Guantanamo on The Huffington Post

Morris Davis Fired: Top Congressional Researcher On Afghanistan Sacked After Criticizing Obama Administration

2009-12-04T00:56:29Z

The top congressional official who oversees research on foreign policy and defense issues, including the war in Afghanistan, has been fired from his job after publishing a newspaper op-ed criticizing the Obama administration's recent decision about bringing Guantanamo detainees to trial.

Daniel Bruno Sanz: The Fool's Errand

2009-11-30T17:33:33Z

"What a fool believes he sees, the wise man has the power to reason away"

-The Doobie Brothers

First, President Obama, in office for four months, fired the top general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan and replaced him with a former special forces commander in a quest for a more agile, unconventional approach in a war gone quickly downhill. With the Taliban resurgent, Obama's switch to Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal suggested the new commander-in-chief wanted major changes in addition to the additional troops he ordered into Afghanistan to shore up the war effort.

Then in September, Kurdish independence obsessive Peter Galbraith got the ax. America's top diplomat at the United Nations mission in Afghanistan was ordered out of the country after a row with his Norwegian boss over how to respond to fraud-riddled presidential elections in that fourth world country. Weeks later it came to light that Karzai tried to rig the election with huge numbers of phony ballots and his doobie brother Wali has been on C.I.A. payroll for eight years and counting, supporting the Taliban assertion that the Afghan government is nothing more than a U.S. puppet. Very shortly after the scandal broke, the opposition resigned and Karzai "won" by default, giving him as much legitimacy as Diem in South Vietnam two generations ago.

Then poor Peter's public persona was forced to swallow a porcupine, quills and all, when Norwegian investigative journalists revealed that the illustrious US ambassador, a tireless advocate for plight of the Kurds and the partition of Iraq, cut a cool $100 million oil deal for himself when he helped the poor Kurds draft Iraq's new constitution.

Also in September, Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq and the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, became the first high U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan War, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency. His resignation letter is a must read. Here is an excerpt:

I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries. Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate and increase our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.

This month, Greg Craig resigned as White House chief counsel. Craig had been at the center of the administration's effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a promise that President Obama pledged to carry out within one year of taking office. The promise will be broken. While the White House line is to portray the resignation as a preplanned and personal decision by Craig to move on from White House life, outsiders and closure advocates see the announcement as the culmination of an internal White House blame game as to who was responsible for the obstacles met in implementing the president's Guantanamo policy.

Now the Japanese have called it quits. Japan's new government, the first since 1955, has ordered its navy to end its mission in support of "coalition" forces in Afghanistan. Since 2001, Japan had provided about 126m gallons of fuel to US, British and other vessels operating in the Indian Ocean. The two Japanese ships on duty - the supply ship Tokiwa and the destroyer Kirisame - returned to port in Japan.

Three days ago, German Labor Minister Franz Josef Jung, the former defense minister, resigned a day after the opposition accused him of withholding information on an air strike in Afghanistan that killed as many as 142 people. "I take political responsibility," Jung told reporters in Berlin. He's the first minister to leave Merkel's cabinet for policy reasons.

Also three days ago, a 7.0 Richter earthquake erupted in the financial nerve center of the Middle East: Dubai. The unthinkable has occurred: oil sheiks are "resigning" from their bond interest payments, putting them into default. Sixty billion dollars in Dubai World bonds lost 60% of their value overnight and the currencies of emerging market countries from Turkey to Mexico crashed. The following day, stock markets in Asia fell by as much as 5%. U.S. markets were conveniently closed for Thanksgiving. The Dubai default will weigh on Obama's ability in Afghanistan.

Now read this blast from the past (bold and italics are mine):

Last Sunday, three and a half million men and women of Algeria, without distinction of community, in complete equality, gave France and myself their vote of confidence. They did this quite simply without any constraint and in spite of the threats that certain fanatics brought to bear against them, their families and their property. This is a fact, as clear as the bright light of clay. And this fact is fundamental not only because it mutually and forever pledges, one to the other, Algeria and France, but also because it ties in with what happened that same day in Metropolitan France, in the Overseas Departments, in the Territories of the Community.

The least that can be said of this great demonstration is that the French people proved to themselves and to the entire world their determination for renovation, and that, at the same time, a hundred million men decided to build their future together in Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

With regard to Algeria, what is the future to which France is calling her? Women and men of Algeria, I have come here to tell you what it is.

What must be achieved is the basic transformation of this country, so brave, so alive, but also so full of difficulties and suffering. This means that it is necessary for the living conditions of each man and woman to improve from day to day. This means that, for the benefit o� the inhabitants, the resources of the earth and the ability of the elites must be brought to light and developed. This means that children must be taught. This means that all Algeria must have her share in what modern civilization can and must bring to men in terms of well-being and dignity.

But the loftiest plans call for practical measures. Here are the measures that my Government intends to take in the near future covering the next five years by virtue of the full powers that the new Constitution has just conferred upon it.

During these five years, of the young people in Metropolitan France - yes, I say in Metropolitan France-that enter the service of the State, in the Administration, in the Army, in education and in the public services, at least a tenth of these young people must be recruited from the Arab, the Kabyle and Mozabite communities, and that without prejudice to an increased proportion of Algerians serving in Algeria.

In the course of these five years, salaries and wages in Algeria will be raised to a level comparable to what they are in Metropolitan France.

Before the end of these five years, 250,000 hectares [617,500 acres] of new land will be allotted to Moslem farmers.

