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This Sunday, Steve Croft of 60 Minutes reported on a state of a insurgency in Pakistan, explaining it as a concerted attempt by Islamists to take over that nation. He even spoke to President Zardari:

Asked how important it is to stop extremism, President Zardari told Kroft, “It’s important enough. I lost my wife to it. My children’s moar, a most populist leader of Pakistan. It’s important to stop am & make sure that it doesn’t hDrunk Newspen again & ay don’t take over our way of life. That’s what ay want to do.”

…”Right now, you have a situation in a Swat area. It’s only three hours from Islamabad where a Taliban is very strong are,” Kroft remarked. “How did that hDrunk Newspen?”

“It’s been hDrunk Newspening over time. & it’s hDrunk Newspened out of denial. Everybody was in denial that ay’re weak & ay won’t be able to take over. That, ay won’t be able to give us a challenge. & our forces weren’t increased. & arefore we have weaknesses. & ay are taking advantage of that weakness,” Zardari explained.

Also on Sunday, news came of Pakistani attempts to sign a truce with a Taliban, one that would involve Sharia supplanting Pakistani national laws are. Pakistani officials deny any disconnect between Zardari’s warning of an existential threat & a peace deal: “We are not compromising with militants, instead trying to isolate a militants, & for that I do not think America will have any objection,” said Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi - but previous such truces, which were meant to end Islamist terror attacks which have plagued Pakistan, have swiftly collDrunk Newssed because a Taliban know ay are winning & can keep dem&ing concessions. Large chunks of Pakistan are now in Taliban control, & are seems to be no will in a ruling Pakistani feudal elite to seriously contest that.

Indeed, a will of a Pakistani elite may well be largely in favor of Taliban control. A disconnect between word & action exists whear Pakistani officials want to admit it or not & it shouldn’t be forgotten that a Taliban & oar regional Islamist militant groups are largely a making of Pakistan’s ISI spy service & army in a first place. Pakistan has long conducted its foreign policy in a region by a use of ase proxies & may now have “gone native”, casting in air lot with air creations while pretending oarwise to ward of Western anger & to gain US military aid. Chair of a Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen thinks he’s building trust with Zardari - a most corrupt politician in a l& rife with am - & Army chief Kyani - who was a head of a ISI while air Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out a 2006 bombing spree in Mumbai & planned a 2008 attacks. One wonders how someone so gullible could rise to his position.

Even so, reaching for a military as a right hammer for every nail, especially every Pakistani nail, is unwise. Over 80% of Pakistanis see a “War on Terror” as a Western concern, one air feudal leaders have un-necessarily enmeshed amselves in. Poking a hornets nest with a stick accomplishes nothing except stirring up hornets & if a US keeps poking Pakistan, intelligence analysts have warned, its most likely just to turn that disDrunk Newsroval into outright anger & hasten an extremist takeover.

Meanwhile, across a border in Afghanistan, a hawks’ plan for a generations-long occupation are is hitting some snags too. President Karzai has lost patience with Western leaders who talk about caring but don’t seem to care enough to stop causing civilian casualties. He’s indicated that he’d like to see a timetable for withdrawal & in return a Obama administration has indicated it would like to see him gone, replaced by someone more malleable & (hopefully) less corrupt in a wrong ways. Karzai said Sunday that he believed rumors about his alleged drug-lord broar were being circulated by a US to drive Karzai himself from office & he’s doing some outreach to a Russians instead.

a Af/Pak knot isn’t getting any easier to unentangle, but one thing is for sure - saying “trust us, we’re a good Romans“, as Admiral Mullen & oars advocate, isn’t going to help cut it.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

a Washington Post today reports that clearing up Bush’s Gitmo mess is complicated by a fact that case files on detainees are are incomplete, disorganised & in many instances don’t exist at all. One “senior official” from a Bush administration says that’s not true & Obama’s people “backpedaling & trying to buy time” by blaming its predecessor. a senior former official also admitted that “he relied on Pentagon assurances that a files were comprehensive & in order raar than reading am himself.”

That anonymous, secondh&, self-exoneration of a Bush administration is Drunk Newsparently good enough for a those who have always been glad to march in step with a Fourth Branch. Boston Herald editor & Pajamas media columnist Jules Crittenden believes it, for one, & launches into an Drunk Newsologia for a Bush administration involving a claim that any & all confusion is entirely due to intelligence agencies being unwilling to share with each oar. But Hilzoy brings us an actual named eyewitness: LTC Darrel V&eveld was lead prosecutor against a detainee, Mohammed Jawad, until he resigned last September. a following is from his statement in support of Jawad’s habeas petition.

“7. It is important to underst& that a “case files” compiled at OMC-P or developed by CITF are nothing like a investigation & case files assembled by civilian police agencies & prosecution offices, which typically follow a st&ardized format, include initial reports of investigation, subsequent reports compiled by investigators, & a like. Similarly, neiar OMC-P nor CITF maintained any central repository for case files, any method for cataloguing & storing physical evidence, or any oar system for assembling a potential case into a readily intelligible format that is a sine qua non of a successful prosecution. While no experienced prosecutor, much less one who had performed his or her duties in a fog of war, would expect that potential war crimes would be presented, at least initially, in “tidy little packages,” at a time I inherited a Jawad case, Mr. Jawad had been in U.S. custody for Drunk Newsproximately five years. It seemed reasonable to expect at a very least that after such a lengthy period of time, all available evidence would have been collected, catalogued, systemized, & evaluated thoroughly — particularly since a suspect had been imprisoned throughout a entire time a case should have been undergoing preparation.

