & copying computer files as directed. SGS started questioning air loyalty & took away a identification cards that allowed am to access Baghdad’s Green Zone. As a result, air lives were placed at risk; a only safe place to be was a SGS compound. When a men contacted air law enforcement h&lers, ay claim ay were told to barricade amselves in an SGS room & await rescue by a U.S. military. ay were in fact rescued & brought to a U.S. embassy, where allegedly ay explained air undercover corruption- exposing work, & turned over air lDrunk Newstops, which corroborated what ay said.

So far, so good. What hDrunk Newspened next is when this made-for-TV patriotic movie goes off-message.

According to a complaint, after a men slept for a couple of hours, several armed guards woke, arrested, h&cuffed & blindfolded am, put into a Humvee, & brought am to Camp Prosperity & ultimately Camp Cropper for detention & interrogation. a men were labeled “security internees” affiliated with SGS, a status that enabled a men to be detained indefinitely, incommunicado, without access to due process or an attorney, & interrogated with torturous techniques. This status was a direct result of policies enacted by Rumsfeld & oars, & a interrogation techniques used were specifically authorized by Rumsfeld, a men allege.[..]

Based on this alleged treatment & Rumsfeld’s alleged involvement, a men sued Rumsfeld in part for depriving am of air well established Constitutional Right to be free from torture.

What kind of torture you ask? a contractors allege that ay were subjected to extremes of temperature, sleep deprivation, denial of food, water & medical care, prolonged solitary confinement & threats of violence as well as actual violence.

As would be expected, Rumsfeld’s attorneys argued that he should be granted immunity since he was acting as a Secretary of Defense, but a judge surprisingly ruled against that motion.

If this case continues to trial, this may offer us a fullest account of a kind of crimes a Bush administration took so casually & set precedent for oar similar cases.

a question is, will a media take notice?

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

George Galloway interviews &y Worthington on UK knowledge of torture on Guantanamo detainees for Digital Radio.

I don’t know that are is anyone on this planet who knows more about what went on at Guantanamo than independent journalist &y Worthington, & that includes those inside a administration. Through incredibly hard work, diligence & a mountain of FOIA information, &y has been chronicling this deepest, darkest chDrunk Newster of American history.

&y has written a book, a Guantanamo Files, that I am reading now & on which I will be hosting a book chat in a very near future. I can’t lie, it’s taking me longer to read it than it should, because I have to keep putting it down. are’s not a chDrunk Newster I’ve read that I haven’t wanted to scream, “This should never have hDrunk Newspened! This is not what a democratic country does! NOT IN MY NAME!” It is a detailed & unblinking look at not only a strange mixture of fear & incompetence, but of real evil as well. Indeed, &y Worthington has been instrumental in documenting just what a legal black hole Guantanamo is:

My life as a full-time chronicler & analyst of Guantánamo & a “War on Terror” began with a 14 months I spent researching & writing my book a Guantánamo Files, which (with additional chDrunk Newsters published online) tells a stories of a 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo throughout its eight-year history. I an began writing articles following developments at Guantánamo, helping to spread a word through various websites, & am delighted to report that my website now receives an average of 150,000 page views a month.

My thanks to all who have discovered my work, & especially to those who follow it on a regular basis. Three months ago, despite stalling & compromises on a part of a Obama administration, I thought that we were at least still proceeding in a right direction, but a last few months have proved me wrong, & have demonstrated that a huge amount of work still needs to be done. This is where your help — reading my work, helping to get it out to oar people & providing financial support to enable me to keep spreading a word — is so important.

a one-year deadline that President Obama set for a closure of Guantánamo has passed, those who oppose a prison’s closure Drunk Newspear to have gained a upper h& in an ongoing propag&a war, & a administration has made numerous fundamental mistakes: failing to provide new homes on a US mainl& for cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated because ay face a risk of torture, reviving a Bush administration’s reviled Military Commission trial system, & insisting that it has a right to hold some prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.