Before the end of these five years, the first phase of the plan for the agricultural and industrial development of Algeria will be brought to its conclusion. This phase includes, in particular, the delivery and the distribution of the oil and gas of the Sahara, the setting up, on this soil, of great metallurgical and chemical complexes, the construction of housing for a million people, the corresponding development of health services, of roads, ports, means of communication-in short, the regular employment of 400,000 new workers.

Gradually in the course of these five years, two-thirds of the girls and boys will be enrolled in school and, during the three years after that, complete school enrollment of all Algerian youth will be achieved.

During these five years, the human contact that has been made especially by the French Army-by its career officers, its reserve officers, its fighting men, its young conscripts-will be continued and developed and, in Metropolitan France, the same must be true, in Paris and n our provinces.

What will be the political Consequences of this evolution which calls for very extensive and prolonged efforts? I believe it is quite useless to freeze in advance, in words, that which, in any event, is going to take shape, little by little, as it is undertaken. But, in any case, two things arc certain as of now: the first concerns the present.

In two months, Algeria will elect her representatives under the same conditions as will Metropolitan France. But at least two thirds of her representatives will have to be Moslem citizens.

The other refers to the future. The future of Algeria will in any event - because that is the nature of things-be built on a double foundation: her personality and her close solidarity with Metropolitan France.

In any case, it is absolutely essential that this fruitful transformation be accomplished. This is necessary for the good of the men of Algeria, for the good of the women, for the good of the children who live here; but it is also necessary for the honor of mankind. It is necessary for the peace of the world. For no one has any interest in the stagnation of a people, except the kind of people, who, to serve their ambitions, gamble on the spirit of revolt and the poverty of others.

This transformation, this immense political, economic, social and cultural task-who could effect this transformation, if not France?

Now it happens that France has the will and the means to do so. It also happens that the vote of the Algerians has just proved that they desire this transformation and that it should be carried out with France.

Therefore, turning toward those who are prolonging a fratricidal conflict, who are organizing lamentable attacks in Metropolitan France, or who are spreading through the chancelleries, through underground dens, by means of the radios and the newspapers of certain foreign capitals-vilifications of France, to those I say: Why kill? We must enable people to live. Why destroy? Our duty is to build. Why hate? We must cooperate.

Stop this absurd fighting and you will at once see a new blossoming of hope over all the land of Algeria. You will see the prisons emptying; you will see the opening up of a future big enough for everybody, and for you yourselves in particular. And then, speaking to those States which are throwing oil on the fire here while their unhappy peoples writhe under dictatorships, I say: Could you do what France is in a position to do here, what only France is capable of doing? Could you people do it? No. Then let France carry on, unless you deliberately decide to envenom the conflict in order to distract attention from your own difficulties. But in the present state of the world, where can these bitter incitements lead if not to a universal cataclysm? Only two paths lie open to the human race today: war or brotherhood. In Algeria as everywhere, France, for her part, has chosen brotherhood.

Long live the Republic! Long live Algeria and long live France!"

-Charles de Gaulle
October 3, 1958

By 1956 France had committed more than 400,000 troops to Algeria, a country of 10 million. Today it is estimated that the population of Afghanistan is over 30 million. Although the elite airborne units and the Foreign Legion received particular notoriety, approximately 170,000 of the regular French army troops in Algeria were Muslim Algerians, most of them volunteers. France also sent air force and naval units to the Algerian theater.

In 1958-59 the French army had won military control in Algeria and was the closest it would be to victory. During that period in France, however, opposition to the conflict was growing among many segments of the population. Thousands of relatives of conscripts and reserve soldiers suffered loss and pain; revelations of torture and the indiscriminate brutality the army visited on the Muslim population prompted widespread revulsion. Sound familiar?

The war in Algeria brought the end of the French Fourth Republic even as it exploded nuclear test bombs in the Sahara. France's nukes proved useless in its bitter Algerian and Vietnam wars. The Soviet Union folded ten months after losing a total of 15,000 men in Afghanistan, a backwards country on its own southern frontier. No logistical challenges or pesky newspaper reporters. Still couldn't pull it off.

Change the names, dates and particulars, and the history of mighty powers recycles itself in Af-Pak-Iraq.

Supreme Court Rules Against ACLU In Case Of Detainee Abuse Photos

2009-11-30T11:13:10Z

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has thrown out an appeals court ruling ordering the disclosure of photographs of detainees being abused by their U.S. captors.

In doing so Monday, the high court cited a recent change in federal law that allows the pictures to be withheld.

Supreme Court Sides With Government On Disclosure Of Detainee Abuse Photographs

2009-11-30T10:49:56Z

Michael Foote: Spinning The 9/11 Trials

2009-11-30T10:43:31Z

In the two weeks since Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement regarding civilian trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his four co-conspirators, critics have latched on to some common myths about the utility of civilian courts versus military commissions. Four of those misstatements have not gone away and need to be addressed.

1) Civilian court trials return us to a pre-9/11 mindset. Rudy Giuliani was one of the first to perpetrate this misleading slogan. The problem with this claim is that civilian court trials of terrorists never went away. In fact, they increased dramatically after 9/11. A study from the Center on Law and Security shows 693 defendants with identified terrorist ties were prosecuted in the United States from September 2001 through September 2008. 81 of those defendants were affiliated with al Qaeda. The Bush administration certainly did not advocate a "return to the pre-9/11 mindset" yet it vigorously pursued terrorists around the globe and even brought some of them back to the United States for trial in civilian courts.