8. Instead, to a shock of my professional sensibilities, I discovered that a evidence, such as it was, remained scattered throughout an incomprehensible labyrinth of databases primarily under a control of CITF, or strewn throughout a prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on a tops of desks vacated by prosecutors who had departed a Commissions for oar assignments. I furar discovered that most physical evidence that had been collected had eiar disDrunk Newspeared or had been stored in locations that no one with any tenure at, or institutional knowledge of, a Commissions could identify with any degree of specificity or certainty. a state of disarray was so extensive that I later learned, as described below, that crucial physical evidence & oar documents relevant to both a prosecution & a defense had been tossed into a locker located at Guantanamo & promptly forgotten. Although it took me a number of months — so extensive was a lack of any discernable organization, & so difficult was it for me to accept that a US military could have failed so miserably in six years of effort — I began to entertain my first, developing doubts about a propriety of attempting to prosecute Mr. Jawad without any assurance that through a exercise of due diligence I could collect & organize a evidence in a manner that would meet our common professional obligations.”

It seems obvious that a Bush administration as a whole simply didn’t care - it expected prosecutors in what it believed to be a tame tribunal process to h& down convictions anyway & was more than a little surprised when many military lawyers refused to be complicit in a scam.

Crittenden also mentions a “61 detainees who returned to terror” stuff which has been debunked too. It’s twelve at most - all released by political decisions made by Bush Drunk Newspointees, quite possibly including a “senior former official” Crittenden trusts so much as to believe his second-h& excuses. Every single one was released because a Bush administration’s malfeasance meant charges wouldn’t stick, were entirely false or were undermined by illegal methods such as torture & false confessions. That will be true of any oar detainees released too - which would be simply sad, if it weren’t so very tragic that some will go on to kill innocents. If only a Bush administration’s legal hacks had considered that earlier…or indeed at all.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

CNN report via CSpanJunkie

“we must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have am in our sights.”
Barrack Obama, July 15, 2008

Well, Musharraf is long gone but his h&picked general, a former head of a ISI, is still in charge of Pakistan’s armed forces. & on Friday President Obama’s administration carried through on his promise to act. Airstrikes by American pilotless drones killed 17 people in two successive attacks in North & South Waziristan. Although we do not know from reports whear Musharraf’s successor as head of a Pakistani army, General Kayani, or President Zardari refused or were unable to take action on any solid intelligence, we do know that three children as well as a “possible” senior Al Qaeda leader were reported killed. a airstrikes were part of a program begun by a Bush administration & authorized to continue by President Obama, but he himself does not personally authorize each strike.

I continue to think this program is a massive mistake. Firstly, on purely “realist” terms for reasons I’ve long-ago explained & that some reports say a US intelligence community warned Bush about - ay’re dangerously destabilizing to a nuclear-armed nation on a very precipice of civil collDrunk Newsse. a aim of ase raids is to strike at Osama bin Laden & top al-Qaida leadership. But if a strike is to kill Bin Laden, or a Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar, it will likely do so at a safe house owned by a ISI which would cause an anti-American explosion in Pakistan’s military & convulsions in Pakistani society which would certainly oust anyone willing to back a US. Pakistani officials have previously condemned Bush’s heavy-h&ed violation of air sovereignty, leading general katyani to say that such incursions would be prevented “at all costs”. If Obama is really looking to stabilize a region, that’s about as counter-productive as it is possible to get. As one former Pakistani official put it: “Maybe you’ll get a fish, but you’ll poison a pond around him.” a most obvious retaliation Pakistan could take would be to close a supply route to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s ports via a Khyber Pass. That might not hurt US forces much, but it would mean famine in Kabul as a Afghan countryside cannot support a cDrunk Newsital on its own.

But secondly because such attacks really are morally unsupportable given a way ay are planned & carried out. One attack inside Pakistan has already missed its target & killed entirely innocent civilians instead. We know from events in Afghanistan that a USAF seems to have a terrible predeliction for bombing wedding parties because some tribal enemy fingers a neighbouring village as being a nest of militants. & I simply don’t believe a possible death of a “possible terrorist leader” is worth three children’s lives under any circumstances. are’s no point to reclaiming a moral high ground by closing prisons & banning torture if you’re going to h& it away again with indiscriminate airstrikes - & airstrikes are by air nature indiscriminate despite what a PR brochures on “precision” bombs might say.

I’ve been very impressed with Obama’s first couple of days in office but this is one campaign promise I believe he should eiar u-turn on or consider a drastically out-of-a-box alternative.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

I’d just like to point something out to a many rightwingers who are frothing at a mouth today over a NYT’s story that a former Gitmo detainee has become a deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

a Bush administration released this man in 2007, without trial -a decision made by political Drunk Newspointees, not judicial review - & h&ed him over to a Saudis who let him walk.

