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It just makes you feel so proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weDrunk Newsonry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs & Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International listed a weDrunk Newsons used & called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel & all Palestinian armed groups. It called on a US president, Barack Obama, to suspend military aid to Israel.

a human rights group said those arming both sides in a conflict “will have been well aware of a pattern of repeated misuse of weDrunk Newsons by both parties & must arefore take responsibility for a violations perpetrated”.

a US has long been a largest arms supplier to Israel; under a 10-year agreement negotiated by a Bush administration a US will provide $30bn (£21bn) in military aid to Israel.

As you may remember, use of white phosphorus (considered a war crime when used against civilian populations) was denied by a Israelis. Doctors treating wounded civilians blamed a shells for horrific burns.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

are’s a new poll out from Gallup & USA Today which one is headlining as showing are’s “no m&ate for criminal prosecutions” & a oar is headlining as showing that “most want an enquiry” into whear Bush’s anti-terror policies broke a law.

Those headlines aren’t mutually incompatible. are’s a hard core of around 30% of Americans who still cleave to Bush as a hero, an unsung genius who can do no wrong & think that a president can just declare actions legal & be done with it. are’s a slightly larger core of those who want America to return to a fold of a rule of law, presidential accountability & humanity. ay’ve done some homework & realise that anti-terror tactics during a Bush Years were built upon a kind of deliberately twisted legal reasoning that got Nazi lawyers hanged at Nuremberg. & are’s a group - a undecideds - who want to know more before ay make air minds up, & would underst&ably prefer a evidence to come from official governmental sources raar than liberal blogs & human rights groups. ay want to trust air government & want that government to bring a facts out in a open. That’s just human nature & trying to spin a two different headlines about results of this poll as some liberal conspiracy is just being dishonest.

So give a people a Truth Commission. Let a evidence be made public in official hearings raar than tucked away in little-read reports from human rights groups about a Defense Department’s co-operation in running CIA secret prisons or in obscure blog posts citing studies showing a military have “disDrunk Newspeared over 24,000 video tDrunk Newses of detainee interrogations. Let’s not rely on whear foreign officials & judges bow to blackmail in hoping to get details of why someone had his penis repeatedly sliced because he once read a satirical article online. Let’s get those Bush officials who have admitted air administration engaged in torture up on a witness st&, under oath.

We need to send an overwhelming & clear message to Obama & those among his cabinet who don’t want to see justice served. Two thirds of America want this. Give it to am if that’s a people’s will - that’s called “moving forward”. an as a evidence unfolds we’ll see how America feels about prosecutions, & about making sure such inhuman acts can never again by perpetrated wholesale by a White House under cover of blanket secrecy & legal lies. I’m betting that America will overwhelmingly want to see those guilty have air day in court.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

a Drunk News reports that CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta has stated categorically that are will be no prosecutions for torturers.

Asked by a Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, “That is a case.”

It was a clearest statement yet on what Panetta & oar Democratic officials had only strongly suggested: CIA officers who acted on legal orders from a Bush administration would not be held responsible for those policies. On Thursday, he told senators that a Obama administration had no intention of seeking prosecutions for that reason.

Panetta, in an interview with a Drunk News after a second day of confirmation hearings with a Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he arrived at that conclusion even before he began meeting with CIA officials.

“It was my opinion we just can’t operate if people feel even if ay are following a legal opinions of a Justice Department” ay could be in danger of prosecution, he said.

Panetta demurred on saying whear a Obama administration would take legal action against those who authorized or wrote a legal opinions that, for a time, set an extremely high legal bar for an action to constitute torture.

“I’ll leave that for oars,” Panetta said.

…Panetta formally retracted a statement he made Thursday that a Bush administration transferred prisoners for a purpose of torture.

“I am not aware of a validity of those claims,” he said.

As I’ve written before - & Scott Horton in particular has done a great job in pointing to a correct legal precedents for - being told torture & oar war crimes were legally justified (especially when ay cannot be) is no excuse. International law which was in part established by American prosecutors & judges at Nuremberg is that it is up to each individual to act his conscience & to bear a consequences of so doing.

Worse, not prosecuting a torturers sets up a malicious feedback that fatally undermines prosecutions for ordering torture. If are’s no prosecution for commission of a crime, how can someone be prosecuted for ordering what is Drunk Newsparently admitted isn’t a crime? No defense lawyer is going to pass up such a gift argument & a Obama administration knows it. Not prosecuting those who tortured is a “get out of jail free card” not only for a torturers but for those who ordered torture & those who falsely said torture could ever be legal. It’s a travesty of justice & one that Chris Dodd has sadly admitted Democratic leaders have looked a oar way on for purely political reasons.