2) Civilian trials will create an unacceptable security risk to New York. Former Bush administration official John Bolton continued to give legs to this overstatement in an interview last Friday. He conveniently overlooked the fact that New York City hosted 23 of those 81 al Qaeda defendants prosecuted in the United States since 9/11 and none those cases sparked another terrorist attack. New York City has consistently been the target of terrorist plots since 9/11 regardless of our policies (remember Denver's own Najibullah Zazi). Whether al Qaeda terrorists are tried in New York City has little to do with al Qaeda's desire to attack it again. Courthouse security is always a legitimate concern, but anyone familiar with al Qaeda's tactics knows they are more likely to attack soft civilian targets than a heavily guarded building. Terrorists would gain the same propaganda effect by attacking a shopping mall or nightclub -- and they could just as easily do that during a military commission trial.

3) The government will be forced to turn over classified intelligence during the trials. Some GOP Senators, former Bush administration officials, and 1993 World Trade Center bombing prosecutor Andrew McCarthy expressed this belief almost immediately after Holder's announcement. None of them, however, mentioned the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) and its function in mediating what information gets released. CIPA has been law since 1980 and played a role in numerous civilian national security prosecutions. CIPA allows a judge to conduct a review of classified information outside the presence of the defense after the government raises an objection. The judge may then decide against disclosure or allow redacted disclosure based on a balancing test. Military commission rules call for the same kind of procedure.

4) Civilian trials will be a long, drawn out process. Attorney and 830 KHOW talk show host Craig Silverman expressed that concern on this site about a week ago. On its face his view is valid because criminal cases rarely move quickly. But the critics do not address how military commissions could be any different. KSM's lawyers would work just as hard to slow down a military commission trial and they would have even more material to use. Military commission rules have little precedent and offer judges no guidance on procedure, evidence and substantive law. Indeed, the entire constitutionality of the commissions could take years to adjudicate. If military commissions provide sufficient due process, as their advocates claim, there will be plenty of room for challenges throughout the proceedings.

Some of the criticism of Holder's decision comes from individuals who would only support detaining terrorists indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. For the rest, eliminating the lazy catchphrases and examining the facts should make the debate more fruitful. Civilian trials are one weapon among many we can use against terrorists. Their potential effectiveness should not be a victim of ideological spin.

Will Bunch: Decades Are Only "From Hell" If We Make Them

2009-11-30T00:18:05Z

The decade that we're in now (more on that awkward phrasing in a second) is still with us for another 32 days, but the race to define it is already on. Time magazine -- which didn't dare wait for December lest it be scooped -- jumped out to an early and perhaps insurmountable lead when it declared the last 10 years as "The Decade from Hell," a phrase I've already heard reverberating loudly about the Big Media echo chamber. Unless you've been stuck in a garage since the year 2000 building a giant balloon in order to become a reality TV star, you can probably rattle off all the supporting evidence in your sleep: 9/11, the global economic meltdown, the failures of Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and torture and the rapid loss of U.S. prestige in the world, and so on and so forth.

One potential good thing about "The Decade From Hell" is that it does give the years from 2000 through 2009 the thing they so strikingly lack: a name! Indeed, that problem became noticeable just months into the year 2000, when it became clear there was no consensus name (like the Nineties, or '90s) and then 9/11 in some bizarre way just brought that whole conversation to a halt; when it resumed there were some awful suggestions like "the Naughts" (really?) but I tend to use "the 2000s," any confusion with either the 21st Century or the new millennium be damned. But beyond that, I have some other problems with this whole "Decade From Hell" concept. Was it really? And if so, why was that?

The biggest problem is that the "Decade from Hell" suggests that life can be boiled down to, in $10,000 Pyramid terminology, "Things That You See on CNN." What about all the billions of people, literally, who brought a new son or daughter into the world during the 2000s, who found a soulmate or got married (or even both!) or created an amazing work of art during the last 10 years? True, these same folks may have also been pained by 9/11 or suffered a job loss as well, but they probably won't look back on these years as all hellish.

It's also, appropriately in a weird way, a very America-centric view -- I doubt people in India or China, which grew their economies and gained clout on the global stage, will see the 2000s through a ring of hellfire. But yes, if you look at the United States and from the perspective of all the big stuff in politics, the economy and the ways that we relate as a society, it was not the best of times. But here's the other thing that troubled me about "The Decade from Hell" concept, this underlying assumption that maybe our Decades are somehow fated or handed down to us; that the same fickle Decade Gods who gave us sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll in the 1960s and then whomped us upside the head with Pet Rocks, the AMC Gremlin and "Muskrat Love" in the 1970s are up there deciding our fate in 10-year increments. The Time cover story states that:

If we are now watching the sun set on a Decade from Hell, does it naturally follow that the next decade will be all good and glory? Of course not. And yet there are some hopeful signs...There's also a natural cycle to history. Unless you believe that this country is in the throes of a deep and permanent decline, there's no question that we will rebound. "Usually when you've had a really bad decade like this one, the next decade turns out to be much better for investors," says Richard Sylla, a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business.

That can be some dangerous thinking right there -- and not just because it seems to associate our greater health and well-being with the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I think that when history looks back with more clarity on the 2000s and how they played out in the United States, we'll see that the bad things that happened were the result not of a fate-driven up-and-down cycle of decades but from events that trace all the way back, for the most part, to the start of the 1970s and to both powerful forces that were outside America's control and to poor choices that were within our control, that we made as a nation.