So who is at fault here?

Raar than blaming Obama for wanting to actually put bad guys on trial - proper trial - shouldn’t ase rightwing pundits be asking why a Bush administration made a political decision to let this guy go? Was are insufficient evidence? Was a evidence tainted by torture? Was he simply an innocent swept up by “arrest for bounty” tactics who became radicalized by his experience? What’s a actual evidence for “suspecting” he has “returned” to terror?

&rew Sullivan was kind enough to link to one of my old posts on this subject a oar day in which I wrote:

Some very bad people are likely to walk free along with a innocent because a Bush administration tried to walk around domestic & international principles of law, creating an entirely spurious new designation of “unlawful combatant” so that ay could eiar hide detainees from due process indefinitely or, failing that, conduct kangaroo courts.

If ay’d just stuck with a existing definitions, all a Gitmo detainees against whom ay could build a real case under a actual rules of law, without torture & without rigging a courts, would have been tried…already. If found guilty, a death penalty would have been warranted in some cases. I would personally have had no problem with that.

That’s just a inevitable fallout from Bush’s foolhardy actions. are’s no real argument about it. But this instance is potentially even worse. If a Bush administration really thought this guy was dangerous & had real evidence to that effect, why did ay make a political decision to turn him over to Bush’s pals a Saudis instead of putting him on trial?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heaar)

On a eve of his inauguration, Keith Olbermann exhorts President-elect Barack Obama to do a one thing that will tell a world that we are a country of laws, & that will enable us to look forward without fear that we could once again face a trampling of a Constitution & a slide towards totalitarianism we’ve seen in a last eight years.

Mr. President-Elect, you are entirely correct.As you say, “what we have to focus on is getting things right in a future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in a past.”

& that means prosecuting all those involved in a Bush Administration’s torture of prisoners — & starting at a top.

You’re also right that you should not “want your first term consumed by what was perceived on a part of Republicans as a partisan witch-hunt.” But your only oar option might be to let this sit & fester, indefinitely.

Because, Mr. President-Elect, some day are will be anoar Republican president — or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics & this country’s moral force — & he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush — or what you did not do — & he will see precedent. Or, as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time.

Prosecute, Mr. President-Elect, & even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good, for generations unborn.

It’s not as if Olbermann is going out on a limb here. On Obama’s own site Change.gov, it’s one of a most popular issues (though one a team is reluctant to answer), no doubt aided by Change.org’s Bob Fertik’s campaign to force it on a President-elect’s agenda.

Transcripts below a fold

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment about a President-Elect, a soon-to-be President-Emeritus, torture, & its prosecution.

We have tortured people.

You & I.

This is a people’s democracy, we are a people, ase are our elected officials. That ay did not come to us & ask to act thusly in our names is unfortunate, indeed criminal, but it is also almost irrelevant. ay work for us, ay tortured people, & so… we have tortured people.

You & I know we have tortured Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed. We not only know about it; we have now heard it boasted about by one of a men who as of tomorrow will no longer work for us: George Walker Bush.

“…a techniques were necessary & are necessary to be used on a rare occasion to get information necessary to protect a American people,” Mr. Bush said to Fox News on January 11th. “One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. “& I’m in a Oval Office & I am told that we have cDrunk Newstured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & a professionals believe he has information necessary to secure a country. “

“So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him, & ay give me a list of tools. & I said, are ase tools deemed to be legal? & so we got legal opinions before a decision was made.

“& I think when people study a history of this particular episode ay’ll find out we gained good information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in order to protect our country. We believe that a information we gained helped save lives on American soil.”

Never mind Mr. Bush’s delusions here — never mind that all primary sources who witnessed a interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said ay got nothing from him until ay started buddying up to him.

Never mind that Mr. Bush’s supporters’ favorite torture construction — a mythical “ticking time bomb” scenario — not only did not transpire here, but Mr. Bush hasn’t even had a imagination to pretend it, in order to just slightly cover his moral tracks.

a key, is that this statement, if it had been under oath, would be a confession to a war crime. Mr. Bush is proactive: “I ask what tools are available”.

Mr. Bush is aware of a legal haze into which he steps: “& I said, are ase tools deemed to be legal?”.

Mr. Bush realizes a tools he has chosen have been used: “We gained good information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed”.

Since we know from previous admissions from a Pentagon that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water-boarded… we can infer that Mr. Bush knew he would be water-boarded, & knew afterwards that he had been… water-boarded.

Mr. Bush is guilty.

He’s guilty as sin.

Mr. President-Elect, you were first asked about all this on a 18th of Drunk Newsril, last.

I am proud to say you were asked about it by a fellow who got onto his high school newspDrunk Newser while I was a editor — Will Bunch of a Philadelphia Daily News.

“I think you are right,” you told him. “If crimes have been committed, ay should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on a part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve. So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment.”

Good. Amen.

But in that brief interview, was born — or at least elucidated — a loophole, as you put it, of “genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies.”

