Tomcast: Chase Madar "The Land of Oz"

LINK:

The Land of Oz

Chase Madar, a civil rights lawyer and contributor to The London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterpunch and The American Conservative, illustrates how prisons like the one at Guantanamo Bay are not the exception, but rather the rule, when it comes to the American criminal justice and penal systems.

related story:

Obama's Gitmo

Marjorie Cohn's testimony to US Congress (pray people pray!)

On Torture and "Administration Interrogation Rules" Testimony to the US Congress by Prof Marjorie Cohn

Global Research, May 8, 2008

US Congress

Testimony of Marjorie Cohn "From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules" Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties House Judiciary Committee May 6, 2008 What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery, and wars of aggression? They are all jus cogens. That’s Latin for "higher law" or "compelling law." This means that no country can ever pass a law that allows torture. There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a jus cogens prohibition. The United States has always prohibited torture in our Constitution, laws, executive statements, judicial decisions, and treaties. When the U.S. ratifies a treaty, it becomes part of American law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture." Whether someone is a POW or not, he must always be treated humanely; there are no gaps in the Geneva Conventions. The US War Crimes Act, and 18 USC sections 818 and 3231, punish torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment. The Torture Statute criminalizes the commission, attempt, or conspiracy to commit torture outside the United States. The Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws and the President the duty to enforce them. Yet Bush, relying on memos by lawyers including John Yoo, announced the Geneva Conventions did not apply to alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda members. But torture and inhumane treatment are never allowed under our laws. Justice Department lawyers wrote memos at the request of Bush officials to insulate them from prosecution for torture. In memos dated August 1, 2002 and March 18, 2003, John Yoo wrote the DOJ would not enforce U.S. laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. The maiming statute makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb, or any member of another person” or throw or pour upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance. Yoo said, "just because the statute says -- that doesn't mean you have to do it." In a debate with Notre Dame Professor Doug Cassell, Yoo said there is no treaty that prohibits the President from torturing someone by crushing the testicles of the person's child. It depends on the President's motive, Yoo said, notwithstanding the absolute prohibition on torture. Yoo twisted the law and redefined torture much more narrowly than the Torture Convention and the Torture Statute. Under Yoo's definition, you have to nearly kill the person to constitute torture. Yoo wrote that self-defense or necessity could be defenses to war crimes prosecutions, notwithstanding the Torture Convention's absolute prohibition against torture in all circumstances. After the August 1, 2002 memo was made public, the DOJ knew it was indefensible. It was withdrawn as of June 1, 2004, and a new opinion, dated December 30, 2004, specifically rejected Yoo’s definition of torture, and admitted that a defendant’s motives to protect national security won’t shield him from prosecution. The rescission of the prior memo is an admission by the DOJ that the legal reasoning was wrong. But for the 22 months it was in effect, it sanctioned and caused the torture of myriad prisoners. Yoo and other DOJ lawyers were part of a common plan to violate U.S. and international laws outlawing torture. It was reasonably foreseeable their advice would result in great physical or mental harm or death to many detainees. Indeed, more than 100 have died, many from torture. Yoo admitted recently he knew interrogators would take action based on what he advised. Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and micromanaged the torture by approving specific torture techniques such as waterboarding. Bush admitted he knew and approved of their actions. They are all liable under the War Crimes Act and the Torture Statute. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, are liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them, and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. The Bush officials ordered the torture after seeking legal cover from their lawyers. The President can no more order the commission of torture than he can order the commission of genocide, or establish a system of slavery, or wage a war of aggression. A Select Committee of Congress should launch an immediate and thorough investigation of the circumstances under which torture was authorized and rationalized. The high officials of our government, and the lawyers who advised them, should be investigated and prosecuted by a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Justice Department, for their roles in misusing the rule of law and legal analysis to justify torture and other crimes in flagrant violation of our laws. For the complete testimony, see http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=205193-1 . Once again: "my" Special Prosecutor information is at: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/genera_ladybroa_080215_special_prosecutor_i.htm or accessible, if the blog stays up, on the link on your left!

More elistist BS .... thanx WaPo ..

More of the TOTAL bullshit from the assholes. They cause the headaches, the death and destruction and then come on as if they are "human rights activists". Give me a break!

Why don't they write a book together if they are SO keen to get this issue on the table?
Why aren't they stumping around the media about Guantanamo Bay EVERY SINGLE DAY of their lives?
Where is the pressure coming from them to have a red phone installed between the US and Iran?

Yeah, such friggin bullshit. Makes me sick.

Why not suggest the closure of ALL black sites - including the ones in Canada and the UK and Diego Garcia and ..

