The CIA, torture, and the banality of evil

For those sickened by what our country has become in eight short years, yesterday was a really bad day. Those who give a damn about the rule of law and the ideals that define America took a beating yesterday as every time we turned around more devastating information came to light about just how far these bastards have gone toward destroying everything this country is supposed to stand for.

"If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong"

In late 2002, a top CIA lawyer gave a torture workshop to Pentagon officials intended to advise them on how far they could take their "harsh interrogation techniques" when interrogating detainees. According to the minutes of the 02 October 2002 meeting, CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at Guantanamo that torture is basically "subject to perception." It was in that meeting that he so blithely set the parameters at life and death. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."


In that document released yesterday by a Senate panel that is investigating how torture became a sanctioned practice suggests that CIA spooks were far more involved than has been previously known. By the time the meeting took place, the CIA had already used waterboarding, in which a prisoner is subjected to controlled drowning, with the blessing of buA$h administration lawyers.

The new evidence, along with hours of questioning of former Pentagon officials at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, shed light on efforts by top aides to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to research and reverse-engineer techniques used by military survival schools to prepare U.S. service members for possible capture by hostile forces. The techniques -- sensory deprivation, forced nudity, stress positions and exploitation of phobias, such as fear of dogs -- would eventually be approved for use at Guantanamo Bay and would spread to U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib prison. Nearly all were later rescinded.

The newly released documents show that in the summer of 2002, Pentagon officials compiled lists of aggressive techniques, soliciting opinions from the CIA and others, and ultimately implementing the practices over opposition from military lawyers who argued that the proposed tactics were probably illegal and could harm U.S. troops.

The memos and other evidence evoked intense bipartisan condemnation from members of the Armed Services Committee who spent nearly eight hours grilling some of the former and current officials involved with the decisions.

"The guidance that was provided during this period of time, I think, will go down in history as some of the most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our nation's military and intelligence communities," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, asked: "How on Earth did we get to the point where a United States government lawyer would say that . . . torture is subject to perception?"

In what is probably the most incendiary memo of all those released, Fredman and ten DoD officials and attorneys discussed torture with a banality befitting a standing lunch order. In that meeting, Fredman, whose agency had already received permission from the administration to torture suspected terrorists laid out the key considerations to establishing a similar program pogrom at the Cuban gulag. He discussed the advantages and disadvantages of recording the torture on video, enthusiastically touted waterboarding, and calmly discussed methods to keep those meddling do-gooders from the International Committee of the Red Cross from interfering with the good time that stood to be had by all. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental," he was quoted as saying.

A CIA spokesman refused to comment on the remarks by Fredman and instead attempted to sidestep the issue of responsibility and shift that to Yoo, Addison, Gonzales et al, while still maintaining - without one iota of evidence - that torture had saved lives. "The far more important point is the fact that CIA's terrorist interrogation program has operated on the basis of measured, detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice," he said. "The agency program, which has been carefully reviewed within our government, has disrupted terrorist plots and saved innocent lives."

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Tony Fratto spit in the face of logic, reason and truth and insisted that "abuse of detainees has never been, is not, and will never be the policy of this government."

In spite of all evidence to the contrary - that torture not only doesn't work, but is actually detrimental to gathering usable, reliable intel, Fredman's advocacy struck a courd with a lot of Pentagon officers who need to be cashiered out as e1s. In the following weeks, these disgraces to their uniforms goosestepped toward fascism and fell in line behind some of the worst humanity has offered throughout history, including the Nazis, Hirohitos army and the perpetrator of the Spanish Inquisition.

Among those questioned yesterday about decisions was William J. "Jim" Haynes II, a former Defense Department general counsel who acknowledged pressing for more aggressive techniques but said the decisions were driven by the administration's fear of more terrorist strikes.

"What I remember about the summer of 2002 was a government-wide concern about the possibility of another terrorist attack as the anniversary of September 11" approached, Haynes said. He also cited "widespread frustration" among Pentagon officials that summer about the slow progress on obtaining information from Guantanamo Bay detainees.

At the time, Pentagon officials acknowledged that the proposed methods faced opposition from experts specializing in international and military law. One of those objecting was Mark Fallon, deputy commander of the Defense Department's Criminal Investigation Task Force. In mid-October 2002, Fallon sent a prescient email to his Penatagon colleagues in which he warned that the techniques that were being pursued would cause a backlash when what was going on would inevitably come out, and America and the world would recoil in horror at what was transpiring. "This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of," Fallon wrote. "Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this."

Would that they had heeded his warning. But no one did, and now look where we are. Standing nose to nose and attempting to retrieve our nation from the banality of evil that has been allowed to run roughshod over everything we were raised to believe America stood for.

A Moment of Clarity

We've been reading through the McClatchy series on Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of detainees--and when you start to look at the .pdf files and the declassified document dump, you see all manner of chilling things.

Here is a moment of stark clarity and sanity, from a document dated December 17, 2002 [click to enlarge]:



The quality of the image is poor, and I hope it can be read. What you are seeing is a statement that turns on the lights for me and illuminates everything. At a very early stage in the process of handling the detainees, an individual named Timothy James is basically telling anyone who will listen that torture doesn't work.

No one listened.

And that's why we are where we are today.

--WS

McClatchy: We Got The Wrong Guys

We don't express, often enough, the enormous debt that we owe organizations like McClatchy--they do the heavy lifting of the actual reporting, we do the blogging, and they do excellent work. THIS series is Pulitzer worthy already--it details what we need to know about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a way that shows that the US is not fighting the war on terror in a way that would make us proud:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that [Mohammed] Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.

