Human Rights

Extra! Dog Bites Man! Read All About It!

dlindorff — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:23:00 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In the category of yawn-inducing stories that we knew all about
before they happened, comes word that the jury of senior uniformed
officers sitting in judgement of Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur in the
first Bush-league military tribunal to actually go to a hearing at
Guantanamo Naval Station found the prisoner, Salim Hamdan…

Drum roll please…

Guilty of supporting terrorism.

I pause here for gasps of astonishment.

It’s awfully silent…

Really, did anyone expect anything else? The officers, who all have
careers to think about that would surely be severely crimped if they
went off script and found the man innocent of the charges, heard
evidence that was obtained through torture. They heard reports of
confessions from a man who himself was subjected to torture, by the
admission of the military itself, and who was never afforded an
attorney during those interrogations.

Okay. So now we need to ask, do we all feel safer, knowing that a
car driver whose claim to fame is that he used to drive the Evil One
from house to house and wife to wife is going to be locked up for life?

Wait a minute. He is already being locked up for life. At least, he
was captured in November 2001, and shipped to Guantanamo in May 2002,
and he’s been held there ever since—for over six years—awaiting this
trial, er, I mean tribunal. There certainly was no prospect of his ever
being let go before the tribunal, so I’m not sure what the point of
this exercise was really.

So now we can move on to the next tribunal—this one involving Ahmed
Khadr, a Canadian boy picked up in Afghanistan at the age of 15, who’s
been held now for six years on the base. His “crime” is that he was
bombed by the US Air Force, and then shot up (in the back) by US
Special Forces, but he somehow managed, at least allegedly, to toss a
grenade at his attackers, killing one (actually there is some testimony
that he didn’t actually toss the grenade, but then, why quibble about
details, right?).

Does anyone want to guess about the outcome of his “trial”?

Back in journalism school, I remember being told that the classic
definition of a news story was “Man Bites Dog!” The notion was that if
something totally predictable happens, like a dog biting a man, it
ain’t really news. Only if it is unexpected does it have any real news
value. By that standard, Hamdan’s conviction should be relegated to a
one-sentence notice in the news briefs section, but I’m guessing it’ll
be page one tomorrow all over America: Terrorist Convicted!

What we really need to be asking is why taxpayer dollars are being
spent on this shameful farce, which makes a joke of American “justice”
around the world.

Salim Hamdan is one of three things:

* a vile terrorist, in which case he should be tried in a regular
court of law by a jury of citizens, with all the rights available under
our Constitution

* a prisoner of war, in which case he should be sent back to
Afghanistan, since that war is now technically over (he is not a member
of the Taliban).

* an innocent schmuck who was working for a living driving a rich
bearded guy around the Hindu Kush, and who got picked up instead of his
boss, who’s still plotting ways to blow us all up while the US
government wastes its time and its personnel prosecuting his driver.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Then again, maybe it is news after all: “US Attacked By Terrorist Gang, Mastermind’s Driver Gets Life Seven Years Later”
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in
Philadelphia. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St.
Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work
can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Mukasey's Excellent Idea: War All the Time, Enemy Combatants Everywhere

dlindorff — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:55:16 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has caught some flak for
proposing, in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, that
Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda.

Instead, he should be applauded for his brilliant idea.

First of all, Mukasey is admitting, whether he wants to admit it or
not, that the Bush/Cheney program of capturing alleged terrorists and
holding them for years as enemy combatants without charge in detention
centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and various
undisclosed locations around the globe, and of torturing many of them,
are illegal actions that violate US law and International Law. So let’s
give him credit for that.

Second, he wants to make these criminal acts retroactively legal
and future such acts legal, by declaring Al Qaeda to be some kind of an
entity and to declare America to be at war with that entity. Of course,
doing this wouldn’t exactly solve the torture problem, since the Geneva
Conventions are fairly clear about the fact that you just cannot
torture. You can’t even treat captives in a war in a degrading manner,
which pretty much rules out things like stress positions and
waterboarding, unless perhaps conducted by polite men in butler
uniforms who address the victims as “sir” and deliver hors derves and
wine spritzers during the process.