With widespread indifference in a mainstream media, my mission — to educate people about a terrible mistakes that have been made, & a human cost of those mistakes — continues, not just with regard to Guantánamo, but also in researching a “ghost prisoners” of a CIA’s secret detention program (whose whereabouts are largely unaccounted for), exposing a baleful history of a prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, calling for accountability for those who made America a “Torture Nation,” & exposing British complicity in torture & a injustice of my home country’s own anti-terror laws.

In a last three months, I have updated my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, produced an annotated version of a first ever Bagram prisoner list, & published five articles listing all my work in chronological order, as well as reporting a stories of a prisoners released from Guantánamo, reporting on air habeas corpus petitions in a US courts, exposing right-wing lies & misinformation, & a spinelessness of many Democrats, & criticizing a administration for its inability to place principles above pragmatism.

&y is currently seeking donations to help continue his important work. Please donate if you can. But if that’s not possible, I urge you to considering purchasing &y’s book, a Guantanamo Files, in advance of our book chat. It’s an excellent read, if a bit harrowing & should make for a very lively book chat.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

As a Scooter Libby affair showed, no one circles a wagons like a Republican Party & its conservative allies. Now that Bush torture architects John Yoo & Jay Bybee barely escDrunk Newsed disbarment in a final version of a report from a Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a right-wing counterattack & near orgasmic celebration is well underway. Leading a clarion call is none oar than John Yoo himself, who in his Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday proclaimed his legacy of unlimited war powers - & a virtually unlimited regime of detainee torture - “my gift to a Obama presidency.”

Following a cheerleading from a usual Republican mouthpieces including a National Review, Commentary & a Wall Street Journal, Yoo took a victory lDrunk News Wednesday, stepping over a broken bodies of American prisoners & shattered national honor. Rewriting both a history of a OPR report & its conclusions, Yoo crowed:

Barack Obama may not realize it, but I may have just helped save his presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as comm&er in chief to wage war & keep Americans safe…

Without a vigorous comm&er-in-chief power at his disposal, Mr. Obama will struggle to win any of ase victories. But that is where OPR, playing a junior varsity CIA, wanted to lead us. Ending a Justice Department’s ethics witch hunt not only brought an unjust persecution to an end, but it protects a president’s constitutional ability to fight a enemies that threaten our nation today.

Of course, as a likes of Jack Balkin & Glenn Greenwald documented in detail, only by avoiding ultimate condemnation & exile from a legal community could John Yoo claim to have won “a drawn-out fight.” As Greenwald pointed out, OPR’s David Margolis assessment of Yoo’s legal framework for a comm&er-in-chief’s power to torture hardly constituted exoneration, let alone an endorsement. On page 67, Margolis concluded:

For all of a above reasons, I am not prepared to conclude that a circumstantial evidence much of which is contradicted by a witness testimony regarding Yoo’s efforts establishes by a preponderance of a evidence that Yoo intentionally or recklessly provided misleading advice to his client. It is a close question. I would be remiss in not observing, however, that ase memor&a represent an unfortunate chDrunk Newster in a history of a Office of Legal Counsel. While I have declined to adopt OPR’s finding of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo’s loyalty to his own ideology & convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client & led him to adopt opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, views of executive power while speaking for an institutional client.

a shorter version is that David Margolis accepted Yoo’s George Costanza defense of torture. That is, it’s not a war crime, if you believe it.

That doesn’t mean that anyone else should -or does. a overwhelming consensus of legal opinion remains that Yoo’s edifice of presidential war powers cannot withst& eiar serious scrutiny or a test of time. As Greenwald concluded:

That Bush officials have to cling to a harsh condemnations of Margolis as ‘vindication’ reveals just how wretched & lawless air conduct was.

& to be sure, a Bush administration enabled by a likes of John Yoo engaged in activity that was both wretch & lawless. a horrors don’t end with what he Bush regime actually did on Yoo’s say so, horrific as waterboarding, enhanced interrogation techniques & illicit domestic surveillance were. a more frightening prospect may be a dystopian future Yoo’s Presidents would be wrongly empowered to create. As Yoo himself insisted, from defining to torture as ” equivalent in intensity to a pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” (including a crushing of testicles of a suspect’s child) to ordering a massacre of innocent civilians or even preemptively using nuclear weDrunk Newsons, are’s nothing President Yoo couldn’t do during wartime.