Why did this happen? Well, for starters--poor leaders. Weak, ineffective leaders who did not know, chose not to respect, or ignored the rule of law meant we had people in the field doing things that reflect badly on them and on all of us. To date, many have been put on trial, but, really, that's just scapegoating. Like the old adage--if a ship runs aground, the Captain of the ship is relieved--then the policy should be that if troops under a general officer's command abuse detainees or prisoners, they should be relieved. If you make THAT the rule, every commander will sit up and pay attention--and respect the rules of war.

McClatchy's expanded coverage adds this to the mix:

The Defense Department has said that detainee abuse in places such as Bagram was the work of a handful of wayward soldiers. Even after Habibullah and Dilawar were beaten to death, U.S. military officials continued to say that such violence was isolated.

Cammack and other soldiers say the abuse was the outcome of sending troops, often reservists with no background in detainee operations, to installations where the rules were unclear and they received little support.

"It tore us down mentally really bad," said Cammack, who pleaded guilty to hitting Habibullah and received three months in prison and a bad-conduct discharge. "You had no support whatsoever ... everybody hit their boiling point."

Cammack was a specialist in the 377th Military Police Company, a reserve unit based in Cincinnati. Many of his buddies were small-town police officers or, like him, blue-collar laborers. He was one of four soldiers from the unit who agreed to interviews with McClatchy.

No one at Bagram, Cammack said, had any idea what he was doing. Senior officers who came through the Bagram Collection Point paid no attention to the privates and sergeants, who, Cammack said, were slowly losing control of themselves in the face of the war in Afghanistan.

I'm not going to fault Cammack for his perception--he was there, I was not. But I suspect that there are two issues here. One, if he, as a member of a Military Police unit, didn't know how to handle people in his custody, then he hasn't been trained properly. Military Police units should all be required to know how to handle detainees and prisoners in any and all events. If he and the members of his unit are predominantly police officers, then they know that there are rules for treating people in their custody. Those rules should have been defined and explained to them in Afghanistan--as in, hell yes, you can shoot someone if they're a threat to you, but no, you can't just beat the hell out of people because you don't like how fast they're eating. Second, it wasn't a "wayward soldier" issue. It was a leadership issue, and clearly, Cammack was made a scapegoat for failed leadership.

What the McClatchy series does is peel away the covers on how we handled these issues--the capturing, the detaining, and the processing of people suspected of being terrorists. If you want a clear cut example of what this process looked like in, for example, 2004, please see THIS .pdf file and note that a very clear-cut legal basis for capturing, holding, and putting these detainees on trial was attempted by the Bush Administration.

I say, "attempted" for obvious reasons--the legal basis for what they were doing was shaky, at best, and many of the sources were unreliable.

Mozzam Begg is in the McClatchy database of detainees, and his case is one found in that .pdf. You can see the government going back and forth--is he or isn't he?

McClatchy details his story here:

From childhood, Moazzam Begg relished tales of heroes, those who protect the very weak from the very strong. In his Jewish school, he heard them from his teachers. In his Muslim home, he heard them from his father. Later, on weekends, he heard them from an English lady-friend of his father.

The stories were about vastly different peoples: from ancient Jews to Arabian legends to more modern Britons. But to Begg the stories had several things in common: All were about people who stood up for what was right, no matter how strong the opponent. And all inspired him.

He never dreamed, however, that an arrest and three years of what he calls "torture light" in a superpower's prison would put him in a position to carry on their fight. Today, as he travels around the United Kingdom, speaking to university gatherings, politicians and civic groups, exposing what he describes as the inhuman nature of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, he thinks that it has.

Begg was arrested on Jan. 31, 2002, at his home in Islamabad, Pakistan, while his wife and children slept nearby. During the next three years, U.S. authorities would accuse him of operating, funding and supporting al Qaida camps and operations. He maintains that while he'd supported Islamic causes in the past, including Kashmiri groups favoring secession from India in the mid-1990s, he'd never been involved in al Qaida or any movement that promoted violence against the West. In the 1990s, he'd traveled to Bosnia during its war and he'd attempted to travel to Chechnya during the conflict in that breakaway Muslim republic of Russia.

He says that what the U.S. claimed was an al Qaida camp he'd funded and was directing in Afghanistan was a girls school. The school in Kabul was an experiment under Taliban rule, which didn't allow co-education, to prove that girls could be well educated within a Muslim country. He says that he and his wife raised money for two years before heading to Afghanistan in 2001, and both taught there. His daughter even attended the school, he said.

He said they fled Afghanistan for Pakistan when the U.S. began bombing to oust the Taliban regime, and hoped to return to Afghanistan to reopen the school. He'd been in Islamabad for about three months when he was arrested.

Begg said that from the first moment of his arrest, he was convinced that the Americans had no idea whom they were seizing.

"When they put me in the vehicle, an American guard, who was trying very badly to look Pakistani, showed me a pair of handcuffs and told me, 'These were given to me by the wife of one of the September 11 victims. I promised her I'd use them to handcuff one of the men responsible.' He then put the handcuffs on me. All I could think was, 'Won't he feel stupid when he realizes I'm the wrong guy.' In the end, I don't think he cared. I was dark-skinned, that's all that mattered," Begg said.

And I go back to this issue--who the hell was that soldier and why didn't he have someone in his chain of command tell him to knock it off? He may very well have been given handcuffs and told to go get someone who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Well, did it ever occur to the guy to get the right person? Instead of just any person?

My position is this--we are going to make mistakes in a time of war. But if we maintain a solid foundation in the rule of law and make damned sure we have good leaders doing what they are supposed to be doing, we'll be able to do what we need to do--and that is kill the terrorists and protect this country--while still having a framework that allows us to criticize our conduct, evaluate what we do, and compensate anyone who is not treated fairly.