It was in the year 1970, in fact, that oil production in the United States peaked and began an inexorable decline -- that and the growth of a global economy undercutting high-paying U.S. factory jobs were perhaps first and foremost the signals that the generation of American economic dominance that flourished after World War II was winding down. Ironically, for me personally, I spent the end of the 2000s reliving the 1980s as I wrote and researched a book on Ronald Reagan and his legacy called Tear Down This Myth; I was reminded of how early tentative steps toward alternative energy that could have put the nation on a brighter path was chucked aside for a bubble economy that encouraged massive borrowing by both the government and by families trying to survive in a now-consumerist economy where a tiny few reaped windfalls in newly deregulated financial markets and paid lower taxes on their bounty; how preserving our global dominance meant investing billions not in new ideas but on new tanks and jet fighters, increasingly aimed at the part of the world that did still have a lot of oil, the Middle East.

It from those very human decisions -- which were not fated at all, and in fact could have been avoided -- that a "Decade from Hell" arrived in our inbox on 1/1/00. Because it was that unregulated, finance-driven economy that have us an economic meltdown, a decision to spend billions on tax breaks for the wealthy instead of infrastructure that contributed to Katrina's levee collapses and a lethal bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and our need for dominance in the world's oil regions that caused us to invade Iraq, with many bad consequences. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, that cannot of course be blamed on America -- it speaks instead to the evil cycle of fanaticism and the power-mad manipulators like Osama bin Laden -- but at the same time I do think it's fair to wonder how the 2000s would have played out differently -- from terrorism to Afghanistan to Iraq -- if we had heeded Jimmy Carter's call in the late 1970s to end our dependence on foreign oil.

As for the 2010s, I don't think we can afford to sit around watching CNBC and waiting for the Decade Gods to automatically turn everything green as some sort of karmic balance for the awfulness of the 2000s. We can't go back in time undo the lousy decisions of yesteryear, but we can at least, belatedly, start to do the right things -- try to get it right on alternative energy and on infrastructure, to remain a leading nation on the world stage not because others fear our weapons, but because they cherish our ideas and also our ideals, as they existed before they were corrupted by the likes of Guantanamo and torture. Those good choices over the next 10 years could bring us not one but a series of more heavenly decades, and demolish the myth of a fated cycle.

Because a "Decade from Hell" doesn't just happen -- unless we make it that way.

Heather Robinson: NYC Trial Of High-level Terror Masterminds Will Violate Civil Liberties -- Of Americans

2009-11-29T22:45:30Z

Just watched this video clip of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani discussing the impending trial of high level al Qaeda operatives, including 9/11 master planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in New York City.

Giuliani, who in his capacity as a former U.S. attorney prosecuted numerous terrorists, thinks the Obama administration's plan to bring KSM and others to New York City for civilian trials is a bad one. He points out that these notorious war criminals will, if tried in U.S. courts, be granted the rights of civilians, which is inappropriate given that they have declared and committed acts of war.

To Giuliani's analysis I would add/emphasize that not only will KSM & Company be granted the rights of civilians, but of civilian U.S. citizens, who are the people our laws and courts are designed to protect. So this decision seems doubly wrong-headed; not only are these dangerous men not civilians, they are not U.S. citizens.

Giuliani points out that the cases could be thrown out by a judge who, say, deems that some of the evidence of these men's crimes was gathered in a way that "shocks the conscience." That is because, as Giuliani explains, the entire U.S. criminal justice system is designed, first and foremost, to protect the rights of innocent U.S. citizens. "Our system is geared towards letting the guilty go free if there is any doubt. It's a very different situation when you are at war."

Giuliani believes the Obama Justice Department's move reflects a concern about offending people in the Islamic world over concern for the safety of U.S. citizens. He also eloquently explains that it is not treating terrorists as such that is likely to offend law-abiding members of the Muslim world, but the condescending assumption that peaceful Muslims can't differentiate between our handling, as a nation, of terrorist masterminds and our handling of Muslim-American citizens, or our perceptions of Islam. I'm inclined to agree, and would also argue that this decision more reflects concern over others' opinions than true concern for civil liberties. For one thing, the small number of individuals who are now being held at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are treated humanely, something no greater a critic of the Bush Administration than filmmaker Michael Moore (of all people) highlighted in his movie Sicko, which asserted the excellent health care (superior, according to Moore, to that available to many U.S. citizens) available to the inmates there.

More significantly, bringing these men to trial in New York will increase safety risk to U.S. citizens -- especially if they are released. And as Giuliani pointed out, U.S. defense attorneys will be under legal and ethical obligation to make strenuous arguments in favor of their release. That is the way our civilian justice system is designed to operate. Despite Eric Holder's recent statement to the effect that a high-level terrorist like KSM would not be released, if defense attorneys failed to muster all the arguments and evidence they could (including exploiting sophisticated legal arguments and loopholes) to argue for these men's release, or if a judge refused to allow for the possibility of acquittal, the trial would not be legitimate. To put it simply, in bringing these men to civilian trial the Obama Administration is allowing for the possibility that they may be released at some point, unless the trials are kangaroo trials and our system made a mockery.