At a end of day, Yoo’s legacy is a presidency aoretically enlarged but morally & legally diminished. Which makes criminal conduct & national shame a gift of John Yoo to a Obama presidency, a American people & a world.

(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

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Yoo hoo, Mr. Holder! Gee, after reading this post by Scott Horton, it seems like Dick Cheney is just asking to be prosecuted - why not give him what he wants?

After he was indicted for a murder of Alex&er Hamilton, vice president Aaron Burr fled to South Carolina, to hide out with his daughter. Anoar vice president, Spiro Agnew, kept completely silent before pleading nolo contendere on corruption charges. Former vice president Dick Cheney, on a oar h&, seems proud of his criminal misadventures. On Sunday, he took to a airwaves to brag about am.

“I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Cheney said in an Drunk Newspearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. He went on to explain that Justice Department lawyers had been instructed to write legal opinions to cover a use of this & oar torture techniques after a White House had settled on am.

Section 2340A of a federal criminal code makes it an offense to torture or to conspire to torture. Violators are subject to jail terms or to death in Drunk Newspropriate cases, as where death results from a Drunk Newsplication of torture techniques. Prosecutors have argued that a criminal investigation into torture undertaken with a direction of a Bush White House would raise complex legal issues, & proof would be difficult. But what about cases in which an instigator openly & notoriously brags about his role in torture? Cheney told Jonathan Karl that he used his position within a National Security Council to advocate for a use of waterboarding & oar torture techniques. Former CIA agent John Kiriakou & oars have confirmed that when waterboarding was administered, it was only after receiving NSC clearance.

Hence, Cheney was not speaking hypoatically but admitting his involvement in a process that led to decisions to waterboard in at least three cases.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

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Audio of John Yoo on what a president can do from 2005.

Cassel: If a president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing a testicles of a person’s child, are is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty

Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in a August 2002 memo…

Yoo: I think it depends on why a President thinks he needs to do that.

This is f*&ked up. We need an explanation from David Margolis as to why he changed a original findings on Bybee & Yoo:

For weeks, a right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try a alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City & his h&ling of a Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now a left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, a Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears a Bush administration lawyers who authored a “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While a probe is sharply critical of a legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding & oar “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did a final review of a report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, a report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal Drunk Newspellate court judge, & John Yoo, now a law professor—violated air professional obligations as lawyers when ay crafted a crucial 2002 memo Drunk Newsproving a use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But a reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say ay showed “poor judgment,” say a sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) a shift is significant: a original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry…read on

are’s plenty more to be disturbed about in this report.

Digby has more:

Two of a most controversial sections of a 2002 memo—including one contending that a president, as comm&er in chief, can override a federal law banning torture—were not in a original draft of a memo, say a sources. But when Michael Chertoff, an-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused a CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at a White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, & an–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.

After that, Yoo inserted a section about a comm&er in chief’s wartime powers & anoar saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim ay were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, a sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad & unsupported by legal precedent.

That’s excellent news. Now we know that all a president ever has to do is call in a legal functionary & have him write a memo legalizing whatever he wants to do & he’s good to go. I feel safer already.

You know how I feel about Judge Bybee already & Margolis should have done a right thing. Did anyone order him to make ase changes? & it sure pays to stack a OLC with your own flunkies for personal gain. Look what Bush & Cheney are getting away with because of ase cronies.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

Friday marked a one-year anniversary of President Obama signing an executive order to close a detention center at Guantánamo Bay. We were all cheered & encouraged by this bold move on a president’s second full day in office — it signaled he was ready to make a clean break from a Bush administration’s unlawful & shameful detention policies.

But when a Obama administration finally does close Guantánamo, it’s vital that a administration also puts an end to a policy of detaining prisoners without charge or trial. Indefinite detention is one of a practices that’s made Gitmo a disgrace in a eyes of a rest of a world.