I am all for fighting the war on individuals who use "terrorism" as their chief tactic of achieving their goals. I am against being a dumbass about it. The smart way to fight terrorism is to spend a little bit of time and effort to find the Mohammed Akhtiars and the Moazzam Beggs and whoever else and ask them, pay them, and recruit them to fight on OUR side where possible. I'm funny that way--I see the world in a way that must make the neoconservatives giggle and fall down. I see the world as being many, many shades of gray, and if we are intelligent and surgical in the way we counter the ideology of the people against us by convincing the fence sitters and the somewhat apolitical people in their society to join us and help us if we promise not to abandon them (our track record there isn't so hot, I admit) then maybe--just maybe--we can counter the rise of the individuals who use radical Islam as their foundation for recruiting followers.

I would submit that we are in the position that we're in because the leadership at the top didn't pay attention to the important things. They paid attention to consolidating their power and demonizing their political enemies back home.

And we're suffering because of those choices.

For the record, no. I don't hate America. But thanks for asking. It makes me feel special.

The Candor is Enough to Knock You On Your Ass

Adam Boulton of SkyNews sat down with the President. Do not have liquids in your mouth when you read this.

BOULTON: I mean, has it been good for your marriage -- eight years in the White House?

MRS BUSH: It's been fine for our marriage.

THE PRESIDENT: Never been better.

MRS BUSH: We have a very good marriage. We both have a lot of strength. And believe me, these were years when you really needed to be really strong.

BOULTON: Yes, Cherie Blair called it the "goldfish bowl."

THE PRESIDENT: Let me say this to you about all this popularity stuff. First of all, popularity is fleeting. And I want it to be said about George W. Bush that when he finished his presidency, he looked in the mirror at a man who did not compromise his core principals for the sake of politics, or the Gallup poll, or the latest, you know, whatever. And you can't lead in this world if you're chasing something as temporary as a popularity poll.

BOULTON: I mean, you've talked a lot about freedom. I've heard you talk about freedom -- I think every time I've seen you.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

BOULTON: And yet there are those who would say, look, let's take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down -- what you need to do -- I think I suggested you do this at a press conference -- if you go down to Guantanamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated -- and they're working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.
BOULTON: But the Supreme Court have just said that -- you know, ruled against what you've been doing down there.

THE PRESIDENT: But the district court didn't. And the appellate court didn't.

BOULTON: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn't it?

THE PRESIDENT: It is, and I accept their verdict. I don't agree with their verdict. And it's not what I was doing down there. This was a law passed by our United States Congress that I worked with the Congress to get passed and sign into law.

BOULTON: But it looked like an attempt to bypass the Constitution, to a certain extent.

THE PRESIDENT: This was a law passed, Adam. We passed a law. Bypassing the Constitution means that we did something outside the bounds of the Constitution. We went to the Congress and got a piece of legislation passed.

BOULTON: Which is now being struck down, I think.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, and I accept what the Supreme Court did, and I necessarily don't have to agree with it.

My only point to you is, is that yes, I mean, we certainly wish Abu Ghraib hadn't happened, but that should not reflect America. This was the actions of some soldiers. That doesn't show the heart and soul of America. What shows the heart and soul of America is the sacrifice of our troops willing to defend our country and liberate 50 million people, or the generosity of America when it comes to providing money for HIV/AIDS in Africa, or the fact that America feeds more of the hungry in the world than any other country. That's the true America.

Noted without comment...

BREAKING NEWS - Habeas Corpus Restored

MSNBC.COM:

The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
The Associated Press:

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts “criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called ‘the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.’”

Whose legal mind will go down as being more true to the American way? Kennedy or Roberts? If you said Roberts, you haven't been paying attention...

[BG has an update after the jump.]

The SCOTUSblog - the bet source for information and analysis about the Supreme Court and what those black-robed rascals are up to - has this to say about the ruling:

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

The Court stressed that it was not ruling that the detainees are entitled to be released — that is, entitled to have writs issued to end their confinement. That issue, it said, is left to the District Court judges who will be hearing the challenges. The Court also said that “we do not address whether the President has authority to detain” individuals during the war on terrorism, and hold them at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba; that, too, it said, is to be considered first by the District judges.

This is huge. This is the third strike. This is the unraveling of the bu$h administration. The Constitution is off the vent and breathing on its own once more. But I am still pissed off that it was a 5-4 decision.

And while that was the biggest news, there was another Habeas ruling today. In a unanimous ruling, the justices found that U.S. citizens held by U.S. military forces in Iraq have a right to file habeas cases, because it does extend to them. In the second part of that ruling, the justices found that federal judges do not have any authority to bar the transfer of those individuals to Iraqi authorities to face prosecution or punishment for crimes committed in that country in violation of Iraqi laws.

The unraveling of the bu$h administration is underway. Bob Gates wins and everyone else in this administration loses - and the biggest loser of all? Dick Cheney.

Un. Fucking. Believeable.

So get this...I am watching the NewsHour on PBS, and Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, who was on site at Guantanamo today, watching the arraignments get underway on closed circuit television, is being interviewed by Jeffrey Brown. The part of the interview that made me sit up and say "What the fuck?!?!?!" was when she told us that the drugs the detainees are being treated with were not disclosed to reporters because that would violate their HIPPA rights!

Yes! They are not entitled to due process in the federal court system, but by God! we will protect their medical records from prying eyes!

Un. Fucking. Believable.

I need a drink.

~~BG

GItmo Judge Axed For Speaking Out

Military judge dismissed:

A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday.