Safety does not always automatically trump concerns over civil liberties. In times of war, a balance must be achieved. Incarcerating whole populations in order to theoretically protect Americans against attacks that might -- or might not -- materialize, as happened to Japanese-Americans during World War Two, was a gross violation of the civil liberties of American citizens. The theoretical possibility of threat from Japanese-Americans (a threat that, as far as I am aware, did not materialize) was given huge weight over the rights of these Americans, who unlike their ethnic brethren overseas were simply not at war with us. Thus despite a lack of evidence, whole populations of Japanese-Americans were lumped in with foreign enemy combatants in our assessment of their mindset. Although it may have been motivated by desire to protect Americans, the policy punished innocent Japanese-Americans and, insofar as it reflected fear, not logic, failed to accomplish anything in the realm of national security.

On the other hand, it could certainly be argued that, with mistakes like the incarceration of innocent Japanese-Americans fresh in our memories, we are fighting the last war and have swung to the other extreme. Endangering innocent Americans in order to bend over backwards to grant "civil liberties" to a small number of foreign enemy combatants (whose own nations and codes of ethics recognize no such concept) is a violation of Americans' civil liberties -- starting with the rights to life and security.

After all, before one's right to a fair trial, to freedom of speech and assembly, to freedom of religion, comes one's right to keep breathing. If a government cannot reasonably protect its citizens from the threat of physical attack, cannot within reason ensure basic security, it is not doing its number one job as a government that serves its people. Similarly, when a government abandons a suitable level of national defense and leaves itself vulnerable to attack or overthrow, all the other rights and privileges it grants its citizens will soon be meaningless.

Protecting citizens from violence should not be used as a cover to encroach on civil liberties. And basic rights such as the right to move in public spaces, to assemble, to speak, etc. should not be sacrificed, even during wartime, if at all possible. But being at war with a fanatical enemy does sometimes necessitate common sense defensive measures.

Like those who, at a time when thousands of Israeli civilians were being attacked in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on the streets, in restaurants, and on buses by suicide bombers, argued against the construction of Israel's security fence in favor of deference to Palestinian Arabs' civil liberties, those who argue for civilian trial for the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are misapplying sacred principles -- the right of citizens of democratic countries to protection against government overreach -- to people who are at war with us (and with those principles). Also, they have picked a dangerous time to misapply those sacred principles.

To put it simply, what about the civil liberties of the Israeli citizens who were losing their lives, their arms and legs, on buses that had been turned into infernos? What about the rights of New Yorkers who go to Lower Manhattan to work, and will be exposed to greater physical risk, and the rights of all U.S. citizens who will be exposed to great risk in the event these men are released, even years hence? These rights are being cast aside so our government can grant imaginary rights to citizens of other nations, in this case to individuals like KSM, who make no secret of their intention to fight against us a war without end.

It's just not good common sense. And it is a violation of Americans' civil liberties.

Andy Borowitz: Pardoned White House Turkey Slays Nine

2009-11-26T15:34:41Z

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - In a potentially embarrassing situation for the Obama White House, a turkey pardoned by President Obama earlier this week went on a three-state killing spree on Thanksgiving Day, killing nine.

While authorities were still piecing together the motivation behind the recidivist fowl's homicidal rampage, a chorus of Republican critics complained that pardoning the feathered killer was symptomatic of the Obama administration's misguided policies.

"First they close down Guantanamo, then they let killer turkeys run free," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). "Next thing you know they'll put this turkey on trial in New York."

Elsewhere, a person believed to be a party-crasher who attended this week's state dinner and acted inappropriately turned out to be Vice President Joe Biden. More here.

Read more HuffPost Thanksgiving coverage and commentary

9/11 Trials Create Nasty Legal Spat Among Defense Lawyers

2009-11-25T15:09:49Z

A nasty spat has broken out among defense lawyers over an issue that is likely to be front and center in the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York: who actually speaks for the defendants?

New York defense lawyer Scott Fenstermaker has made big headlines in recent days after telling The New York Times that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and four accused 9/11 co-conspirators intend to plead not guilty in their upcoming trial so they can use the courtroom as a forum to attack U.S. foreign policy...

Phil Carter Resigns: Key Pentagon Appointee Worked On Gitmo Detainee Issues

2009-11-24T19:52:41Z

Phillip Carter, the top detainee affairs policy appointee at the Pentagon, has quit his post after just seven months on the job, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday. Carter told the Washington Post that he was leaving for "personal and family reasons."

Carter, an Army captain who served in Iraq, had been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's detention policy. He wrote extensively on national security and intelligence issues on his blog, IntelDump, before joining Barack Obama's presidential campaign last year to oversee outreach to veterans.

Carter's resignation appears to have caught the Department of Defense off guard, according to the Miami Herald:

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to say precisely when Carter submitted the resignation, or where he last traveled in a job that took him frequently to Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

"He has submitted his resignation,'' Whitman said, brushing aside a question of whether Carter was still reporting to work or had already spent his last day on the job. "A replacement has not yet been named." [...]

It was not known whether Carter's service in uniform as a civil affairs officer in Iraq helped him fit in to the Defense Department culture where pockets of senior leadership were holdovers from the Bush administration.

Carter's move comes days after President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time that his administration would not meet its goal to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010.

White House counsel Greg Craig, who played a major role in setting detainee policy for Obama, also announced his resignation this month.

Philip Carter, Key Official In Guantanamo Closure, Resigns

2009-11-24T16:07:55Z

A key official in the Obama administration's effort to remake detention policy and close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay has resigned.