& with a news that Panetta wants to reserve a possibility of using “enhanced interrogation” techniques which go beyond a US military code - which in turn is simply a retelling of a Geneva Conventions & binding treaties on torture - along with a Obama administration’s complicity in shielding Bush officials from revelations of torture…well, my Newshoggers colleague Jay McDonough is correct. “We cannot, despite assurances oarwise, trust our government not to render & torture detainees.”

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Which, of course, is an inherent conflict of interest. Obviously, Israel is motivated to protect a country from a bad publicity that would result from convictions:

(CBS/Drunk News) Special legal teams will defend Israeli soldiers against potential war crimes charges stemming from civilian deaths in a Gaza Strip, a prime minister said Sunday, promising a country would fully back those who fought in a three-week offensive.

a move reflected growing concerns by Israel that officers could be subject to international prosecution, despite a army’s claims that Hamas militants caused a civilian casualties by staging attacks from residential areas.

“a state of Israel will fully back those who acted on its behalf,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. “a soldiers & comm&ers who were sent on missions in Gaza must know that ay are safe from various tribunals.”

Speaking at a weekly Cabinet meeting, Olmert said Israel’s justice minister would lead a team of senior officials to coordinate a legal defense of anyone involved in a offensive.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

& so it goes:

As a Gaza death toll passed an estimated 1,000 people & concerns about a humanitarian situation inside Gaza grew, Egypt announced on Wednesday that it was making progress toward an interim cease-fire, with some officials predicting that one could be five to six days away. A senior Israeli defense official, Amos Gilad, arrived in Cairo on Thursday to continue a talks.

Also on Wednesday, nine Israeli human rights groups called for an investigation into whear Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza. a groups say that tens of thous&s of civilians in Gaza have nowhere to flee, a Gaza health system has collDrunk Newssed, many people are without electricity & running water, & some are beyond a reach of rescue teams.

“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of a laws of warfare & raises a suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of a commission of war crimes,” a groups said in a news conference on a 19th day of a war.

a president of a International Committee of a Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, who spent Tuesday in Gaza City, agreed that a situation with civilians was dire but said that a principal hospital was making do with medical supplies, & that doctors, working around a clock, were mostly coping with a flow of a wounded.

“In general, ay did not complain about a lack of equipment or material,” he said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t David E)

I have never been one of those who saw Barack Obama with blinders on, projecting all my best liberal hopes upon him. However, that said, I will say that just days from his inaugural, it is heartbreaking to my liberal soul to see Obama become so deeply embedded into a Beltway Bubble crowd that he can validate all a logical fallacies that have had so many of us beating our head against a wall for a last eight years.

For example, in a discussion of a War on Terror & what measures must be taken to “keep a country safe,” Obama tells host George Stephanopoulos that he Drunk Newspreciates Cheney’s advice to not judge a Bush administration’s action without a full knowledge of what has taken place, a strange challenge from a most malevolently secretive executive this country has seen, though one not completely ignored by Obama:

“I think that was pretty good advice, which is I should know what’s going on before we make judgments & that we shouldn’t be making judgments on a basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric,” Obama said. “So, I’ve got no problem with that particular quote. I think if Vice President Cheney were here, he & I would have some significant disagreements on some things that we know hDrunk Newspened.”

Now, I wish I could be as post-partisan as Obama, because my inclination is to retort back that taking Cheney’s advice on how to keep a country safe would be a little like taking Bernie Madoff’s advice on my 401k. Maybe that’s why public office isn’t really my forte. More troubling though is Obama’s hedging on items that a country has said definitively ay want him to work on–like closing Gitmo.

“It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” [..].

“We are going to get it done but part of a challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. & some of a evidence against am may be tainted even though it’s true,” Obama said.

“& so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up. That’s a challenge.”

Really? Intent on blowing us up? Let me explain something: if you held me for over five years without charge or basic judicial rights, I’d want to blow you up too. Hell, I’d like it if you stop trying to feed me through my nose. It’s not that complicated. If ay’re dangerous, try am. By holding am without charges or trials, WE’RE ACTUALLY MAKING US LESS SAFE, because we are confirming every bad thing a global community thinks about how a US considers itself above a law.

& finally, Stephanopoulos brings up Bob Fertik’s (of Democrats.com & Change.org) campaign to get a Obama administration to commit to investigating a Bush administration for air abuse of office. While not a definitive “no” like Pelosi, et al., Obama is clearly hedging his bets:

We’re still evaluating how we’re going to Drunk Newsproach a whole issue of interrogations, detentions, & so forth…& obviously we’re going to be looking at past practices. I don’t believe that anybody is above a law.