But what’s brilliant about Mukasey’s idea is that it could be so easily expanded beyond just terrorism.

Once you accept the idea that a gang of armed men can be declared
war on like a country, it opens up a whole universe of enemies against
which the US could declare war.

Start with the war on drugs. Remember that one? It was never a war,
and no one ever really thought of it as one, but we could now make it a
real one, and have Congress declare war on drugs. Then, using Mukasey’s
war on terror model, we could just have cops grab drug dealers and
suspected drug dealers, and maybe even users, and just lock them up
without charge to be held for the duration of the war, like he wants to
do with terrorists.

But why stop there?

Congress could declare war on drunk drivers. Now there’s a scourge
that is killing Americans at a frightening rate. With a war on drunks
behind the wheel, we would no longer see people hiring lawyers and
getting their charges reduced to some trivial moving violation that
allows them to get back behind the wheel. We’d just lock ‘em up and
hold ‘em until the war was over.

Next we could have a war on littering. I, for one, am sick of
seeing our streets lined with soggy used soda cubs, balled up used
diapers and shriveled wet condoms, and all those plastic shopping bags,
If we could just start locking up enemy combatant litterers, the whole
country would look a whole lot better in no time.

Finally, Congress could declare a real war on poverty. We had one
of those back in the mid-‘60s, but we lost. Not for lack of trying, but
poor people kept getting poor again and dragging the rest of us down.
If Congress would declare war, the government could start rounding up
the enemy combatant poor, and locating them away for the duration. I
understand Halliburton is already building camps around the country
which could be used for this purpose.

Now I admit Mukasey and the Bush/Cheney administration are a bunch
of heartless bastards, and I wouldn’t want to see them treating the
enemy combatant poor the way they treat drug dealers or hardened
litterers, but with the poor, it could be a humanitarian kind of thing.
I mean, the enemy combatant poor would certainly get treated better in
those camps, with three squares a day and schools for the kids, than
they are doing on their own right now.

So I say let’s move forward with this idea. The Founding Fathers
couldn’t have been so blind that they were only referring to nation
states when they talked about Congress having the power to declare war.
They were a bunch of creative, forward-thinking men, and I’m sure they
would have liked the idea of broadening the meaning of war a bit to
include things like international criminal gangs, domestic criminals,
litterbugs and the poor.

I say, declare war and bring ‘em on!
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in Philadelphia. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34973';
digg_title = "Mukasey\'s Excellent Idea: War All the Time, Enemy Combatants Everywhere";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n Attorney General Michael Mukasey has caught some flak for proposing, in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, that Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda.\r\n\r\n Instead, he should be applauded for his brilliant idea.\r\n\r\n First of all, Mukasey is admitting, whether he wants to admit it or not, that the Bush/Cheney program of capturing alleged terrorists and holding them for years as enemy combatants without charge in detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and various undisclosed locations around the globe, and of torturing many of them, are illegal actions that violate US law and International Law. So let’s give him credit for that.\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Rice's Lies About Torture

dlindorff — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:00:51 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?

After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency) were dreamed up, proposed and approved for use—meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.

The US was “a different place” in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Rice told a group of people at a town hall meeting in Mountain View, Calif. on Thursday. But even though the administration’s “top priority” at the time was allegedly “preventing new attacks and not necessarily observing fine legal points,” the woman who at that time was Bush’s National Security Advisor, says “President Bush made clear that we were going to live up to our obligations at home and to our treaty obligations abroad."

Well of course she’d say that. But in fact, let’s look at those “fine legal points.”
The Third Geneva Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War defines prohibited torture as follows:

“No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.”

It’s kind of hard to see how that rather thorough definition of torture—which as a treaty signatory is the definition by which the US is supposed to live—can accommodate the waterboarding, sexual humiliation, months in solitary confinement, faked executions, days in stress positions, etc. which were approved by Rice and her fellow inquisitors and the nation’s commander in chief.

But no matter. Rice says that even if things were kind of harsh back in 201 and 2002, today “the ground is different.” She says soothingly, "We now have in place a law that was not there in 2002 and 2003."