Philip Carter, who was appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy in April, said in a brief telephone interview that he was leaving for "personal and family reasons" and not because of any policy differences with the administration. He tendered his resignation Friday, Pentagon officials said.

Mark Kirk Cools His Bomb-Throwing Rhetoric On Gitmo Detainees Plan

2009-11-23T16:59:18Z

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk turned down the rhetoric today on Democratic-backed plans to use the largely vacant Thomson Correctional Center to house suspected terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying he wants a "dispassionate and specific" discussion of the issue.

Gitmo Detainees At Thomson Prison Could Create 3,000 Jobs: White House

2009-11-23T00:18:46Z

WASHINGTON — A deal to house Guantanamo Bay detainees at a northwestern Illinois prison could bring nearly 3,000 jobs to the area, a White House analysis says.

Residents from the seven-county area surrounding the Thomson, Ill, prison would be "excellent candidates" for up to 1,400 of the jobs generated in the deal's first year, according to the report by the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

The Fall Of Greg Craig

2009-11-22T17:31:48Z

Nearly 100 days after Barack Obama entered office, his top White House lawyer, Greg Craig, braced the President's senior advisers for a potentially explosive development. The Administration was preparing to release photographs of suspected terrorists being abused in U.S. custody. On April 16, Craig asked chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to focus on the issue. Emanuel pleaded for more time to bury the release behind other news.

Small Town To Liz Cheney: We Want Gitmo Detainees, Not Your Fearmongering

2009-11-20T15:24:49Z

Officials in a small Michigan town featured in a new video about Guantanamo by Liz Cheney's national security group want her to know that they're not falling for her "fearmongering" -- and say they want Gitmo detainees in their town.

Esther J. Cepeda: Terror Fears Scarier Than Guantanamo Bay Suspects in the Heartland

2009-11-19T16:14:17Z

What's far scarier than the thought of Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspects cooling their heels behind maximum security bars in Thomson, Illinois?

Fear-mongered people -- already stretched to the limits due to the ravages the economy has inflicted -- acting out against anyone who looks like a foreigner because the TV and newspaper headlines are hyperventilating about terrorists living among us.

There is no doubt that the recent Fort Hood Massacre left the country wondering where they can feel safe from terrorism. If the young men and women who have pledged to protect the good old U-S-of-A can't be kept from being slain in the name of Islam on a military base filled with their peers, the dark thought goes, then what level of safety can the average Joe hope for?

I won't deny that the concern does give one pause, but honestly, I'm less scared of the possibility of an armed Islamic radical coming into my life than I am about the everyday bigots.

Take Valerie Kenney, resident of Tinley Park, which was just named by BusinessWeek Magazine the "Best Place in America to Raise Kids." She is accused of yanking off a Muslim woman's headscarf at the checkout counter of the neighborhood Jewel.

Two days after the Fort Hood shootings Kenney, 54, allegedly walked up to a woman in a hijab -- who was almost certainly loading sugary all-American kiddie cereal and milk onto the conveyor belt to take home to her four young daughters -- and shouted "That guy that did the Texas shooting, he wasn't American, and he was from the Middle East." Nidal Malik Hasan was born in the United States, in Virginia, to Palestinian parents.

Gee, I wonder how those four daughters -- or the other families who have reported derogatory terrorist-related terms graffitied on their Tinley Park property -- feel about Tinley being the "Best Place in America to Raise Kids."

Speaking as someone who has actually been slurred a terrorist in public -- dark skin, hair and eyes makes for a great many terrorist suspects -- I can tell you that the shame and humiliation of the words alone are painful enough, I can't imagine how devastated the young woman was to be violated publicly in such a religiously-offensive way. Just think about someone ripping a shirt off a nun and you might get how serious that is.

So we were already on "high" for terror alert when the Thomson, Illinois situation reared its head. Last Saturday the White House floated the idea of holding terrorist suspects who are currently in Guantanamo Bay in rural Western Illinois. Never mind the Thomson facility is a maximum security prison and the prisoners in question would be held to military detention standards which precludes all but the essential legal or enforcement visitors. Still, the fear mongers would have us believe that -- I'll quote running-for-Senate U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk -- "If we transfer al-Qaeda terrorists to Illinois, the Chicago area will receive increased attention from the jihadist world. As home to America's tallest building and her busiest airport, this is not a risk we should impose on Illinois families."

Really? Kirk wants to run for Senate to represent all of Illinois in Washington and the best he can do to whip up votes is dissuade potential economic development for a rural area -- and state -- that badly needs it is because otherwise, scary terrorists will have never heard of the Willis-formerly-Sears Tower and O'Hare?

Please! That's crazy talk coming from someone who should just know better for all sorts of different reasons. And it puts Kirk in the same class as Valerie Kenney: frustrated, scared, and just plain wrong about credible terrorist threats to Illinois' residents.

Esther J Cepeda writes about terrorism, politics, and much, much more on www.600words.com

Stephen Paul Smith: The Forgotten Defendant of Guantanamo

2009-11-18T18:23:44Z

Prosecutors, defense counsel, a military judge, several journalists and a handful of non-governmental organization observers like myself convened at Guantanamo Bay this week for what was to be the first hearing for a Guantanamo defendant under the Obama administration's "new and improved" military commissions.

The hearing came about a month after Congress passed legislation to improve the widely discredited military commissions, and just a few days after US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that five detainees, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would be sent to US federal court for trial.