Army Col. Peter Brownback III was presiding over the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, in his role as chief judge at Guantanamo, ordered the dismissal without explanation and announced Brownback's replacement in an e-mail this week to lawyers in Khadr's case.

In another indication of the Pentagon's drive to step up the pace at Guantanamo, charges were drafted against three more terrorism suspects, bringing to 17 the number accused of war crimes.

[SNIP]

Brownback said during an April hearing that he had been "badgered and beaten and bruised by Maj. Groharing" to set a date but couldn't do so in good conscience when the prosecution was withholding evidence.

Brownback revealed in a November 2007 session that Pentagon officials had made clear they "didn't like" his decision the previous June to dismiss the Khadr case for lack of jurisdiction.

That ruling was overturned a few weeks later by a hastily assembled Court of Military Commission Review.

Asked about Brownback's removal, Air Force Capt. Andre Kok, a tribunal spokesman, said it was "a mutual decision between Col. Brownback and the Army that he revert to his retired status when his current active-duty orders expire in June."

We are ruled by a military junta, one that spits on the rule of law.

--WS

It really IS a law enforcement issue

Despite what the JAG officers are saying, despite what all of the evidence tells us, the Bush Administration still doesn't understand how to put terrorists on trial:

Two former U.S. federal prosecutors say that when it comes to handling accused terrorists, the best way is the old way: Put them on trial in civilian courts, not military tribunals.

In a report examining 123 terrorist cases from the past 15 years, the two principal authors say that the courts were able to produce just, reliable results while protecting national security.

The report comes at a time when the Bush administration's system of military commissions remains mired in delays.

Whether the case is the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 or the East African embassy bombings in 1998, judges, juries, defense attorneys and prosecutors are able to get the job done correctly, they say.

The study, commissioned by Human Rights Now, blows the lid off the age-old lie that the courts can't do the job when it comes to putting terrorists on trial:

Recently, some commentators have proposed an entirely new "national security court" to handle some or all international terrorism prosecutions. Although proposals vary, many offer novel features that would give the government more power and make it easier for the government to secure convictions. However, creating a brand new court system from scratch would be expensive, uncertain, and almost certainly controversial. Indeed, there is the risk that the very same issues now debated simply would be transferred to a new arena for resolution. In our view, before dramatic changes are imposed-such as the creation of an entirely new court or new detention scheme-it is important to take a step back and evaluate the capability of the existing federal courts and the existing body of federal law to handle criminal cases arising from international terrorism. Given the strength and vitality of our existing court system-and the fact that it reflects in many ways the best aspects of our legal and cultural traditions-there are obvious advantages to relying on the existing system, provided that it is up to the job.

Our analysis of the capability of the federal courts to handle criminal cases arising from international terrorism is based heavily on the actual experience of more than 100 international terrorism cases that have been prosecuted in federal courts over the past fifteen years. Based on our review of that data and our other research and analysis, we conclude that, contrary to the views of some critics, the court system is generally well-equipped to handle most terrorism cases.

Finally--someone stands up and says that the American belief in the rule of law actually means something.


Locking people up and torturing them has left us with nothing--nothing we can prosecute, nothing we can be proud of, nothing to stand on, and no claim whatsoever to be on the side of the rule of law. The following list should be understood, remembered, acknowledged, enacted and acted upon as soon as someone with a soul and an ounce of common decency takes responsibility for the people we're holding.

In the Pursuit of Justice finds:

--Prosecutors have invoked a host of specially tailored anti-terrorism laws and long-standing federal criminal statutes to obtain convictions in terrorism cases;

--Courts have consistently exercised jurisdiction over defendants brought before them, even those defendants apprehended by unconventional or forcible means;

--Existing criminal statutes and immigration laws provide an adequate basis to detain and monitor suspects in most cases;

--Applying statutes such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), courts have successfully balanced the need to protect national security information, including the sources and means of intelligence gathering, with defendants' fair trial rights;

--Courts have devised creative approaches to balancing defendants' right to receive exculpatory information and other relevant discovery with the need to protect national security information;

--Miranda warnings are not required in battlefield and non-custodial interrogations or interrogations conducted purely for intelligence gathering purposes, and the Miranda issue does not have significant implications for criminal terrorism prosecutions;

--The Federal Rules of Evidence, including rules that govern the authentication of evidence collected abroad, provide a common-sense, flexible framework for guiding admissibility decisions;

--Terrorism trials have not presented novel speedy trial problems;

--The Federal Sentencing Guidelines and other applicable sentencing laws prescribe severe sentences for many terrorism offenses, and experience shows that terrorism defendants have generally been sentenced to lengthy periods of incarceration; and

--Courts are generally able to assure the safety and security of trial participants and observers.

And, finally, a little honest pushback against the wingnuts:

In the Pursuit of Justice recognizes that the civilian criminal justice system is not, by itself, "the answer" to the problem of terrorism. Intelligence gathering, diplomacy, interrupting the flow of terrorism financing, and military force are all part of the equation. But the White Paper demonstrates that the criminal justice system is capable of bringing terrorists to justice through procedures that are fair, and seen to be fair, while protecting vital national security interests.

Let the courts decide--and let the courts get to the bottom of that whole "domestic spying" thing, too.

"the utter lack of sophistication and circus-like atmosphere..."

Every time someone says that the United States does not torture, remember this one salient point:

The CIA has acknowledged waterboarding [Abu] Zubaydah, in part out of concern that he had information that could prevent another imminent attack.

That is all the proof one needs in order to show that the US government tortures.

The larger revelations found in the Justice Department audit of the system in which detainees were handled raise troubling questions about the tactics and the mindset of the people who were charged with keeping America safe. Did they, unwittingly, endanger America even more by operating well outside the boundaries of common sense and decency?