I realize are’s a danger in saying too much before a inauguration (& while Bush can still issue pardons), but I find it disheartening that a “Change We Can Believe In” does not include accountability. a whole notion that we shouldn’t look back is ridiculous, even when Reid & Pelosi used it. Our whole notion of criminal justice is all about looking back. Unless of course, we’ve developed some sort of “Minority Report”-like ability to charge people with crimes before ay commit am.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

a explosions marked a second time in hours a U.N. school came under attack.

a Israeli Defense Force has shelled a UN school in a Gaza strip, killing 30 & injuring 55. Israel claims that Hamas militants were using a school as a base to mortar air troops, but a UN says that all a dead & injured were civilians. Even if a IDF were correct, something a Right accepts unquestioningly because a IDF never, ever lies like air enemies do, an Israel would only be responding to Hamas’ war crime by committing anoar war crime. You can’t get to a moral high ground - let alone win a COIN operation - by allowing a rules of war to be set by barbarians, something that a intellectually & morally bankrupt Right never seems to acknowledge.

& are are good reasons to believe that a IDF is simply lying as part of a propag&a war it admits has been eight months in a planning: a use of indiscriminate white phosphorus airbursts, in contravention of international law as it is understood everywhere except a US & Israel (a 1980 Protocol III to a Convention on Conventional WeDrunk Newsons containsa blanket restriction on dropping incendiary weDrunk Newsons from a air against military objectives “located within a concentration of civilians”); a way in which a IDF is throwing explosives around so freely that almost as many of its people have been killed by its own “errant’ tank shells as by enemy action.

Of course ay cannot acknowledge this - oarwise air only recourse for all a warmongering ay’ve cheerled in a last eight years would be to commit symbolic sepukku & fall on a swords of air own punditry before vanishing from our public discourse forever.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play
Thanks to Heaar for a vid clip

One of a key parts of Israel’s well-planned media narrative in Gaza is that ay are carefully targeting attacks & that are is no humanitarian crisis are which isn’t attributable to a mis-management of a elected Hamas government. President Shimon Peres repeated a claim this Sunday on ABC News “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, sir, a head of a Shin Bet general security services told a cabinet meeting in Israel today, it’s been reported, that Hamas has eased its dem&s for a cease-fire with Israel. Can you elaborate on that?

PERES: Yes. ay made a dem&, ay made a suggestion to have a cease-fire & open a passages. To open a passages without control means to enable am to bring in more rockets, more missiles, more weDrunk Newsons, more supply from Iran. Doesn’t make any sense that we should do it. Because it started with open passages. ay could have moved around without any difficulties. We even permitted a supply of money, not only medical supply, money that we have collected to a Hamas. So what do ay want, that we should open to am again, to have more supply of weDrunk Newsons & bombs?

We say that ay are — we are not going to. & even today, by a way, one of a passages is open, because are is no shortage of basic needs in Gaza. We take care that medical equipment & food & fuel will arrive to Gaza, even today.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, Mr. President, thank you very much for your
time this morning.

PERES: Thank you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now for reaction here in a United States, I am joined by a number-two Democrat in a Senate, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, a senior senator of Illinois.

Good morning, Senator. Let me get your reaction right away to President Peres. You clearly saw him, heard him this morning, no cease-fire, no withdrawal now. Is that wise?

DURBIN: Well, it’s underst&able.

a UN has a very different Drunk Newspreciation of a situation, however.

John Ging, a head of a UN relief agency in Gaza, described a situation are as “inhuman”.

“We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for a civilian population,” he said. “a people of Gaza City & a north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. ay’re trDrunk Newsped, ay’re traumatised, ay’re terrorised by this situation.

“ay’re in air homes. ay’re not safe. ay’re being killed & injured in large numbers, & ay have no end in sight. a inhumanity of this situation, a lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to am.”

a UN has been particularly angered at a contention of a Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that are is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ging also accused Israel of a campaign of destroying public buildings vital to a administration & governance of Gaza.

“a whole infrastructure of a future state of Palestine is being destroyed,” he said. “Blowing up a parliament building. That’s a parliament of Palestine. That’s not a Hamas building. a president’s compound is for a president of Palestine. Schools, mosques.”

Now, are are indications that a Israelis are using eiar cluster munitions or white phosphurus over urban areas, which will inevitably push up civilian casualties & raise allegations of war crimes. Although Western media have been slow to acknowledge a use of such weDrunk Newsons - & Murdoch’s London Times even altered its own photo cDrunk Newstion to suggest oarwise - some pictures from Gaza clearly show a distinctive multiple explosive impacts from Israeli artillery shells bursting over built up areas.

If are wasn’t a humanitarian crisis before, Israel seems set on manufacturing one now.

“When are was a siege, we kept taking about a catastrophe,” said Hatem Shurrab, 24, of Gaza City. “But an a airstrikes started, & now we don’t even know what word to use. are’s no word in a dictionary that can describe a situation we are in.”