But if the administration was hoping this hearing might make the case that the new and improved military commissions are a legitimate forum to try detainees, they could not have been pleased with today's proceedings.

The detainee whose hearing took place today in the hilltop courthouse overlooking Guantanamo Bay was Mohammad Kamin, an Afghan who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2004. Although he was one of 10 detainees facing charges before the military commissions when President Obama was sworn into office, his name was not among those mentioned by Attorney General Holder last week.

It seems the Justice Department, in making its announcement, failed to decide the fate of the Kamin case. And the result was the usual chaos and confusion that has plagued the military commissions since their inception.

Given no guidance, the lawyers and commission officials had little choice but to continue with Kamin's hearing, debating the merits of the case in a legal Neverland.

Kamin himself didn't show up for the hearing. As he had done throughout the proceedings against him, he boycotted. The one time he appeared, for his arraignment in May 2008, he was forcefully extracted from his cell. When he was informed this morning of today's hearing, he reportedly placed earplugs in his ears, pulled a blanket over his head, and waved away the officials.

And then there are the charges.

Kamin is charged with "material support for terrorism." Yet Jeh Johnson, General Counsel for the Department of Defense, stated during a Senate hearing in July that "material support for terrorism" is not an offense under the laws of war, and therefore should not be prosecuted by military commission. The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which was signed into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act on October 28, retained the offense despite Johnson's conclusion.

Kamin's appointed defense counsel, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Federico, also challenged the current jurisdiction of the military commissions to try Kamin. "If there is a conviction, it would likely be overturned on appeal," he said. Under the previous 2006 military commissions statute, Kamin was deemed an "unlawful enemy combatant." But the new language only authorizes the prosecution of "alien unprivileged belligerents." Since the government has not alleged that Kamin fits the new category, it is not clear the government has the authority to bring the case to trial.

Participants in the hearing operated without the benefit of a new rules manual, no doubt adding to the fog which envelopes the commissions' procedural guidelines. Reportedly, the Department of Defense has begun work on such a manual, but the date for publication is still unknown. In spite of the murky legal terrain, defense counsel attacked the slow pace at which the government has released internal memos, contact information for witnesses, and unaccounted for interrogation logs. "We are advocates," said Lt. Cmdr. Federico. "We just want the opportunity to engage with these issues."

Air Force Judge Thomas Cumbie, who voiced his frustration with the ongoing delays in the release of documents, described the mantra of the government as "It's in the mail, and it will be there soon." Adding: "And then it doesn't happen."

To date, government prosecutors in the military commissions have successfully litigated only three cases. All three defendants - David Hicks, Salim Hamdan, and Ali Hamza al Bahlul - were convicted of material support for terrorism. In the first two cases it was the only offense for which they were convicted, and both Hamdan's and al Bahlul's convictions are on appeal to the ad hoc Court of Military Commissions Review. It is easy to understand why the government would be hesitant to throw out the charge.

The recent changes to the military commissions are improvements over the previous incarnation, which itself was enacted after the Supreme Court ruled that President Bush's military commissions violated US law. They limit coerced or hearsay evidence and provide greater equity in resources to the defense counsel. However, as illustrated by today's hearing, the 2009 Military Commissions Act still falls short of the due process guarantees of the federal courts or courts martial. The legal standards, procedural rules, and participants remain makeshift and unstable. Prosecutors, defense counsel, and even the judges themselves stumble to make sense of a system without precedent.

The commissions were created by the Bush administration to circumvent legal protections. Under Obama, the underlying purpose remains the same. The new commissions offer little hope for swift and decisive justice in the Kamin case or any other.

Charles Shaw: Empty Prison in Struggling Illinois Town Might Be Next Gitmo

2009-11-18T15:07:30Z

As the Obama Administration looks at transferring "detainees" from Guantanamo Bay to a prison facility within the continental US, a political furor has erupted that pits economically devastated rural America against the fear-mongering of metropolitan Republicans intent on covering their collective asses and reclaiming their lost mantle of power.

The Chicago Tribune reported last week that "a near-empty prison in rural Illinois has emerged as 'a leading option' to house suspected terrorists from Guatanamo [sic] Bay -- an idea welcomed by people in the tiny river town of Thomson but sharply criticized by Republicans in Congress."

House Republican Donald Manzullo acknowledged 'extraordinary unemployment' in northwestern Illinois--he put the rate at 17 percent--but added: "The issue is: 'Are you going to exchange the promise of jobs for national security?' National security trumps everything. That's the safety of the people.

The lawmaker, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was concerned that "al-Qaida would follow al-Qaida" to northwestern Illinois if Thomson became the prison to replace Guantanamo Bay....

...House Republican Mark Kirk of Northbrook, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, is circulating a sharply worded letter among the state's congressional delegation and state officials, urging the White House not to transfer suspected terrorists to the prison.

If your administration brings al-Qaida terrorists to Illinois, our state and the Chicago metropolitan area will become ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization,' Kirk, a five-term congressman, wrote in the letter to President Barack Obama.

Beyond Republican histrionics about a wave of jihad descending upon Chicago, the truth of the matter is far closer to the desire of Republicans to keep the extralegal limbo at Guantanamo going full steam. The last thing any of them want is to have detainees tried in civilian criminal courts, which is what is happening right now in New York with Kalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 patsy the government wants us to believe was the sole criminal "mastermind" behind the attacks.