The report, written by Glenn Fine, the Inspector General of the US Justice Department, reached several disturbing conclusions:

While the Inspector General's report "...found no instances in which an FBI agent participated in clear detainee abuse..." it blamed the FBI for failing to give clear instructions to its agents in the field.

The split, pitting the FBI against the CIA and Pentagon, came to a head over the treatment of the so-called 20th hijacker Muhammad al-Qahtani. Qahtani is accused by the government of attempting to enter the United States in August 2001 to be a muscle hijacker on one of the planes used in the 9/11 attacks. He was turned away at the Orlando airport and not allowed entry into the country.

Fine's report raises troubling questions about CIA and Pentagon interrogators whose use of snarling dogs, short shackles, mocking of the Quran and other abuses of detainees overseas appear to have overstepped what U.S. courts would allow in collecting evidence.

At the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, FBI agents in 2002 openly clashed with military interrogators bent on "aggressively" interrogating al-Qahtani by confronting him with agitated dogs and keeping him awake for continuous 20-hour interviews daily.

Didn't the US Military just apologize for desecrating a Koran in Iraq? Why the change of heart, one wonders.

The most glaring aspect of the revelations in this report are not that the US tortures detainees--we've become accustomed to learning that about our government. What stands out like a sore thumb, at least to me, is the rejection of proven methods for interrogation:

Such tactics "have been employed only when traditional means of questioning - things like rapport-building - were ineffective," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said Tuesday.

In al-Qahtani's case, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said no evidence of torture has ever surfaced after extensive internal reviews. Al-Qahtani, designated as an additional hijacker for the 2001 attacks, was forced to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog while at Guantanamo Bay, according to a 2005 Pentagon report.

Whitman also said he was unaware of any Pentagon actions that would have delayed the Justice report. Fine's audit, however, describes seven months of foot-dragging and negotiating by the Pentagon over how much information in the report should be classified or otherwise shielded from public review. The 438-page report issued Tuesday is only sparsely blacked-out.

The report surveyed over 1,000 agents, interviews with hundreds of other witnesses and a review of more than a half-million documents. It concluded FBI agents in nearly all cases refused to participate in harsh interrogations and left the room when they were ongoing.

Agents also were fairly vigilant about reporting their concerns to their superiors, the report shows.

At Guantanamo Bay, two FBI agents "had concerns not only about the proposed techniques but also about the glee with which the would-be (military) participants discussed their respective roles in carrying out these techniques, and the utter lack of sophistication and circus-like atmosphere within this interrogation strategy session," the report found.

Within the system, there has emerged a few leaders who are trying to resist the CIA and the Bush Administration. We have seen this with the lawyers who have refused to go forward with the trials, and we're also seeing it with the men who have been brought in to clean up the mess:

Interrogators at Guantanamo got intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer — and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator [there] said.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation due to accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

Wearing a blue-striped business shirt without a tie and looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."

He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence-gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" — today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."

"Everybody in the world believes that they know how we do what we do, and I have to endure it every time I turn around and somebody is making reference to waterboarding," Rester said. He insisted that Guantanamo interrogators have had many successes using rapport-building and said that technique was the norm here.

For security reasons, he would only discuss one of the successes, and that was only because his boss, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, had already described it in a speech last month. Buzby said several detainees, using poster board paper and crayons, drew detailed maps of the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan that enabled coalition forces to wipe out safe houses, trenches and supplies last summer as Taliban forces were returning to the stronghold they had abandoned more than five years ago.

Rapport-building actually works. But it is slow, tedious and not very glamorous to "make nice" with the enemy and use a more "diplomatic" way to getting information out of them.

It's not hard to see why anything relating to "talking" or "diplomacy" or "common sense" is universally rejected by the Bush Administration.

Another day, another detainee sues, alleging torture

Attorneys representing Binyam Mohammed, held without charge at Guantanamo since 2002 and accused of being a suspected al Qaeda co-conspirator, have filed suit against the British government. The suit charges that the British government would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained via torture.

Pentagon officials have not yet charged Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed, 29, with war crimes. In the last, aborted U.S. effort to stage military commissions, he was accused of planning to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in New York City.

The suit seeks to extract from the British government any secret intelligence that the two war on terror allies may have exchanged in the case in a bid to prove any trial would be tainted by torture.

Pakistani security forces arrested Mohammed at the Karachi airport in April 2002. From there, his lawyers claim, he disappeared into a secret network of U.S. supported prisons -- including 18 months in Morocco between 2002 and 2004.

There, according to an affidavit his London lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, he confessed under torture to crimes he never committed.

''The torture included shackling, being suspended from walls and ceilings, brutal beatings and being cut all over his body with a scalpel, including his genitals,'' according to the 21-page petition filed Tuesday at the British High Court of Justice.

"Unsurprisingly, the claimant co-operated to avoid further torture.''

The squatter occupying the oval insists, of course, that the United States does not engage in torture. We use enhanced interrogation techniques, but those are not torture...(Yes, this is definite hair splitting, but what are you? A commie terrorist lover? Nine-Eleven changed everything!)

Under the laws regulating military commissions, evidence obtained via coercion might be admissible, if the judge hearing the case deems it necessary, but evidence gathered by using torture is not, because torture violates United States and international law. The responsibility for determining where that line lays will be up to each individual judge hearing cases once the tribunals get underway.

Tribunals like the ones the Bush administration has set up have not been used by this country since the end of WW II, and other nations, including our closest ally Britain, have called the commissions "kangaroo courts." Last year, the Brits specifically requested the release of Mohammed from captivity in Guantanamo, but their subject remains confined. Now, his attorneys are convinced that he will finally be charged as the Pentagon prosecutor revisits old cases that were earlier halted by the Supreme Court.