I know that they intend to build one single HUGE black site in Afghanistan, built by Halliburton - I know The Plan. This public posturing to "kill time" is pathetic as in fact, it's the same old, same old going on. US insanity is the card on the table.

This is mere propaganda against Syria, that's ALL it is ..

OH! And Henry the K is the BIGGEST LIAR OF THEM ALL. (but all are jerks)

The US as madman theory of dominance continues to rule as official policy. Beware! Big Brother is insane is the message to the world.

Veeger

5 Former U.S. Secretaries Of State Urge Closure Of Guantanamo, Talks With Iran

Five former U.S. secretaries of State on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens, Georgia, aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice.

Each of them said closing the prison in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad.

"It says to the world: 'We are now going back to our traditional respective forms of dealing with people who potentially committed crimes'," said Colin L. Powell, who served as President Bush's first secretary of State.

Powell was joined by Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine K. Albright, who sat in a round-table discussion sponsored by the University of Georgia at a sold-out conference center in downtown Athens.

Kissinger called Guantanamo a "blot on us" and agreed it should be closed, but wondered aloud about the consequences of a closure.

Baker, a lawyer who served in President George H.W. Bush's Cabinet, said he had struggled with its legal implications.

"It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally," he said. "I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen - even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests - and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate."

The former secretaries of State also urged that the U.S. open a line of dialogue with Iran, each saying it was important to maintain contact with adversaries and allies alike.

Albright stressed the importance of finding "common ground," and Christopher urged diplomats to explore opening contact with other "vectors of power," such as clerics and former political leaders. Albright and Christopher served under President Clinton.

Baker suggested the dialogue could center on a common dilemma, saying a "dysfunctional Iraq, a chaotic Iraq, is not something that's in the interest to Iran. There's every incentive on their part to help us, the same way they did in Afghanistan."

Kissinger urged an open - if delicate - line of communication with Iran.

"One has to talk with adversaries," said Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Powell compared the potential talks to difficult visits he made to Syria while he served as America's chief diplomat.

"They are not always pleasant visits," he said. "But you've got to do it."

Kishosre Mahbubani on human rights cowards

This is really good but here are a few points. The US has long advocated torture - particularly in Latin American. It just paid the buck$ to have a "local" do it and that was that. But to tear up the Army Field Manual was a bit beyond the beyond. That is part and parcel of the poisitoin the US government takes that it owns the world in the plutocracy's interests -- and must have an official strategies of being a "madman" so people are always AFRAID. Such was the great instituionalization of the neocons GWOT tactics.

One sign of real progress would be the closing of the infamous School of the Americas and stopping the criminalization of those who protest it - THEN and only then can we safely say that the US has no intention of being a torturer nation. Canada has much to answer for on the human rights/torture issue as well. I know what they do, and I am not fooled. Those who participated in rendition/black sites need to be called to account as well, let us not forget that.

I have difficulties reading a rehash of the old Cold War paradigm as well - we live in an age of transglobalism.

Veeger

The sermons of cowards

The west is squandering authority on democracy and human rights: it fails to practise as it preaches

• Kishore Mahbubani
• The Guardian,

Something remarkable has happened in the struggle for greater freedom and democracy. The world's most powerful nation and the traditional beacon for democracy, the United States, has slid backwards. One of the world's poorest nations and the world's most populous Islamic state, Indonesia, has moved distinctly forward. And yet western discourse largely ignores this development, as evidenced by the sweeping speech on democracy delivered by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, last month.

The first flaw of western discourse is its inability to practise what it preaches in this respect: to speak truth to power. This is revealed in the reluctance of western governments to discuss the most catastrophic reversal in the field of human rights: the decision by the US government to defend the use of torture. In the evolution of human rights there have been two quantum leaps: the first was the universal abolition of slavery; the second, the move towards abolishing torture.

Ten years ago, if anyone had suggested the US would reintroduce torture, the answer would have been "impossible!" Yet the impossible has happened. Amnesty International has described Guantánamo as "the gulag of our times". Despite their history of condemning human rights violations, no western nation has condemned the US government for Guantánamo. Miliband's speech rightly applauded several brave Burmese people for standing up to the military government. They spoke truth to power, and at great personal risk. Sadly, even though he faced no personal risks, Miliband could not muster the courage to speak truth to power regarding Guantánamo.

Even more tellingly, in the US there has been a broader reversal on many civil rights issues. In the face of threats from terrorism, the population has, in effect, accepted a reduction of civil liberties, symbolised by the Patriot Act. In so doing, Americans have revealed that in a crunch they behave no differently to other societies. When they feel threatened, they too are prepared to sacrifice civil liberties - thus providing a new negative role model for others.