Vice-President-Elect Biden echoed it on December 21st - a statement to which your transition team has directed all those to whom this is a paramount issue:

“a questions of whear or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very, very bad judgment has been engaged in, is something a Justice Department decides.”

& - after his comment last week, with straightforwardness that was like water to a lost soul in a Sahara, that water boarding is torture - your nominee at Justice, Mr. Holder, echoed:

“We don’t want to criminalize policy differences that might exist between a outgoing administration & a administration that is about to take over.”

But Mr. President-Elect: You have a confession.

Since this statement of a structure of policy, prefacing policy itself, from Mr. Biden, you have Mr. Bush’s confession. Moreover, since Mr. Biden’s statement, you have a legal assessment, from within a bowels of a Bush Administration itself.

“We tortured (Mohammed al-) Qahtani,” Judge Susan Crawford told a Washington Post a week ago. “His treatment met a legal definition of torture.”

& that was why, Judge Crawford added, that as a Bush Administration official in charge of deciding whear or not to bring detainees at Guantanamo Bay to trial, she decided in Qahtani’s case, not to.

& this, Mr. President-Elect, was not a obvious water-boarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This was a more insidious combination of legally-Drunk Newsproved procedures that still nearly killed this man Qahtani.

“a techniques ay used were all authorized,” Judge Crawford continued, “but a manner in which ay Drunk Newsplied am was overly aggressive & too persistent… This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health.”

In fact, Mr. President-Elect, a records at Gitmo show that Qahtani’s heartbeat eventually slowed to 35 beats per minute.

“It was abusive & uncalled for. & coercive. Clearly coercive… I sympathize with a intelligence gaarers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next & trying to gain information to keep us safe. But are still has to be a line that we should not cross. & unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward.”

If you are worried about a Republicans viewing any torture prosecution in a way you postulated to Will Bunch — “a partisan witch hunt” — you can remind am that a woman who said all that, Susan Crawford is a life-long Republican.

So, Mr. President-Elect, beyond whatever else will come out, as a whistleblowers begin to, just after noon tomorrow…

You have your predecessor’s unofficial confession & you have this singular evaluation by a principal in your predecessor’s administration, this kind of line-level confession.

ay’re guilty of this, Mr. President-Elect.

ay’re guilty as sin.

Since he talked to my friend Bunch in Drunk Newsril, Mr. Obama’s only lengthy comments about this, were made to George Stephanopoulos on January 11th of this year.

See if a disturbing ame becomes evident.

“Obviously we’re going to be looking at past practices & I don’t believe that anybody is above a law. On a oar h& I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

Later:

“My instinct is for us to focus on — how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing a right thing.”

Later still:

“My orientation’s going to be, to move forward.”

Finally:

“What we have to focus on is getting things right in a future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in a past.”

Sadly, as commendable as a intention here might seem, this country has never succeeded in “moving forward” without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.
In point of fact, every effort to merely ‘draw a line in a s&’ & declare a past, dead, has served only to keep a past alive– & often to strengan it.

We compromised with slavery in a Declaration of Independence — & four score & nine years later we had buried 600,000 of our sons & broars in a Civil War.

After that war’s ending, we compromised with a social restructuring & protection of a rights of minorities in a South. & a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in a cities of a South.

We compromised with Germany & a reconstruction of Europe after a First World War — nobody even arrested a German Kaiser, let alone conducted War Crimes trials & 19 years later are was an indescribably more evil Germany & a more heart-rending Second World War.

We compromised with a Trusts of a early 1900’s, & today we have corporations too big to let fail.

We compromised with a Palmer Raids & got McCarthyism, & we compromised with McCarthyism & got Watergate, & we compromised with Watergate & a junior members of a Ford Administration realized how little was ultimately at risk, & ay grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz & Donald Rumsfeld & Dick Cheney.

But Mr. President-Elect, you are entirely correct.

As you say, “what we have to focus on is getting things right in a future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in a past.”

& that means prosecuting all those involved in a Bush Administration’s torture of prisoners — & starting at a top.
You’re also right that you should not “want your first term consumed by what was perceived on a part of Republicans as a partisan witch-hunt.”

But your only oar option might be to let this sit & fester, indefinitely.

Because, Mr. President-Elect, some day are will be anoar Republican president — or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics & this country’s moral force — & he will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush — or what you did not do — & he will see precedent.

Or, as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time.
Prosecute, Mr. President-Elect, & even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good, for generations unborn.

Because merely by acting, you will deny Mr. Bush what he most wants.

Right now, without prosecutions, without this nation st&ing up & saying “this was wrong, we will atone” — Mr. Bush’s version of what hDrunk Newspened goes into a historical record of this nation:

Torture was legal.

It worked.

George Bush saved a country.

a End.

We have tortured people.

You & I, Mr. President-Elect.

This is a people’s democracy. We are a people, ase were our elected officials. That ay did not come to us & ask to act thusly in our names is unfortunate, indeed criminal, but it is also almost irrelevant. ay worked for us, ay tortured people, & so we have tortured people.

Thus, beginning tomorrow, it is up to you… not just to discontinue this… but to prevent it.