Well, actually no. Because when that new law was put in place by Congress, the president issued a signing statement saying that he would not be bound by it. Asserting a claim of “unitary executive,” created out of thin air by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John You and Assistant Attorney General (and now federal appeals court judge) Jay Bybee, Bush has claimed that for the duration of the so-called “War on Terror” he has all the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches rolled into his own hands, and as such is not bound by acts of Congress, or by orders of the court. (Yoo and Bybee are also the mob attorneys who advised Bush that any interrogation methods that fell short of causing death or “pain equivalent to death or organ failure” would not be torture.)

The truth is that the Bush/Cheney administration, with the clear knowledge and authority of the president and vice president and of Rice herself, went on to torture captives in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo Bay, and in countless “black sites” around the globe, well into 2006 at least, and continues to torture captives now. Those tortured have even included children.

Condi Rice seems to be hoping to return to Stanford University after she leaves office at the end of this benighted and criminal administration this coming January. If she does, she will, I am sure, have to at some point confront my colleague Barbara Olshansky, who has just spent her first year there at the Stanford Law School as a professor of international human rights. Barbara, who co-authored “The Case for Impeachment” with me (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), was for several years the lead attorney for several hundred of the detainees at Guantanamo, and has also looked into the conditions under which US prisoners are being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan—another torture center that got its start down that road with the capture and torture of John Lindh back in October, 2001—the first documented case of such abuse.

One would hope that the students of Stanford would raise such a stink about having a war criminal like Rice running their school that they would either prevent her from getting the job, or drive her from the campus.

Until then, the least we can do is make her explain how waterboarding and other measures applied under her guidance and with her approval as National Security Advisor, can possibly comply with the Geneva Conventions which the US has signed.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). He is working on a new book on the reason’s for indicting Bush and Cheney for war crimes after they leave office. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/33602'; digg_title = "Rice\'s Lies About Torture"; digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\n Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?\r\n\r\n After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency)—meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.\r\n\r"; digg_skin = 'standard';

Protect your right to Biological privacy! Oppose DNA Database Act!

mappw — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:02:11 -0400

Protect your right to Biological privacy! Oppose DNA Database Act! Dear Friends, Please respond to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) bulletin below. Then forward it to all who you know, as quickly and broadly as possible. We need to add our comments against a Federal DNA database in order to put a stop to it. We only have until today, Monday, to add our comments, to protect our biological right to privacy. Click the link below for more information - http://www.ccrjustice.org/get-involved/action/oppose-sweeping-new-federa... Click the link below to take action by adding your own objections - http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail... ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ ____ center for constitutional rights Friends, Under a new plan, the government could take your DNA and keep it on file permanently if you are arrested at a demonstration on federal property. Take action today to stop the government from giving itself sweeping new powers to create DNA databases. Please read this alert for background on the plan and immediately go here and click on the yellow "Add Comments" balloon to file public comments with the government to oppose the plan. The government is only accepting comments until this Monday, May 19, so take action today! At the end of 2005, a little-noticed provision was slipped into the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill that provided the federal government with the power to collect and permanently keep DNA samples from anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen merely detained by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison. Now the government is trying to put the DNA Fingerprint Act into practice. Federal agencies would be required to take DNA samples from: Individuals arrested for the most minor of crimes, such as peaceful protestors who are demonstrating on federal property. Countless numbers of visitors from other countries who are pulled aside in airports by the Transportation Security Administration. Lawful immigrants seeking admission to this country, whether at the land border or in passport control at the airport. Go here for more information on the law. This is a dangerous invasion of privacy. Our DNA is not a fingerprint - it contains vast amounts of sensitive medical information about us. And Congress held no hearings on this dangerous legislation, even though it: threatens the privacy of millions of Americans; would disproportionately affect people of color; and turns the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. The Justice Department recently issued proposed regulations on the implementation of the law and is seeking public comments. Go here and voice your opposition to the federal government collecting and permanently storing our DNA. (See the end of this email for suggested talking points.) CCR will also be submitting extensive comments and notifying the press of this important story so the government can't slip their plan by without the public knowing. Congress failed to oppose this dangerous new law - it's up to us to let them know that the we oppose the government collecting people's DNA, and that we care about our privacy. Please take action today. Sincerely, Vincent Warren CCR Executive Director ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here are some reasons to oppose this plan, which you can use in your comments: Innocent people do not belong in a criminal DNA database. The underlying statute that permits this is wrong and goes against basic principles of our justice system. The regulations interpret the statute as broadly as possible, giving the FBI and other federal agencies the authority to take DNA in far too wide a range of cases. DNA is not a fingerprint - it contains vast amounts of sensitive medical information about us. The Justice Department's decision not to require destruction of the biological samples once the DNA profile is uploaded to its database exacerbates the potential for our genetic privacy to be violated and opens the door to the potential of familial searching. The regulations will add a disproportionate number of people of color to the database, potentially making those communities an increased target for law enforcement and further aggravating the already existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The regulations estimate that potentially more than one million new samples will be added to the database a year, yet the FBI's laboratory is currently receiving for processing only 75,000 offender samples each year. The requirement to collect, profile and upload such a massive number of DNA samples will flood the system and create huge backlogs, which may ultimately hinder criminal investigations, rather than help them. The regulations contemplate federal agencies contracting with third parties to collect and store DNA samples. Outsourcing the handling of this most sensitive information to multiple collection and storage sites will almost certainly lead to abuse, the creation of "shadow databases," and error, potentially undermining public trust in DNA as an effective investigational tool. Take Action: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail... Center for Constitutional Rights ll 666 Broadway 7th floor NY, NY 10012 ll 212-614-6464 ll www.ccrjustice. org