The second flaw in western discourse is the refusal to recognise its track record of double standards in the promotion of human rights and democracy. When a western country has to choose between promoting its values or defending its interests, interests always trump values. No western country promotes democracy in Saudi Arabia. Too many interests would have to be sacrificed in doing so. But in states such as Burma and Zimbabwe, where no major western interests are at risk, values can take primacy. When Tashkent agreed to host a valuable American military base in the battle against terrorism, the British ambassador, Craig Murray, was forced to resign in protest against the silence of his government on human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

We are moving toward a more intelligent world. Globally, the number of highly educated people, especially in Asia, has never been higher. They can now make well-informed judgments about what the west does with human rights. Hence, while the west conducts a self-congratulatory conversation on the subject, the rest of the world sees an emperor with no moral clothing.

The third flaw in western discourse is that when presented with a choice between doing good and feeling good, the west almost always chooses the latter because it costs less. Burma exemplifies this best. History teaches that sanctions and exclusions have never succeeded in transforming societies. Engagement and dialogue over time lead to change. The tragedy of 20 years of isolation of Burma has done no good, even though the politicians of the west have felt good condemning the regime.

A prominent Burmese intellectual, Thant Myint-U, grandson of U Thant, the former UN secretary general, wrote in the International Herald Tribune: "What outside pressure can bring about democratic change? And why, after nearly two decades of boycotts, aid cut-offs, trade bans and diplomatic condemnation, are Burma's generals apparently more in charge than ever before? Are we really looking at Burma - a country of 55 million people - in the right way?"

The paradox here is that engaging Burmese generals will require political courage from western politicians. They will have to justify this to their own people and perhaps pay a political price as a consequence. To avoid any risk, western politicians heap praise (as Miliband does) on Burmese dissidents, lauding their courage - while simultaneously demonstrating their own moral and political cowardice.

The time therefore has arrived for a new discourse between the west and the rest on freedom and democracy. In December we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This may well provide an opportunity for the west to change course; nothing can or will prevent it lecturing the world on human rights. But it could nevertheless learn to do something new: to listen to the voices from the rest of the world.

· Kishore Mahbubani is the author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, and will speak at the London School of Economics next Tuesday

These words will resonate will all those who join in the condemnation of this most disastrous period; an appalling US presidency leading out the coalition of the arm-twisted, blind-eyed, circumlocutionary discourses of its hegemony.

And as our awareness of the biggest market failure in history, the carbon bungle, turns our culture from hubris to disquiet we realise that the surrender of values to base interests is not only short-sighted but possibly fatally flawed.

COMMENTS:

zerozero
It is not 'western discourse' but global ruling class discourse. By using such terminology as 'western discourse' the author, I think, reveals he is 'siding' with a notion of a division between east and west that is as politically corrupt as the positions and policies he (rightly) damns. Would it not be rather crazy for a nation-state to act in its foreign policy against its own ruling class's perceived economic and strategic interests (to be 'moral')? Yes. Yet to its own subjects it must appear to always be doing so, or at least trying to.

One thing I noted recently in Bush's statement on Iraq was the way it assumed, newly, that the war simply removed the threat from the US by planting or exacerbating it in another country (Iraq). Can't this be taken as an admission of a war crime, to sacrifice the ordinary Iraqi civilian in such a way?

The author has a rather quaint notion of the history of democracy if he thinks it ever was very very 'noble'.

PRae

A timely piece, but one that seems more focused on provocation than on landing any palpable hits. It's the tired old references to 'western discourse' that give the game away, I think. Not because it doesn't exist, but because it's neither as isolated nor as unified as you suggest.

Of course, as an old UN hand, you are no doubt aware of that, Mr Mahbubani. So I can only presume that the superficiality of the argument stems from a somewhat disingenuous unwillingness to set the 'cowardice' of 'the west' off against a more robust promotion of what 'the rest' has to offer. Maybe it's a marketing strategy for your new book. However, given your career as a long-time ambassador for Singapore and you current position as Dean of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, your argument begs as many questions as it answers. How, for instance, do you square your use of an Amnesty report to lend credibility to your analysis, with the fact that Amnesty is effectively banned in Singapore? How valid can a critique of western sanctions on Burma be when it fails to acknowledge that Asean's much vaunted policy of 'non-interference in domestic affairs' has proved similarly impotent?