Your Friday News Dump™

After over six years of imprisonment by the United States in the Gitmo Gulag, and sixteen months of a hunger strike and force-feeding, al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj is a free man.

Six years of his life, gone. And no charges were ever filed.

The case of Hajj, 39, had been taken up by journalism advocacy organizations as well as his news channel, which is owned by the government of Qatar, a key war-on-terror ally of the United States.

Also released were Amir Yacoub al Amir, 37, and Walid Ali, 33, according to a release from the London based human rights law firm Reprieve, which filed suit on behalf of Hajj and Yacoub.

Yacoub, the release said, was imprisoned for over six years, after he was taken into custody in Pakistan in March 2002. According to Pentagon records, he celebrates his 38th birthday next week.

Pentagon panels had branded Hajj an "enemy combatant,'' disputing his claim that he had simply been a working journalist in a war zone. He had worked for al Jazeera as a cameraman.

Hajj's civil liberties lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, declared the development "a wonderful moment for Sami's wife and son.'' But, he said, "the U.S. military has a lot of explaining to do as to why an innocent journalist was held so long.''

A year ago, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said in a statement to McClatchy newspapers that Hajj "has declined to answer any questions about his alleged role in supporting terror networks'' despite "a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of Sami al Hajj by U.S. forces.''

Hajj was one of three detainees repatriated to Sudan as well. Speaking from his hospital bed in Khartoum, Sudan, he praised Allah for his freedom. "Thank God ... for being free again. Our eyes have the right to shed tears after we have spent all those years in prison. ... But our joy is not going to be complete until our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are freed. The situation is very bad and getting worse day after day," he said of conditions in Guantanamo. He claimed guards prevent Muslims from practicing their religion and reading the Quran. "Some of our brothers live without clothing," he said.

What, pray tell, have we become? I hang my head in shame. The behavior of our so-called leaders over the last seven-plus years makes me hang my head in shame. These behaviors are, to be perfectly blunt, a textbook example of un-American.

The video below is from al Jazeera via YouTube. It is not easy to watch.

A bit of redemption for Richard Myers?

I have never been a fan of Richard "GodBoy" Myers. I have a problem with all the GodBoys evengelizing in the Air Force, and have had since about 1983 and a run-in in the desert with a creepy then-Captain derisively called "Airman Skippy Llewen" by his men. That set the tone for me for all the events and times that have followed. But it isn't just me. Myers has embarrassed a lot of folks who have served in the Air Force and would like to be proud of that fact again.

But at least he wasn't complicit in torturing detainees.

Myers, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005, believed that the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees and protected them from abuse and torture. And the administration deliberately and systematically duped him about what was really going on.

Myers believed that the techniques being employed were taken from the Army Field Manual, and now he believes that he was a "victim of intrigue" perpetuated by top attorneys at the Justice Department, acting in accordance with the office of the Vice President and staffers loyal to then-SecDef Donald Rumsfeld.

Behind Myers' back, these civilians, who were for the most part political appointees (Feith, Gonzales, Addington) were pushing through authorization for previously outlawed techniques, and manipulating inexperienced military personnel who found themselves in totally uncharted waters.

And the guys at the Administration level, making the decisions to torture and abuse, were literally taking their cues from the fictional television series "24."

Larry Wilkerson, a former Army officer who served as Chief of Staff to then Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Guardian that Myers was manipulated, and had the job because he was weak and ineffectual and at could be manipulated by Rumsfeld. "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralized the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways," Wilkerson told the Guardian in an interview. "The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans," he said. "At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job".

Go read the entire article in this months Vanity Fair. But brace yourself first. You will tremble with rage at what has become of our country. And when you finish reading you will agree with Wilkerson who says "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

A funny thing happened on the way to the tribunal

The show-trials the Bushies have been in a lather about getting 9/11 trials underway and timing for maximum electoral impact have been dealt another setback. Two months after the announcement was made that the show trials would be tied to the upcoming election tribunals would get underway, not a single detainee has seen a military defense attorney.

The delay in getting lawyers to those detainees, which largely grew out of a struggle within the Pentagon over legal resources, is indicative of the confounding obstacles facing this latest effort to expedite the military tribunals.

Since fall, when charges had been lodged against just three detainees, military officials have charged 12 more terrorism suspects. Yet there is a growing consensus among lawyers inside and outside the military that few of those cases are likely to actually come to trial before the end of the Bush administration.

“Speed is going to be very, very difficult to accomplish here,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a military law expert at George Washington University. “They may be overconfident that if they just push ahead, all the ducks will end up in a row. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The road to a trial is difficult in some cases partly because they involve potential death penalties and claims of torture by interrogators, issues that raise thorny legal questions that could take months or longer to sort out. But even comparatively simple cases without capital penalty issues are proceeding slowly.

In addition, just as the Pentagon is pushing to try cases in part to show the viability of the tribunal system, some civil liberties groups and defense lawyers are working to slow the pace, partly to keep the system from gaining legitimacy by eliciting testimony against terrorism suspects that could inflame Americans. They say they plan a dizzying array of challenges to try to prevent any significant number of what they call political trials.

They are particularly focused on the Sept. 11 case, which for more than six years has been expected to be the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s military commission system.

“The government can be assured that this will not be a quick show trial,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Not if we can help it.”

The A.C.L.U. and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers announced a plan last week to provide experienced defense lawyers for some detainees.