A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?

dlindorff — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:34:28 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president’s first National Security Council meeting, attended by Vice President Dick Cheney (the man holding Bush’s controller), Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal (who later spilled the beans about the session).

Bush also famously ignored all warnings about the imminent attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How much he and the rest of the administration knew about that attack in advance, or whether elements within the administration may have even helped it along, remains the subject of considerable interest and investigation and may never be answered, but it is clear that there were ample warnings about it, and he did nothing—even rudely blowing off a briefer who tried to alert him to the danger. Moreover, it is known that Israeli Mossad agents (who we know have close ties to both the US intelligence apparatus and to the Neocons who infest the Bush White House) did indeed have advance knowledge, and were set up across New York Harbor with a video camera to tape the attack on the Twin Towers (they were subsequently arrested by New Jersey police, only to be later released and sent back to Israel, through intercession by the US government). As well, we know that unidentified people made a killing by placing negative bets, called “puts,” on the stocks, several days before 9-11, of the two airlines that were hijacked, American and United, and of two investment banks that would be seriously hurt by the building collapses, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. (The puts were placed through an investment bank, Alex Brown, which until a year earlier had been headed by a man who moved over to become the number three person in the CIA.) It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Certainly instead of rallying the public and defending the nation’s democratic traditions and its Constitution, Bush and his handlers after 9-11 immediately set in motion a concerted scare campaign to undermine both. While urging the public to buy sheets of plastic and duct tape to construct “safe rooms” in their homes, they rammed through Congress a deceitfully named measure, the so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act), which effectively undermined most of the articles of the Bill of Rights (and which appeared, suspiciously, fully drawn up in bill form, only days after the attacks).

At the same time, the president, only one week after the attacks, obtained an Authorization for Use of Military Force for a military attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan and on Al Qaeda forces in that country, which he subsequently interpreted broadly as an authorization for a global “war” on terror which he then claimed made him effectively a dictator with absolute power both at home and abroad (the so-called “unitary executive” theory). Under this claim of absolute power as commander in chief in time of war, Bush went on to order the use of torture against captives, foreign and domestic, including US citizens, to strip even US citizens of the right of habeas corpus—that is, the right to have their arrest and detention brought before a federal court—and to establish secret torture centers around the globe and on military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

As well, even before the 9-11 attacks, the president began a sweeping program of electronic spying, run through the super-secret National Security Agency, on Americans’ telephone and internet activities. It was and remains a program that deliberately avoids seeking warrants and court approval even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court—a body that has only rejected some five requests for warrants out of hundreds of thousands sought since its establishment in 1978.