I do not presume that you speak for the Singapore Government on these matters; but surely an argument of this sort can be both more rounded and more rambunctious, and would make for greater substance than taking pot-shots at the Boy King Miliband?

jigen

Good article, very good points raised. I've often wondered why we, the U.S., talk about spreading democracy but never begin with those nations most likely to listen: our allies (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc.). Instead we begin by invading or threatening those least likely to listen - our enemies (Iraq, Iran, etc.) with bombs and democracy. It's just as when we were fighting communism, but allowing other forms of cruel dictatorship stand. It has to do with convenience, not principle.

That the US can export democracy after 2000, when the fellow who lost the election was selected by a group of partisan judges to be installed in the white house, is laughable.

I object to points in the article that talk about America, or Americans, as rolling back their own freedoms. America hasn't done this. A handful of power-hungry and cynical cowards, often collectively referred to as neocons, chickenhawks, or the Bush Administration, has done this.

They promote a climate of fear and market themselves as the antidote to the threat. It's merely a ploy to gain and retain power. It worked when they talked about "the evil empire", it works now they talk about "the evil terrorists". Freedom makes people difficult to govern, and democracy makes power uncertain. They're just doing what they need to do to remain in control, and marketing it under security measures.

That it works, is a different issue. Most Americans "don't have time" to be aware of the issues or to analytically think about what's going on. "Don't have time" means "are more interested in sports, celebrity, and other vapidity". And let's not forget the sad and powerful influence of right-wing hate radio, Fox "News", and other strong sources of misinformation and propaganda. While folly and willful ignorance are deplorable, I have difficulty blaming these poor people for locking their own cell doors. Most Americans feel torture is wrong. It's just they've been made so fearful, with visions of another 9/11/01 and mushroom clouds if we don't torture, that they'll acquiesce to extreme measures without thinking. I'm not excusing their cowardice and lack of thought and soul. But living here, I understand why it happens.

Now, let's wait for RogeredInTheUSA to come on with an off-topic gripe about British democracy as trite retaliation.

Omenowl

March 28, 2008 1:41 AM

I do tend to agree with the article, but we must remember the definition of torture has gone beyond what most people consider torture. The US advocated physical torture in the form of waterboarding, but as human rights have expanded now almost anything is considered torture. A clear definition of torture along with enough leeway for interrogators to gain information through psychological means.

The United States along with other European countries need to make a firm stand on what is acceptable and what is not. They need to tie economic trade benefits to ones human rights record. Why does the US trade with Saudia Arabia and China, but not Cuba? Perhaps if we held onto our principles or at least had a clear method for countries to garner economic benefits there would be a better reform.

We also have to make sure human rights are ensure a fair justice system where things we accept as reasonable such as a Jury by Peers, trials and appeals. This however does not remove the notion the punishment should fit the crime. Hanging murderers should not be deemed a human right violation if the person was convicted of murder.

FromMe2U

Much as Kishore Mahbubani is correct in highlighting the stark differences at times in 'what we say and what we do' perhaps we might look at in what circumstances we tend to deviate more than in others.

He might have pointed more strongly that Western politicians, such as Miliband, focus criticism on countries which have poor or worse Government which are resource rich: Sudan, Burma, Iran, (Iraq's is work in progress), Somalia, Russia, etc but not Zimbabwe, and certainly not on our friends as mentioned: Saudi Arabia etc.

It seems possible that the dearth of new resources under the control of US/UK Big Oil is a specific driver back towards the type of Imperialism that was practised hisorically-the human rights abuses, illegal invasions- (I mean how can it be illegal they've got oil?)- etc.

a good round from today's news

Alleged Terrorist Labsi to Stay in Slovakia (Success!) Posted: 26 Mar 2008 10:37 PM CDT Kosice/Bratislava, March 13 (TASR-SLOVAKIA) - Slovakia’s Constitutional Court on Thursday decided on the suspension of the extradition of alleged terrorist Mustafa Labsi to his homeland Algeria, Labsi’s attorney Maria Kolikova has told SLOVAKIA. Kolikova welcomed the decision, calling it crucial for her client’s protection. “The Constitutional Court has proven to be an effective tool in the [...]

REPRIEVE RELEASES THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF SAMI AL HAJ PROTEST SKETCHES CONDEMNING US MILITARY ABUSE OF THE AL JAZEERA JOURNALIST Posted: 26 Mar 2008 09:25 PM CDT Reprieve is releasing the third in a series of protest pieces called Sketches of My Nightmare, inspired by the suffering of Sami al Haj. Mr. al Haj is an al-Jazeera journalist picked up covering the Afghan war and sent to Guantánamo Bay. He has been on hunger strike in Guantánamo since January 7, 2007. Sami al [...]