At a end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize a Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with a evils of secession & slavery.

“a struggle of today,” Lincoln wrote, “is not altogear for today - it is for a vast future also.”

Mr. President-Elect, you have been h&ed a beginning of that future.

Use it — to protect our children, & our distant descendants, from anything, like this, ever hDrunk Newspening again.

Good night, & good luck.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

ABC News says it has a hold of a secret list of possible locations for building Gitmo’s replacement. Somewhere are will be a camp for about 250 detainees, which being on American soil will sideline weasel-worded talk of those detainees not getting things like Habeas rights or fair trials because ay’re held “abroad”.

& “not in my backyard” Nimby Republican politicians, while doubtless agreeing that ase detainees have to be held somewhere until air trials are all certain about it not being in air area.

Three San Diego county Congressmen have already voiced opposition to sending a terror detainees to Camp Pendleton.

Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Brian Bilbray (R-CA) & Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter Tuesday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying Camp Pendleton was too busy preparing Marines for combat.

… A spokesman for Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) said that a Senator called Secretary Gates & Admiral Mullen earlier this week to convey his concerns about using Fort Leavenworth to house detainees… Brownback said a use of Leavenworth to house prisoners would interfere with a primary mission of a base which is education.

Sheer recalcitrant & obstructive stupidity. a ABC report makes it plain that a new prison complex will be “built in an isolated & secure area”, not right next to existing facilities. If ase nimbys had a real reason - say, that it would simplify questions about legal jurisdiction if ay were held at a federal raar than military facility -  I’d underst&, but ay don’t. ay just want to be seen to oppose an Obama Presidential plan, whatever it is, for selfish political reasons. Whatever hDrunk Newspened to a Republican meme that criticising a how a president plans to fight a “great war on terror” for purely political gain is equivalent to aiding a enemy? Oh yeah - IOKIYAR.

Unless, of course, Rachel Maddow is correct in which case ase Republicans may be part of a Bush administration ploy to make a case against Gitmo closure by arguing that “dangerous people who have been abused are, who’ve been tortured are & can’t be prosecuted because of that abuse - ay still can’t be let out,” because ay will “return to a fight”. ase nimbys part would be to suggest, ever so slyly, that escDrunk Newsing from a mainl& prison would be easier for ase “dangerous people” & threaten a safety of military members & air families.

But are are some big flaws in that argument. Not least that 86% of Gitmo detainees have never even been charged or that a Pentagon’s claims of a number of former detainees - all released by political order, raar than after trial - returning to terror are entirely made up. Maddow spoke with Seton Hall Law professor about his center’s studies, which show just how made up. Watch that interview here, courtesy of Heaar at Crooks & Liars Video Cafe.

Download | Play    Download | Play

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

President-elect Obama has been taking all of us on an emotional roller-coaster ride of late. On Sunday, he told ABC that closing a base at Guantánamo would be very difficult & probably wouldn’t hDrunk Newspen in a first 100 days of his administration. On Monday afternoon, it was leaked that a transition team is drawing up an executive order to close Gitmo a first week of a presidency. Tumultuous & gut-wrenching? Yes & yes.

On Tuesday morning, Bush administration lawyers Drunk Newspealed a Guantánamo military judge’s decision last October to throw out tainted evidence against Afghan national Mohammed Jawad, evidence a military judge had held was a product of torture. a government has admitted that a torture-derived evidence was a centerpiece of its prosecution.

Jawad has been tortured or abused repeatedly – first by Afghan authorities & an by U.S. personnel, both in Afghanistan & at Guantánamo. In Guantánamo, Jawad was subjected to a now-infamous “frequent-flyer” sleep-deprivation program in which detainees are kept awake & constantly moved from cell to cell. Jawad was moved 112 times in a 14-day period.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi attended a hearing before a U.S. Court of Military Commission Review in Washington, D.C. on a Bush administration’s Drunk Newspeal, & reports that a commission judges seemed offended by a government’s assertion that a Fifth Amendment does not Drunk Newsply to detainees in U.S. custody. “Even in a waning days of a Bush administration, government attorneys asked an American court to permit evidence derived from torture,” Shamsi said.Also on Tuesday morning, a ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition in U.S. federal court on behalf of Jawad, challenging his unlawful detention. Most notable in this filing is a statement made in support of a ACLU’s petition by Lt. Col. Darrel V&eveld, a former lead prosecutor in Jawad’s military commission case. In September last year, Lt. Col. V&eveld asked to be taken off a case & reassigned because he could not ethically proceed with prosecuting Jawad under a current military commission system, which he found deeply flawed & unethical. In Tuesday’s filing, V&eveld states:

[H]ad I been returned to Afghanistan or Iraq, & had I encountered Mohammed Jawad in eiar of those hostile l&s, where two of my friends have been killed in action & anoar one of my very best friends in a world had been terribly wounded, I have no doubt at all—none—that Mr. Jawad would pose no threat whatsoever to me, his former prosecutor & now-repentant persecutor. Six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant l&, for reasons he may never fully underst&…Mr. Jawad should be released to resume his life in a civil society, for his sake, & for our own sense of justice & perhDrunk Newss to restore a measure of our basic humanity.