Finally, in a perhaps fatal undermining of the Constitution, the president after 9-11 began a practice of simply refusing to enact or obey laws passed by the Congress, effectively rendering the legislative branch an impotent debating club.

Not content to simply explode or dismantle the legal foundations of the American government and rule of law, Bush and his handlers also went about systematically destroying the country’s basic institutions and even its economy.

The education system was fatally ensnared in a test-driven system called “No Child Left Behind,” which has in short order dumbed down public education to an extent shocking even to this already anti-intellectual society, with many schools simply giving up the teaching of art, literature or history, in order to focus desperately on math and reading in order that their students would do well enough on standardized tests to keep the schools from losing their funding.

The dollar has been cast adrift to become the new Lira as the government has gone on an unprecedented borrowing spree to fund endless war and ever-larger military budgets, while erasing the taxes on the wealthy, the super-rich, and corporations. Banks were given free rein to enter into all manner of risky ventures, leading to the current collapse in credit. Corporations were encouraged to ship their production and jobs overseas. Homeowners were encouraged to spend, spend, spend and to mortgage their homes to the hilt and then some. Towns, cities and pension funds were encouraged to invest in fantastic “structured” products that were actually towering card houses. Domestic car manufacturers were encouraged to build every larger, ever more voraciously gas-guzzling vehicles, pumping out ever larger quantities of carbon into the already overstressed atmosphere.

The nation’s infrastructure—its roads, dams, bridges, levies, airports, veterans hospitals etc.--were left to decay, with predictable results, the most dramatic of which was the loss of an entire city, New Orleans, to a routine Category 3 hurricane (after which, the president did nothing to rescue the survivors or fund a recovery).

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation—one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state—today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs. A nation that once was the envy of the world for its free society now has scientists afraid to report their findings, university professors afraid to support outspoken colleagues, members of Congress afraid to defend their Constitution, citizens afraid of their neighbors, journalists afraid of government criticism, lawyers afraid to defend clients...

Hey, this place starts to look and feel an awful lot like the China I lived in back in 1991!

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country.

The truth is this: If at the end of their second term, Bush and Cheney were to hop on a plane and fly off to a hideout in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border, leaving a "Nya-nya!" note on the White House dining room table, few people would really be very surprised.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

ENDA Employement Non Discrimination Act

sweetbrandigirl2004 — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:32:01 -0400

I would like to know why Barry Frank feels the need to split the GBLT community ? Doesn't he know the quickest way to distroy any force is to divide it. He has sold out to please New speaker of the house so she will have this great human rights victory to announce at the HRC gaila since she is the key note speaker. The gay commuinty has stepped on the backs of the trans community once again to improve thier standing in society. I feel like if the timing isn't right to pass an ALL INCLUSIVE ENDA bill that we should way until after the 2008 election when we will surely have a Democrat pres. We should stand together or fall together.

Sincerely

Sweetbrandigirl2004

Habeas Corpus Vote - Call Your Senators!

Bob Fertik — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:06:39 -0400

Senator Chris Dodd is leading the fight to pass the "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act" and he needs our help immediately because the Senate vote could be tomorrow. Below is the vote tally - where do your Senators stand?
http://restore-habeas.org/whip/total.php

If they have not promised to vote for Dodd's bill call them today at 202-225-3121 and also use our petition:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/113

Letter From Congressman About Military Commission Act and Guantanamo Bay

Elizabeth31 — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:26:06 -0400

I recieved an e-mail from my Representative today on the issue of the Military Commissions Act and what it pertains to, particularly with those at Guantanamo Bay. I thought I would copy it down for you to read as I found it a very important subject. These days there is a lot of talk about it in just about anyplace you look. Below is the e-mail from Representative Ron Kind.