The impasse over access to attorneys arises from a long-running dispute over legal resources and the allocation thereof by the Pentagon. Military prosecutors have access to the entire scope of the U.S. intelligence gathering apparatus, while military defenders are not so well resourced. Col. Steven David, the chief military defense lawyer for the prison at Guantánamo Bay complained in a recent interview that he has neither attorneys nor support staff in adequate numbers. even though prosecutors still greatly outnumber defense attorneys, and until a few defenders were added in recent days, they were outnumbered >2:1

But Colonel David has complaints that go beyond staffing. There is no precedent for dealing with detainees who make claims that they were tortured. Lacking precedents and clear rules, he said, “there are issues within issues within issues.”

Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann impatiently dismissed those concerns. “You have to get the train moving so you can get to a destination,” he said. “And the train hadn’t been moving.” He remains determined to move the ball forward. He waved off concerns, saying that trials in any system could be subject to delays, and added that he had told military prosecutors and court officials not to get distracted as problems cropped up.

A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented one of the detainees, was more circumspect. J. Wells Dixon, speaking about the six men charged with capitol offenses in relation to the attacks of September 11, said that the cases are so complex that the defense teams will need months to prepare. “There is no possibility,” Mr. Dixon said, “that these cases are going to proceed to trial any time soon.”

Now, before some foam-flecked lunatic accuses me of being soft on terrorism, I am not. I have dealt with the looming specter of terrorism my entire life. I was an Air Force wife in the 80's for cryin' out loud! I am totally in favor of effectively curtailing terrorists by treating them like the thugs and criminals they are, and locking their asses up in prison. And retaining the moral high ground where Justice is concerned. Like we used to, back when we actually fought terrorism, before Commander Codpiece went off half-cocked and started making new terrorists instead of catching the existing ones - like bin Laden, who is still at large, almost six years after the attacks of September 11.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Yeah, I'm probably going to shock some people when I say this, but this is the direct result of a failed strategy. This is what happens when you don't kill terrorists on the battlefield where you engage them. I'm not saying don't give them any quarter. I'm saying that the policy of "paying bounties" for warm bodies that were brought to the Americans in Afghanistan has burned us in the ass--a lot of those people had to be released.

CUT and PASTE this link into your browser--it's a DoD .pdf file that Blogger wants to eat--

www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/detaineesFOIArelease15May2006.pdf

Notice anything? A hell of a lot of these guys come from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, based on what they told their captors. How accurate is any of this? Who knows? But every one of these has a name. We already know we've made huge mistakes and had to let completely innocent people go--so much for transparency. I challenge you to look at the names on that report. If they're terrorists guilty of crimes, try them and carry out sentence. If they're not, let them go.

It kind of changes things when you can see their names, though, doesn't it?

Some of the things that made me rant today - Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008

The worst suicide bombing in the history of Afghanistan occurred in Kandahar on Sunday, leaving at least 80 dead and 90 wounded. The attack, blamed on Taliban forces, appeared to target a local tribal leader and police chief who had "declared war" on the them.

The target, along with five of his security detail were killed. The attack occurred at a dogfighting event just outside the city that had drawn entire families of Afghanis from all over Kandahar province. Dogfighting was previously banned when the Taliban ran the country because it involves gambling, an activity that was prohibited under their fundamentalist rule. “This is the action of the enemies of our country,” said the Governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khaled. “They do not let Afghans enjoy their lives and have a peaceful life.”


How's that Surge™ workin' out for ya? Ethnic Kurdish officials in Irbil are keeping their ethnic Arab residents on a short leash. Every three months, Arab residents have to report to an intelligence agency and bring their papers for proper vetting. So much for the blessings of liberty. I guess all Iraqis are equal, but in the new ethnically divided Iraq, some Iraqis are more equal than others, and how equal one is is determined by who is running things where you live. Great. Welcome to Johannesburg, circa 1978.

Hows that Surge™ workin' out for ya? II The fifth female suicide bomber so far this year blew herself up in an appliance market on Sunday, but this time there was no doubt that she was a willing participant. When wires were spotted under her clothing at a checkpoint she bolted toward the market. It is believed that she intended to target an Iraqi Colonel that was touring the area.

How's that Surge™ workin' out for ya? III - Remember what I told you last night about the 2000 coalition-allied and funded militia members who had abandoned their posts after an incident in which three Sons of Iraq civilian guard corps members were gunned down by American forces? Well, that was the second stand-down. Last night when I was posting, I forgot about this. Babil is the second province in which Sunni militiamen have ceased their cooperation with American forces. It happened in Diyala a week ago.

A military judge has overruled objections by the Government and will allow defense attorneys in the Hamdan case question Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other alleged senior al Qaeda captives being held in seclusion at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Navy Capt. Keith Allred gave the U.S. government until Tuesday (Monday is a federal holiday) to establish an independent security arrangement to help lawyers representing Salim Hamdan gather evidence they say could exonerate their client. At issue is just how deeply involved the $200 per month driver with the third grade education was involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks. The prosecution maintains that Hamdan need not have belonged to the cells that plotted the attacks to have been part of the conspiracy to kill Americans, he is guilty by association. The defense argues that if Hamdan wasn't part of the plot, he should be found innocent of overarching conspiracy charges.

Hillary Clinton gave the most detailed response to questions posed about last weeks decision by the government to try six Guantánamo detainees in front of military tribunals, and to seek the death penalty for guilty verdicts. She would ask her Justice Department to transfer the detainees to either the civilian courts or regular military court system, instead of the current Kafkaesque "military commissions" that currently governs the fate of the detainees. The civlian court system handled the first World Trade Center attackers quite ably. They are in prison serving life, put there by a previous Clinton Justice Department.

[I haven't officially endorsed anyone since Richardson dropped out, but I will say this. I liked that answer.]