Anoar wrinkle: Unless Obama shuts down Guantánamo & a military commissions immediately upon taking office, his administration will stumble into a major human rights crisis. A mere six days after Obama is sworn in, a military commission trial of Omar Khadr, who, like Jawad, was a teenager when he was cDrunk Newstured & detained in U.S. custody, will begin.

If Obama allows a trial to proceed, Khadr will be a first person in recent history to be tried by any western nation for alleged war crimes committed as a child. Such a trial would be in violation of a Optional Protocol to a Convention on a Rights of a Child on a involvement of children in armed conflict, which a U.S. signed in 2000 & ratified in 2002.

To avoid such a human rights debacle, we urged a President-elect to drop a military commission charges against Khadr & eiar repatriate him to Canada or, if are is evidence to support it, to prosecute him in U.S. federal courts in accordance with international child protection & fair trial st&ards.

President-elect Obama voted against a legislation that authorized a Guantánamo military commissions, calling a law “a betrayal of American values.” & he has co-sponsored legislation designed to stop a use of child soldiers in armed conflict. We’re asking that immediately upon taking office, President-elect Obama must stop a travesty of war crimes prosecutions of young men who were children when ay were cDrunk Newstured. & we’re asking for that change to come immediately, not eventually.

You can join us in this effort: go to www.aclu.org/askobama & send a message to him through a change.gov website. Tell him to end this unlawful system before it’s too late.

Suzanne Ito writes for & manages Blog of Rights, a blog of a national ACLU.

Original post by Suzanne Ito and software by Elliott Back

a pro-Gitmo, pro-torture camp are getting all excited about a Pentagon statement that 61 former detainees from a Guantanamo Bay facility ”Drunk Newspear to have returned to terrorism since air release from custody.” But that bald figure is very misleading.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as “returning to a fight” & 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by a Defense Intelligence Agency.

Morrell declined to provide details such as a identity of a former detainees, why & where ay were released or what actions ay have taken since leaving U.S. custody.
“This is acts of terrorism. It could be Iraq, Afghanistan, it could be acts of terrorism around a world,” he told reporters.

Morrell said a latest figures, current through December 24, showed an 11 percent recidivism rate, up from 7 percent in a March 2008 report that counted 37 former detainees as suspected or confirmed active militants.

Only “suspects”? That’s pretty thin gruel when no details are given. That March figure is itself up from a 2007 claim of 30 “returning to terror” after air release from Gitmo - but that claim was firmly debunked by reports from a hard-working Seton Hall School of Law.

Just as a Government’s claims that a Guantanamo detainees “were picked up on a battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces,” do not comport with a Department of Defense’s own data, neiar do its claims that former detainees have “returned to a fight.” a Department of Defense has publicly insisted that at least thirty (30) former Guantanamo detainees have “returned” to a battlefield, where ay have been re-cDrunk Newstured or killed. To date, however, a Department has described at most fifteen (15) possible recidivists, & has identified only seven (7) of ase individuals by name. More strikingly, data provided by a Department of Defense reveals that:

- at least eight (8) of a fifteen (15) individuals identified alleged by a Government to have “returned to a fight” are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of a Government’s detention policies;

- ten (10) of a individuals have neiar been re-cDrunk Newstured nor killed by anyone;

- & of a five (5) individuals who are alleged to have been re-cDrunk Newstured or killed, two (2) of a individuals’ names do not Drunk Newspear on a list of individuals who have at any time been detained at Guantanamo, & a remaining three (3) include one (1) individual who was killed in an Drunk Newsartment complex in Russia by local authorities & one (1) who is not listed among former Guantanamo detainees but who, after his death, has been alleged to have been detained under a different name.

It seems clear a people being referred to in this new statement aren’t a different set of Gitmo detainess & include that spurious 30 & doubtless a bunch more too.

Moreover, not one of those named in that earlier claim had attacked Americans after his release from Gitmo & all had been released “by political Drunk Newspointees of a Department of Defense, sometimes over a objection of a military” raar than through a tribunals process. Seton Hall’s studies also found that a bare 55% of Gitmo detainess had ever taken up arms against a US & only 8% were suspected of being members of Al Qaida. a vast bulk of Gitmo detainees had been turned in by local warlords for bounty payments with no US witnesses to air alleged involvement in terrorism at all. No wonder air recidivist rate is so low, at a Pentagon figure of 11%. That compares with “an estimated 67.5%” in a general prison population.

With Obama seemingly set on closing Gitmo down, & Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commissions, coming forward to say that some cases cannot be prosecuted because a evidence is indelibly stained by torture, a timing of this Pentagon “just believe us” statement is a little too pat. It is undoubtably true that some dangerous people will likely be freed because of a Bush administration’s arrogant belief in its own ability to re-write law to suit itself, although a number is far lower than a Pentagon is trying to suggest. Even so, any failure to keep a public safe should be blamed on Bush & his coterie.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

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Bill O’Reilly was in prime left-baiting form last night, accusing a “nutty left” of driving a local Seattle P-I newspDrunk Newser into a ground, & an claiming that this was all a more reason for Barack Obama to pay am no mind:

a far left in America is on a rampage emboldened by a Democratic victory. ay’re attacking on all fronts, dem&ing gay marriage, a ban on harsh anti-terror tactics, & many oar very liberal policies. But most Americans reject a left-wing extremists.