Thank you for contacting me about the Military Commission Act. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

On November 13, 2001, President Bush established military commissions to try individuals detained at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legality of these commissions was subsequently challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that military commissions were not legal because they did not follow procedural rules similar to those in court-martial proceedings. In response, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on September 29, 2006, to authorize the use of military commissions. President Bush signed the legislation into law on October 17, 2006.

While I firmly believe that those responsible for 9/11 and other heinous acts against the United States must be prosecuted and punished, the military commissions bill forced through by the Bush Administration contains critical flaws that I could not support. Specifically, it expanded the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant as an individual who has engaged in hostilities against the United States without differentiating between foreigners and American Citizens. While I do not have a problem with the expanded definition itself, it is critical that we protect U.S. citizens from being tried by a military commission and ensure their constitutional right to a fair trial is maintained.

In addition, I am troubled by the fact that this law threatens an individual's human rights. Instead of clearly banning abuse and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the legislation grants broad executive authority to interpret the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, leaving open the question of whether we will undertake some of the same actions it aims to ban. The President, as commander-in-chief, must have freedom to protect Americans, but this freedom must not go unchecked.

Currently, several pieces of legislation regarding the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are pending before the House of Representatives. The bills would grant habeas corpus, the right to challenge imprisonment or custody without due process, to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, narrow the definition of an enemy combatant, and limit the authority of the President to determine what human rights apply to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind should this legislation come before the House floor for a vote.

As the documented abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison demonstrated, mistreatment of prisoners only emboldens our enemies and weakens our standing abroad. During the Revolutionary War, when asked by his soldiers if they could beat prisoners, George Washington responded, "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren." If America projects to the world an image of a nation that tramples on individual rights rather than champions them, I believe we will miss the chance to win hearts and minds in enemy lands and will risk making our country and our children less secure in the future.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to be in touch with additional comments or questions. I also encourage you to visit my web site, www.house.gov/kind where you can find updated information, sign up to recieve my electronic newsletter and send me e-mail.

Sincerely,

Ron Kind

Member of Congress

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.

Chris Elliott — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:00:51 -0400

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic."

Joseph Stalin's infamous words.

This certainly seems to reflect corporate media's attitude to the ongoing slaughter in Iraq.

It is the 4th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L) - the invasion was later renamed for PR reasons - and despite the US military's reluctance to 'do body counts' a number of other organizations are aware of the level of carnage. Rather than being described as an 'insurgency' it should more accurately be described as a 'holocaust'.

New estimates at the number of Iraqis killed in the conflict over the last 4 years place the death toll at a little over 1 million lives. With 3.7 million refugees and incalculable numbers of wounded, traumatized, tortured, imprisoned, raped, or contaminated with depleted Uranium. This must be some strange new version of the word 'liberation' that I was not previously aware of.

Add to this another half million infant deaths during the 10 years of ~~medieval siege~~ sanctions that Madeleine Albright assured us 'were worth it'.

If a hundred Americans or Britons were killed in a explosion it would be a media sensation for weeks. Russia announced a day of mourning after over a hundred people were killed in a mine explosion last week. In Iraq they dont have this luxury since every single day is a national day of mourning.

Yet to the corporate media these daily massacres are just statistics that may occasionally get a mention but are otherwise less newsworthy than the daily crossword puzzle. Instead they bombard us with celebrity drug scandals, runaway teenagers, confessions of stick-thin supermodels, or more sickening by far, they lambast other nations for their 'poor human rights records' and 'press censorship'. They condemn democratic countries like Iran for being undemocratic while ignoring the fact the US is spending billions on ~~bribes~~ Aid to some of the nastiest undemocratic regimes in the world (Pakistan, Egypt, Colombia to name but 3 of a long list) not to mention close military ties with Israel and Saudi Arabia whose human rights records must surely rank close to the worst of all.

The English language fails us sometimes, there should be a far bigger word than 'hypocricy'.