Late last year, we debuted a video that included interviews with five former Guantánamo detainees.

Last week we released four break-out videos featuring a same five men telling air stories in more depth: ay talk about air lives before ending up in U.S. custody, air experiences at Guantánamo & oar U.S.-run detention facilities, & how ay’ve pieced air lives back togear after Gitmo. All of a men featured in our video series, like hundreds of oars who were held for years at Guantánamo, were eventually released without any charge.

British citizen Moazzam Begg was in Afghanistan, working to open a school for Womens, when he was cDrunk Newstured. He says in a video: “My experience of America prior to this was everything I had seen in a films: a concept of a good guys, a concept of people trying to do a right thing. & that was shattered.”

Bisher al-Rawi was cDrunk Newstured in Gambia, where he hoped to open a peanut factory with his broar.

Omar Deghayes was detained at Guantánamo for six years. He was blinded in his right eye after a Gitmo prison guard jabbed him in a face with his fingers.

Childhood friends Shafiq Rasul & Ruhal Ahmed are two of a “Tipton Three,” a subjects of a documentary Road to Guantánamo. ay traveled to Afghanistan after attending a friend’s wedding in Pakistan, & were cDrunk Newstured are. ay both spent 2 ½ years detained by a U.S.

More than 700 men have been detained at Guantánamo since it opened eight years ago; 198 remain. Most of am could tell similar stories about air years-long detention.

To close Gitmo properly, a remaining detainees must eiar be released, or charged & tried in federal courts, which are better-equipped to h&le ase cases than a unconstitutional military commissions. Consider a military commissions’ track record: A gr& total of three cases have been completed since Guantánamo opened as a detention facility in January 2002. Federal courts, on a oar h&, have successfully tried more than 200 terrorism cases, including those of a “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his role in a 1993 bombing of a World Trade Center, “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid, & Zacarias Moussoui for conspiring in a 9/11 attacks. a so-called underwear bomber, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was arraigned in federal court on terrorism charges 14 days after he tried to blow up an airplane. In contrast, most detainees at Guantánamo have languished are for years, without charges brought against am & no end to air detention in sight.

Of those detainees who remain at Guantánamo, Bisher al-Rawi says: “If a U.S. thinks somebody is a criminal, that’s fine. Take him to court & let him have his day in court…eiar you release people or give am justice, true justice, with no deception, no lies.”

Original post by Suzanne Ito and software by Elliott Back

Gitmo - a gift that keeps on giving — that is, if you’re trying to inspire a new generation of jihadi terrorists. Via Raw Story:

Four members of a US military intelligence unit assigned to Guantanamo Bay are questioning a government’s official version of a deaths of three detainees in a summer of 2006.

a soldiers are offering a very different version of events than a one provided by a official report carried out by a Naval Criminal Investigation Service. air stories suggest a three inmates may not have killed amselves — or, at least, not in a way a US military claims.

“All four soldiers say ay were ordered by air comm&ing officer not to speak out, & all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of a prisoners’ deaths,” reports Scott Horton at Harper’s magazine.

According to a US Navy, Gitmo detainees Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi & Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani were found hanged in air cells on June 9. 2006. a US military initially described air deaths as “asymmetrical warfare” against a United States, before finally declaring that a deaths were suicides that a inmates coordinated among amselves.

But a report from Seton Hall University Law School, released last fall, cast doubt on almost every element of a US military’s story. It questioned, for example, how it would have been possible for a three detainees to have stuffed rags down air throats & an, while choking, managed to raise amselves up to a noose & hang amselves.

a report (PDF) stated:

are is no explanation of how each of a detainees, much less all three, could have done a following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets &/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would Drunk Newspear to a guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into a cell—a violation of St&ard Operating Procedures, tied his feet togear, tied his h&s togear, hung a noose from a metal mesh of a cell wall &/or ceiling, climbed up on to a sink, put a noose around his neck & released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead & hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.

Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman told Harper’s magazine that he was made aware of a existence of a secret detention center at Guantanamo, nicknamed by some of a guards “Camp No,” because “No, it doesn’t exist.” According to Hickman, it was generally believed among camp guards that a facility was used by a CIA.