A trial in a civilian criminal court would permit the detainees to testify in open court. It would call for witnesses, a real prosecution that had to prove its case, a defense for the accused, and real evidence that, for example, Kalid Sheik Mohamed was the actual "mastermind," or that some of these suspected "terrorists" might be just peasants who were turned over to the American forces by Afghan warlords looking for payouts. It would require shining lights into "the dark side, the shadows" that Dick Cheney told us we'd have to go mucking about in, and where, no doubt, much evil was done. A criminal trial would name names, and that's not anything the complicit members of our government want. No way, not now, not nevah.

Perhaps this objection was why, on the heels of the first announcement, came a second that stated that "in addition to housing foreign detainees, [the Thomson] prison could become a site for military trials of those charged with acts of terrorism, an administration official acknowledged Monday."

Gitmo in the Heartland, complete with tribunals. Quaint in a kind of American Gothic way. And yet another of Obama's campaign promises broken.

As for the people of Thomson, IL, their fate has been in a similar limbo for most of this decade. Rural Illinois has been devastated by deindustrialization and the consolidation of farming by Big Agro. The new prison in Thomson was supposed to bring an economic boom to the area. But the prison never opened, and seven years after its completion, stands empty due to Illinois' crippling budget crises.

I have written about the Thomson Correctional Center on a few occasions, and it is discussed in my forthcoming book, Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics, & Spirituality, which will begin serialization on Reality Sandwich next month.

This background on Thomson is taken from my 2005 feature in The Next American City, "A Sorry Excuse for a Decent Living - How Rural Illinois Staked its Revival on Prison Growth":

Thompson, a small Mississippi River town in northwestern Illinois, spent the 1980s and 1990s in economic freefall. An Army depot located fifteen miles to the north employed 400 people in the town until it shut down in the early-'90s. An International Paper plant employed a couple hundred more until it closed around the same time. In search of new economic development opportunities, town leaders turned to one of the few growth industries in rural Illinois: prison construction.

Historically, Thompson and Carroll County have run the 2nd to 4th highest unemployment rate in the state," says Village President Merri Jo Enloe. The main reason we built a prison was because everyone needed a job.

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has an annual budget of $1.3 billion and employs around 22,000 people in 26 prisons, 6 work camps, 2 boot camps, and 25 fully staffed parole offices. Building a prison brought Thompson $210,000 in Economic Development Administration grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce, $110,000 from the Illinois Department of Transportation to upgrade roads to the prison, a grant from the Interstate Commerce Commission to upgrade rail crossings, and a very lucrative local water and sewage contract worth roughly $615,000 annually to serve the prison.

The village of Thompson is also permitted to add the 1,800 residents of the prison to their population count. Since the Village receives $110 a year per resident from the state as a reimbursement on taxes paid, the prison population increases town revenue by another $200,000-a lucrative bonus to a town with a municipal budget of $328,000. Most importantly, the prison promises to deliver 750 permanent jobs.

A lucrative deal, if it would have ever been honored. Attempts to shut down older prisons in the Illinois system and move the inmates to brand spankin' new Thomson exploded into a political firefight because the personnel would not be moved along with the prisoners, thus, jobs lost in one region even if gained in another. This is how valuable prison jobs are in Illinois, when you can't shut down a prison even if you want to. And in California, the most powerful political lobby is the prison guards union.

Prison expansion, and the "correctional economy", are predicated on there being a limitless harvest of offenders to keep the prison well-stocked. Discussed in the opening sections of "A Sorry Excuse" and in great detail in Exile Nation, this supply of human livestock has been the function of the War on Drugs for forty years, which has been one of America's best performing growth industries.

At the time I wrote the story, according to the Office for National Drug Control Policy, the United States was spending $30 billion a year combating the War on Drugs, and over $4 billion incarcerating drug offenders. That funding fueled the growth of the prison economy in 400 places across America where new state prisons have opened in the past 25 years. The federal government went on an equally manic building spree, and the substantial majority of federal inmates have drug convictions.

But ever since the collapse of the economy, as states were pushed further into budgetary strangleholds, the costs of maintaining such a bloated prison economy began to appear unnecessary, in their most benign interpretation, and profligate, in their worst, as in the case of California, which has to release over 10,000 non-violent offenders they can no longer afford to keep incarcerated, or Illinois, where they can't afford to keep open the prisons they have built.

Ironically, despite all the manna from heaven that was dangled in the faces of the residents of Thompson, there was some local resistance to opening a prison in their community based in age-old divisions:

Describing some of the initial resistance to the prison, Enloe said: "This is a predominantly white area, and there was a lot of objection to minorities coming through the community, particularly [from] white transplants from the Chicago area who felt that the prison would bring to the community the kind of people [Black] they were trying to get away from by moving out here.

This makes it all the more peculiar that the town is now so seemingly willing to embrace Muslim "terrorists" in their midst. Have economic conditions deteriorated to the point where these types of moral and racial objections are no longer relevant to conservative America?

As one townsperson was quoted as saying, "It would help the businesses here, and God knows we could use that. It doesn't matter to me who they bring here."

The filmmaker John Sayles once quipped, "Nothing like seeing a prejudice defeated by an even deeper prejudice." In Thomson, and many communities like it all across impoverished rural America, fear of poverty, naturally, seems to trump fear of the Other, or an attack on Main Street, USA.

But any way you look at it, a prison job in a low wage replacement economy is no victory, and further proof of just how far astray America has veered. That we are even having this debate in the first place is the real tragedy.