Italian Court Indicts 26 CIA Operatives For Kidnapping

CactusPat — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:33:07 -0500

Milan Court Indicts 26 Americans In Abduction - CIA Operatives May Be Tried in Absentia
ROME, Feb. 16 -- An Italian judge gave approval Friday for what will be the first overseas criminal trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation, as a court in Milan indicted more than two dozen Americans on charges of kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric four years ago. (more)

After a judicial hearing that lasted two months, the court handed down indictments against 25 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and five Italian spies who are accused of grabbing an imam, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, off the street and stuffing him into a white van as he walked to noonday prayers Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr was taken from Milan to his native Egypt, where he claims he was tortured in prison for more than three years.

The trial is scheduled to open June 8 and will challenge the legality of a long-standing CIA practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which terrorism suspects are secretly abducted and taken to other countries for interrogation. None of the American defendants is in custody, nor are they expected to appear in court. Prosecutors said they will be tried in absentia.

Arrest warrants against the CIA operatives were obtained in 2005. A judge approved the indictments Friday after the judicial hearing and a lengthy criminal investigation that retraced in minute detail how the CIA put together the kidnapping plot.

The CIA and the State Department declined to comment on the indictments. "This is an issue that is before the judiciary in Italy," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

It is the second case in which criminal charges have been filed against CIA officers for illegally abducting a terrorism suspect. German prosecutors in Munich issued arrest warrants last month for 13 CIA operatives suspected of kidnapping a Lebanese German man, Khaled el-Masri, in the Balkans in December 2003 and taking him to Afghanistan. He was released five months later after the CIA realized they had grabbed the wrong man.

In addition, the Swiss government announced this week that it had approved a criminal investigation into the use of Switzerland's airspace to fly Nasr from Italy to a U.S. military base in Germany after his abduction.

He was put on another CIA-chartered plane to Cairo soon afterward.

The Milan prosecution team, headed by investigating magistrate Armando Spataro, has asked the Italian government to file a request with the U.S. Justice Department for extradition of the 26 American defendants. The request has already been refused once, by Roberto Castelli, then Italy's justice minister. But it is being reconsidered by a new Italian government that came to power last year.

The indictment publishes the names of the 25 CIA operatives, including the CIA's former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli and former Milan substation chief Robert Seldon Lady, who are accused of conspiring with the Italian military intelligence agency, known as Sismi.

Most of the CIA operatives named in the indictments had been using undercover aliases; prosecutors said they do not know the operatives' true identities and acknowledged that it is unlikely they will be found or brought to Italy to stand trial.

A former Sismi director, Gen. Nicolo Pollari, has also been charged.

Arianna Barbazza, a Milan lawyer who has been appointed to represent several of the U.S. defendants, said she and other defense attorneys in the case had been unable to contact their clients. She said it was highly unlikely that the United States would respond to an extradition request, even if the Italian government decided to make one.

Barbazza said the trial will probably reveal more about the Italian spies and their agency, "because it will attempt to verify whether Sismi was aware beforehand of the kidnapping."

Matilde Sansalone, who represents the CIA's former Rome station chief and two other Americans, said the apparent decision by the CIA operatives not to hire their own lawyers "demonstrates a specific choice to not participate in the proceedings."

Sansalone said she and other defense lawyers would not contest Nasr's abduction but would argue that there is insufficient evidence to find individual defendants guilty.

Nasr was released this week by an Egyptian court after spending nearly four years in prison. He is staying with his family in Alexandria, Egypt, and is considering filing a civil lawsuit against the Italian and U.S. governments, according to a Cairo lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, who has worked on his behalf.

Attorneys involved in the case said it was unlikely Nasr would return to Milan to testify in the trial; he faces arrest in Italy on terrorism-related charges that were filed after his abduction. Sansalone said the outcome of the trial could change if Nasr does testify, however.

This week the Italian government also asked the country's constitutional court to determine whether investigators overstepped their legal authority by ordering wiretaps of the Italian spies' telephone calls. A ruling in the government's favor could be a setback to the prosecutor's case.

By Sarah Delaney and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 17, 2007; A01
Whitlock reported from Berlin.

Also see "Switzerland Approves Probe of CIA Flight".... looks like Switzerland's getting into the act.