Reason number...hell, I've lost count why I eat a largely locally-grown diet, and sure as hell don't buy mass-produced ground anything. If it doesn't come from a steer we buy directly from a farmer or Four H member after the county fair season, or a deer we harvested; that we then have processed at a locker in a small town - we don't eat it. (Well, unless it's buffalo from McGonigles.) A meat-packing plant in southern California has been shut down, and a recall issued on 140 million pounds of beef, because the plant was processing "downer cows" that the USDA has deemed unfit for human consumption. It is believed that most of the meat has already been consumed, but hey, no worries! Most of it went to school lunch programs!

[Can we get a USDA inspector back in every meat processing plant please? Good grief.]

Researchers at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill have released a study that assesses human impact on the oceans and the results are chilling. The research was conducted by a team of researchers from the US, Canada and Great Britain. In all seventeen areas across which data was collected and analyzed,the human impact was obvious, and in many areas the threats to the oceanic ecosystems overlaps and the impact is compound. "The big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected," said lead scientist Ben Halpern at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Two days in a row, an organization of lawyers has made me swear I will continue my moratorium on attorney jokes. The National Association of Attorneys General has taken the position that the Earth is warming, the climate is changing, the ice caps are melting, and states attorney's general need to educate themselves about it. A vast majority of climate scientists believe that energy is the biggest contributor to global greenhouse gasses, and invariably, as the effects set in, the lawyers will be involved. As the attorneys that represent the citizens of their states, it stands to reason that state AG's should be able to adequately represent the citizens of their states when the torts hit the fan.

Goodnight all - consider this an open thread and I'll see you in the morning.

An Officer Speaks Up for the Defense (better late than never)

When I think about the guts it took for this man to stand up and do what he did, I get a lump in my throat. (Followed immediately by a feeling of revulsion that he didn’t speak up sooner, and that he had to wait for someone to ask.)

I bemoan the undermining of the Honor Code on a regular basis (regular readers can vouch for this). But before I give up and pull the covers over my head to have a good cry, I learn about something that gives me a glimmer of hope that all is not lost.

Lt. Colonel Abraham was an officer at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He served as a liaison between intelligence agencies and the military tribunals that determines the status of the detainees, and he sat in judgment as a member of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT).

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only "generic" material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and those intelligence agencies.

"What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence," Abraham said in the affidavit, filed in a Washington appeals court on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an "enemy combatant."

The Pentagon had no immediate comment, but a spokesman said Defense Department officials were preparing a response to the affidavit.

An attorney for al-Odah, David Cynamon, said Abraham "bravely" agreed to provide the affidavit when defense lawyers contacted him.

"It proves what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," Cynamon said.

Matthew J. MacLean, another al-Odah lawyer, said Abraham is the first member of a Combat Status Review Tribunal panel who has been identified, let alone been willing to criticize the tribunals in the public record.

"It wouldn't be quite right to say this is the most important piece of evidence that has come out of the CSRT process, because this is the only piece of evidence ever to come out of the CSRT process," MacLean said. "It's our only view into the CSRT."

Abraham said he first raised his concerns when he was on active duty with the Defense Department agency in charge of the tribunal process from September 2004 to March 2005 and felt the issues were not adequately addressed. He said he decided his only recourse was to submit the affidavit.

"I pointed out nothing less than facts, facts that can and should be fixed," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his office in Newport Beach, Calif.

The 46-year-old lawyer, who remains in the reserves, said he believe he had a responsibility to point out that officers "did not have the proper tools" to determine whether a detainee was in fact an enemy combatant.

"I take very seriously my responsibility, my duties as a citizen," he said.

Cynamon said he fears the officer's military future could be in jeopardy. "For him to do this was a courageous thing but it's probably an assurance of career suicide," he said.

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and 2005, with handcuffed detainees appearing before panels made up of three officers. Detainees had a military "personal representative" instead of a defense attorney, and all but 38 were determined to be "enemy combatants."

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was "intensive scrutiny" when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn't an "enemy combatant," they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was "intensive scrutiny" when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn't an "enemy combatant," they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

I know a little bit about military culture, and while the Upright Citizen With An Unwavering Sense of Responsibility To Do The Right Thing is kinda miffed that it took him until a defense attorney asked to do the right thing – the military part of my makeup understands his inner struggle.

I understand the predicament he found himself in. It’s the predicament someone I love dearly was afraid he would find himself in when this resident was selected. So he resigned before serving this moronic war criminal for a single day.

Welcome Back, General Powell

The first Sunday in ages that I don’t binge on political news, opting instead to do Nana-type stuff, General Powell relocates his spine! Talking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press this morning, he blasted the notion of “Military Commissions” and the very existence of Guantanamo.

If you missed it, you can read the transcript here. The passage I excerpt can be found at the top of page 4.

GEN. POWELL: They are. Guantanamo has become a major, major problem for America’s perception as it’s seen, the way the world perceives America. And if it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I’d close it. And I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, “Well, then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus.” So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system’s all about? And, by the way, America, unfortunately, has two million people in jail all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus. And so we can handle bad people in our system. And so I would get rid of Guantanamo and I’d get rid of the military commission system and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts-martial. I would do that because I think it’s a more equitable way to do it and it’s more understandable in constitutional terms. I would always—I would also do it because every morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds. And so, essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don’t need it, and it’s causing us far damage than any good we get for it. But, remember what I started in this discussion saying, “Don’t let any of them go.” Put them into a different system, a system that is experienced, that knows how to handle people like this. (emphasis added)

Okay – Powell gets it. And everyone else should get it by now, too.

When you stop upholding American principles it’s a short step to losing that which made our nation a beacon of hope to the oppressed everywhere.

I absolutely hate what has been done by these people, ostensibly in my name.