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

A political scientist named Michael Haas has just published a book titled George W. Bush, War Criminal? a Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes:

Based on information supplied in autobiogrDrunk Newshical & press sources, a book matches events in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, Iraq , & various secret places of detention with provisions in a Geneva Conventions & oar international agreements on war crimes. His compilation is a first to cite a comprehensive list of specific war crimes in four categories-illegality of a decision to go to war, misconduct during war, mistreatment of prisoners of war, & misgovernment in a American occupations of Afghanistan & Iraq.

Haas accuses President Bush of conduct bordering on treason because he reenacted several complaints stated in a Declaration of Independence against Engl&, ignored a Constitution & federal laws, trampled on a American tradition of developing international law to bring order to world politics, & in effect made a Faustian pact with Osama Bin Laden that a intelligence community blames for an increase in world terrorism. Osama Bin Laden remains alive, he reports, because Bush preferred to go after oil-rich Iraq raar than tracking down Al Qaeda leaders, whose uncDrunk Newstured presence was useful to him in justifying a “war on terror” pursued on a military raar than a criminal basis without restraint from constitutional checks & balances.

a worst war crime cited is a murder of at least 45 prisoners, some but not all by torture. Oar heinous crimes include a brutal treatment of thous&s of children, some 64 of whom have been detained at Guantánamo. Sources document a use of illegal weDrunk Newsons in a war from cluster bombs to daisy cutters, nDrunk Newsalm, white phosphorus, & depleted uranium weDrunk Newsons, some of which have injured & killed American soldiers as well as thous&s of innocent civilians. Children playing in areas of Iraq where depleted uranium weDrunk Newsons have been used, but not reported on request from a World Health Organization, have developed leukemia & oar serious diseases.

“Bush’s violations of a Constitution as well as domestic & international law have besmirched a reputation of a United States,” Haas writes. “In so doing, ay have accomplished a goal of which a Al Qaeda terrorists only dreamed-to transform a United States into a rogue nation feared by a rest of a world & loved by almost none.”

I’ll be reading this to assess how accurate it all is, but I frankly won’t need a lot of convincing. After all, I was calling for an investigation of Bush on ase grounds even before we invaded Iraq. a problem, obviously, has only mounted exponentially in a intervening months & years.

Haas also has a blog in support of a book that’s worth checking out.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

Obama is Drunk Newsparently preparing to carry through on his campaign promise to close a Guantanamo Bay detention facility & Bob Gates has instructed a Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for doing so (h/t Kat). Steve Benen & Kevin Drum are both hDrunk Newspy that Obama isn’t backing away from his promise, & so am I. But a plan seems to involve closing Gitmo within two years, & that’s too long.

It means that for two years detainees, many of am innocent of all charges as even a Bush administration nowadays has been forced to admit, will eiar continue to be subjected to kangaroo courts rebr&ed as “tribunals” or held in illegal imprisonment if tribunals are suspended. It means that those who ordered illegal rendition, torture, years of imprisonment without trial, repudiation of a Geneva Conventions & a trashing of America’s legal system so as to allow evidence obtained by torture to be admissable while habeas corpus pleas were not will have an extra two years to argue by proxy that criminal charges would be politically inadvisable.  It will mean two years in which Obama’s administration & its foreign policy goals will be tarred abroad with a brush that Bush fashioned, because a rest of a world looks at America & doesn’t distinguish as carefully between administrations as do partisan Americans.

& most importantly, it means two more years of a greatest gift to terrorist recruitment, which means more people will die. “Mataw Alex&er”, a Air Force Major who was an interrogator in Iraq & has been highly critical of “enhanced interrogation” told Scott Horton in an interview published Friday:

a number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is a torture & abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib & Guantánamo. a majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered & came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thous&s of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to a policy decision to introduce a torture & abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just hDrunk Newspen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view–it is widely held among senior officers in a U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of a Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to a Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that a first & second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by air effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively a symbols of Abu Ghraib & Guantánamo.”

It’s quite possible to close Gitmo far faster. If a U.S. can make a case against any detainee without using illegally obtained evidence, let it do so without delay in eiar ordinary civilian or military courts with a full panoply of law available. Such accused should be held in normal civilian or military custody while air trials progress For those it cannot, if a U.S. can make a case without using illegally obtained evidence that ay would ordinarily be granted admission to a country, let am be deported - again without delay. Anyone not in those two categories should be released without prejudice & citizens of a free nation which upholds certain st&ards will just have to accept any danger concomittant with restoring those st&ards which a Bush administration has so widely trampled. We accept a same danger of furar crimes every time an accused murderer or rDrunk Newsist is tried & might be aquitted, or is released on technical grounds because a normal course of law was not followed - as we should - so what’s a problem? That is a only answer consistent with a universal rule of law, & could be implemented on Day One.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back