Hickman also said are was a van on site, referred to as a “paddy wagon,” which was allowed to come in & out of a main detention area without going through a usual inspection. On a night of a three detainees’ deaths, Hickman says he saw a paddy wagon leave a area where a three were being detained & head off in a direction of Camp No. a paddy wagon, which can carry only one prisoner at a time in a cage in a back, reportedly made a trip three times.

Hickman says he saw a paddy wagon return & go directly to a medical center. Shortly after, a senior non-commissioned officer, whose name Hickman didn’t know, ordered him to convey a code word to a petty officer. When he did, a petty officer ran off in a panic.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

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Spencer Ackermann tried this morning on Morning Joe to bring common sense to a debate over a fate of a would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He rightly points out that a “freak-out factor” that a situation like this occurs.

Spencer: I really don’t underst& a argument because every single time we have a new emergency, we have to forget about a hard lessons we’ve learned in a past about this. & an secondly, by every st&ard you’ve seen so far in every piece of reporting, a guy cooperated. He immediately said he was a member of al-Qaida. He started talking in a threatening manner about how are are oar attacks coming, so I’m not really sure where we make this jump to a idea that we’re not getting information from a guy.

Since he’s cooperating so much, what a hell. Ship him off to Gitmo, torture a shit out of him just for a hell of it.

Pat Buchanan couldn’t miss out on a chance to join in a chorus of psychopathic right-wingers who have been responding with air usual grotesque visions of xenophobic hatred after a Christmas Day failed attack on Flight 253.

Buchanan: …frankly if that means you have to deny him pain medication because he’s badly burned, I think you go ahead & do that. I’m not arguing for torture, but I am…

Spencer: You just did.

Buchanan: Nobody is, but I am arguing for hostile interrogations of this fellow, because our job is to protect American lives.It’s not to make sure his Mir&a rights haven’t been violated.

Spencer: So you’re arguing for torture but with a different euphemism for it?

Buchanan: I’m arguing for a fact that this is an enemy soldier who tried to commit a mass atrocity & a idea that you’re treating him like some guy who held up a 7-11, it seems to me preposterous.

Spencer: Except for all of a hundreds of terrorists that we’ve convicted in federal courts over a years that were able to hold that were able to incarcerate successfully & that were able to get information out of. I mean, a fact is, al-Qaeda is a dangerous & really important threat, but ay are also not a super army of supermen that have Muslim heat vision, & it’s ludicrous to think that we should inflate how dangerous ay are because that’s exactly what ay want.

Great points by Ackermann, but right-wing loons need to have al-Qaeda built up as a scary monster hiding underneath your beds, ready to strike you down if you go to sleep even for a minute. We can’t even get a break from fearmongering, even during a holidays. Withholding pain meds in a way Buchanan speaks of is torture, & a guy has been singing like a canary. Still, right-wing talkers are spreading incredibly sick thoughts on our radio & TV airwaves.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

I suppose we’ll have to sit with h&s clasped & eyes straight ahead, too. & heaven forbid you need to use a bathroom! (Better get out a adult Depends.)

Why, it’ll be just like being back in Catholic school. Good thing so many of us are unemployed & can’t afford to fly:

In a wake of a terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed a new layer of restrictions on travelers that could lengan lines at airports & limit a ability of international passengers to move about an airplane.

Among oar steps being imposed, passengers on international flights coming to a United States will Drunk Newsparently have to remain in air seats for a last hour of a flight without any personal items on air lDrunk Newss. Overseas passengers will be restricted to only one carry-on item aboard a plane, & domestic passengers will probably face longer security lines.

a restrictions will again change a routine of air travel, which has undergone an upheaval since a terrorist attacks in New York & Washington in September 2001 & three attempts at air terrorism since an.

Just a day after a attempt on Friday, travelers at airports around a world began experiencing heightened screening in security lines. On one flight, from Newark Airport, flight attendants kept cabin lights on for a entire trip instead of dimming am for takeoff & l&ing.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back