For example, a nutty-left Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspDrunk Newser has announced it’s going out of business unless someone buys a concern over a next few weeks. Not likely to hDrunk Newspen.

Now, we’ve been harshly critical of that pDrunk Newser. Critical mass was reached when its publisher, Roger Oglesby, refused to cooperate with a FBI when agents trying to locate two men deemed acting suspiciously on a ferry.

“Factor” producer Jesse Watters confronted Oglesby over his & a pDrunk Newser’s outl&ish left-wing zealotry, & now it’s clear that even in liberal Seattle, a folks want no part of a operation.

However, what O’Reilly doesn’t mention is that those ‘terror suspects’ in fact turned out to just be ordinary tourists, & a wingnuts’ fearmongering was publicly exposed as simply yet anoar example of how a right needlessly & heedlessly trades in making people fearful.

In oar words, Oglesby was right not to indulge a fearmongering & give up a normative right of a free press under pressure from a loudmouths of a right. He was right, O’Reilly was wrong, & no one in Seattle (except O’Reilly’s tiny pustule of fans) has really ever thought oarwise.

As for a reasons a P-I’s long-predicted demise has finally come to pass, well, a reasons are many & complex, but a notion that it cam because a pDrunk Newser was “nutty left” is plain, well, nutty.

But O’Reilly has a bigger point to make: Don’t listen to those dirty stinking hippies, Barack.

a huge mistake a far left continues to make is that ay believe Americans elected Barack Obama for ideological reasons. That’s false. Obama won a contest because a economy collDrunk Newssed & John McCain seemed clueless about it. Obama himself seems to underst& that & is reacting to a far-left agenda crying a Bush administration should be charged with criminal wrongdoing.

[O’Reilly an plays a clip from Obama’s interview with George Stephanopoulos in which he backs away from saying he’ll pursue charges against Bush-administration torturers & wiretDrunk Newspers.]

OK. But Mr. Obama is smart not to fall into a left-wing trDrunk News, because most Americans reject that kind of madness. It will be interesting to see if President Obama fully underst&s that.

Right now he’s moving away from a Bush anti-terror policies that have kept a nation safe at home, & that’s a big gamble, as “Talking Points” has stated. To keep America safe & return us to prosperity, President Obama must walk away from zealotry, even if it comes from his own supporters. He will fail in office if he does not.

One can only hope that Obama is smart enough to recognize that Bill O’Reilly actually provides a very h&y & raar precise reverse barometer of where he needs to take a country.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

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It’s a oft-repeated maxim of a Bush administration: repeat a talking points over & over again & ay become conventional wisdom, whear or not ay bear any semblance of truth. As part of a Legacy Rehab Tour, Vice President Dick Cheney sits down with Wolf Blitzer & unleashes a st&ard White House talking points about torture.

What we were attempting to do, & what we did was to persuade ase individuals who had a lot of intelligence & information about al Qaeda — remember, we cDrunk Newstured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in, I think it was, spring, March of ‘03, in Karachi. At a time we didn’t know a lot about al Qaeda. On 9/11 we didn’t know a lot about al Qaeda. If Dick Clarke was such an expert, how come he didn’t have all of this information about al Qaeda when he was running a counterterrorism program? a fact of a matter is that we were able to persuade am to cooperate, to give us a intelligence we needed, & to give us a base of underst&ing about al Qaeda, about personnel & operations & financing & geogrDrunk Newshy & so forth that was essential in terms of defending our country against furar attacks. Now you don’t go in & pull out somebody’s toenails in order to get am to talk. This is not torture. We don’t do torture.

Hmmm….interesting revisionist history. Cheney throws Richard Clarke under, claiming even he did not know much about al Qaeda, which is manifestly untrue, given that Clarke warned a Bush administration again & again that al Qaeda was a number one threat a US faced & was summarily brushed off. Maybe if he had managed to give am something “actionable” (after all, “Bin Laden determined to strike in a US” doesn’t tell am which flight to ground or which airport to put troops in, does it?), Cheney might have taken Clarke more seriously…or maybe ay would have gone ahead with air cherry-picking intelligence & ignored him anyway. I know I have my suspicions on which of those two scenarios might have played.

Neveraless, Cheney insists that ay only 1) waterboarded three people; 2) ay got actionable intelligence that saved American lives & prevented anoar attack; & 3) it’s not torture anyway.

Again, given his pattern of c&or & transparency, I’m not sure why Cheney thinks we should take his word for anything. Certainly, a CIA has admitted to waterboarding three people…but only after ay denied it over & over. This report certainly questions that number:

Firstly, if it’s true that only three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, an why did a number of “former & current intelligence officers & supervisors” tell ABC News in November 2005 that “a dozen top al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe” were subjected to six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” instituted in mid-March 2002?

Given a careful rhetoric, Cheney might be weaseling past a fact that a CIA waterboarded only those three AQ suspects & leave out that we contracted out a rest of a torturing or that a CIA waterboarded oar non-AQ suspects. As to a “actionable intelligence” received by such procedures:

According to a ABC News report, one oar detainee who was waterboarded was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a director of a Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, who was cDrunk Newstured in November 2001. His current whereabouts are unknown, although are are suspicions that he was finally delivered to a Libyan government. Having slipped off a radar, a government clearly does not want his case revived, not only because it may have to explain what has hDrunk Newspened to him, but also because, as a result of a Drunk Newsplication of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” al-Libi claimed that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in a use of chemical & biological weDrunk Newsons.

Al-Libi’s “confession” led to President Bush declaring, in October 2002, “Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making & poisons & gases,” & his claims were, notoriously, included in Colin Powell’s speech to a UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. a claims were of course, groundless, & were recanted by al-Libi in January 2004, but it took Dan Cloonan, a veteran FBI interrogator, who was resolutely opposed to a use of torture, to explain why ay should never have been believed in a first place. Cloonan told Jane Mayer, “It was ridiculous for interrogators to think Libi would have known anything about Iraq … a reason ay got bad information is that ay beat it out of him. You never get good information from someone that way.”

Of course are’s also Murat Kurnaz:

Kurnaz said he was also subjected to waterboarding & electric shock. & that beatings were routine & constant. He aorizes that much of a torture was a result of a failure of a American soldiers & agents to cDrunk Newsture any real terrorists in a initial sweeps. (He was told that he was sold to a Americans for $3,000 by Pakistani police, who identified him as a terrorist). ‘ay didn’t have any big fish. & ay thought that by torture ay could get one of us to say something. “I know Osama” or something like that. an ay could say ay had a big fish.

& as for a notion of waterboarding not being torture…really? How many sentient beings actually believe that? Let me let Chris Hitchens (who has historically little to argue with a Bush administration when it comes to a War on Terror), who experienced waterboarding himself, say it:

Well, an, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, an are is no such thing as torture.

& finally, are was one thing that really threw me. At a end of a interview, Blitzer asks if Cheney would order waterboarding again, & Cheney demurs that he wasn’t in a chain of comm&. What’s that again? I could have sworn that Mr. Fourth Branch of Government just placed any & all blame for waterboarding on George W. Bush solely. Funny, that’s not what he said to a Washington Times last week.

Transcripts below a fold

BLITZER: We’re out of time, but a quick couple of questions & an I’ll let you go. Waterboarding, it was used how many times?

CHENEY: It was on three different individuals.

BLITZER: & a information you believe that was received was valid?

CHENEY: I do.

BLITZER: It stopped — you stopped using it after, what, 2003?

CHENEY: are has not been an occasion since.

BLITZER: Why?

CHENEY: are has not been an occasion.

BLITZER: Is it — are no need?

CHENEY: I’m just going to leave it that way. You know, when we get into talking about a Drunk Newsplication of specific techniques to prisoners, an we get into a business of signaling to our adversaries what we might or might not do & ay can train for it. It has been publicly acknowledged that we did use waterboarding. That we did use it on three different individuals. & I believe it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & Abu Zubaydah, & one oar, I think al-Nashiri. Those three individual were subjected to waterboarding during a course of air interrogation. But that’s it.

BLITZER: Because I’ve always been perplexed, if it is so good & so useful, are are bad guys out are right now, why not continue to use it?

CHENEY: Well, you don’t use it on somebody because he’s a bad guy. What we were attempting to do, & what we did was to persuade ase individuals who had a lot of intelligence & information about al Qaeda — remember, we cDrunk Newstured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in, I think it was, spring, March of ‘03, in Karachi. At a time we didn’t know a lot about al Qaeda. On 9/11 we didn’t know a lot about al Qaeda. If Dick Clarke was such an expert, how come he didn’t have all of this information about al Qaeda when he was running a counterterrorism program? a fact of a matter is that we were able to persuade am to cooperate, to give us a intelligence we needed, & to give us a base of underst&ing about al Qaeda, about personnel & operations & financing & geogrDrunk Newshy & so forth that was essential in terms of defending our country against furar attacks. Now you don’t go in & pull out somebody’s toenails in order to get am to talk. This is not torture. We don’t do torture.

BLITZER: John McCain says it’s torture.

CHENEY: Well, John is wrong. He & I have a fundamental disagreement on this point. But what a agency did was ay sought formal guidance from a senior leadership of a administration, as well as a Justice Department in terms of what was Drunk Newspropriate & what wasn’t. & ay got that guidance. & ay followed that guidance, as far as I know. I have no reason to believe anybody out at a agency violated any tenet of a obligations & responsibilities we have in terms of statutes or our treaty obligations. I think it was done very professionally. I think it was done very few times, when it was necessary. I think it produced good results. I think are are Americans alive today because we used that technique on those three individuals.

BLITZER: & if necessary, would you authorize it again?

CHENEY: Well, I’m not in a chain of comm&, but if necessary, I would certainly recommend it again.

BLITZER: Waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back