Lawyers contend US, Canada violated rights of Guantanamo detainee, seek interrogation details Posted: 26 Mar 2008 09:15 PM CDT Lawyers contend US, Canada violated rights of Guantanamo detainee, seek interrogation details The Associated Press Thursday, March 27, 2008 OTTAWA: The United States has violated international laws by holding a Canadian former child soldier at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyers told Canada’s high court as they sought to force the country’s intelligence service to provide details from their [...]

America’s Ruling Clique Posted: 26 Mar 2008 08:34 PM CDT Neoconservatives derive much of their political strength from the portrayal of big government as the enemy of the people: a belief that plays only too well in America . Big government is indeed the enemy of the people when it does not serve the people’s interests, or when it betrays them. Where the neoconservatives and the [...]

40% of aid to Afghanistan goes to consultants: report Tom Coghlan, The Daily Telegraph Posted: 26 Mar 2008 08:26 PM CDT KABUL - Nearly half the $15 billion in foreign aid given by Britain, the U. S. and other countries to rebuild Afghanistan since 2001 has been spent on consultants and contractors, according to a report by aid agencies released yesterday. The report by the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), which represents 94 aid agencies, [...]

Syria Now Home to a Million ‘Pillow Drivers’ Posted: 26 Mar 2008 08:12 PM CDT Inter Press Service By Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail* DAMASCUS, Mar 24 (IPS) - More than a million Iraqis in Syria cannot find work. For their idleness, they have come to be called the “pillow drivers”. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says there are at least 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria. If they seek [...]

Oscar winner plans Abu Ghraib photo site Posted: 26 Mar 2008 07:50 PM CDT Since Abu Ghraib first came to the world’s attention in 2004, nearly 300 photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse have been shown to the public. But soon an enormous archive of new material — including more than 1,500 other photos, unredacted court papers and interview transcripts — will be posted online by filmmaker Errol Morris, whose [...]

Algeria officials visit Guantanamo Bay detainees
Devin Montgomery at 4:24 PM ET

[JURIST] Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Belaiz on Sunday confirmed that officials from the country had visited the US base at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] to identify Algerian detainees, and said that although the country would accept repatriation of the 17 still held there, some may face criminal charges upon their return. US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch [official profile] has told reporters that the US and Algeria are negotiating an accord in order to return the detainees, but that the US wants to make sure that those that are dangerous are not simply set free.

Two main obstacles face the return of the Algerian detainees to their country of origin. Some detainees, most notably Ahmed Belbacha [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], have challenged their transfer, saying they fear being tortured or killed by either the government or al Qaeda if they return. In addition, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's 2006 amnesty plan [BBC backgrounder] for Islamic insurgents could mean that dangerous detainees may be released and able to reestablish their terrorist ties. US President George Bush has said that, when possible, he wants to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo Bay in order to eventually close the facility [JURIST report]. AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

Shaker Aamer - Guantanamo Detainee

A Conference to mark 2000 days of the existence of Guantanamo Bay and the ongoing imprisonment of Shaker & others.
Saturday 30th June 2007 1800-2030hrs
Memon Centre, 3 Weir Road, Balham, London SW12 0LT (less)

Added: June 04, 2007

The background Arabic song [nasheed] was written and sung by Abu Sulaiman from Bahrain, himself a former detainee of Guantanamo who was released last year. It is dedeicated to all those people held in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Please visit freedetainees.org. Please donate!! Just buy giving up your energy drinks for a week you can make a big difference. Help us tell their stories and give them faces in the minds of humanity.

He is very ill, please pray for him !! and keep him and his family tightly in your heart.

Innocent Afghani, Razzaq Hekmati, dies at Guantanamo

It hardly seems right to comment- what is below speaks for itself.

The US military/industrial/Congressional cabal's - the corporatocracy's victims in the so-called War on Terror live lives of utter desperation and degradation.

No amount of legal redress is possible and people (many many thousands) are ripped out of the arms of their loved ones never to return.

This story of Razzaq Hekmati, is such a story, a story with a sad, sad, sad ending for anyone who loved or cared about him.

I hope he gets a rest now, but we must not ever forget this man Razzaq, he was loved. And if your heart is big enough, love him and love his family and clan, too.

If you care, go visit freedetainees.org and get involved. All these men and women need your help. Some are sick, some are young .. all are being denied international justice.

Veeger

“He is caught in the middle,” said Hajji Wali, a family friend. “He is scared of the Taliban and scared of the government and the Americans, because the Americans took his innocent father and they could take him, too.”

Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

The detention center at the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, who said he was falsely accused, died on Dec. 30.

• 
  

By CARLOTTA GALL and ANDY WORTHINGTON

Published: February 5, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for his resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980s and later for a daring prison break he organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999.

Related

Times Topics: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

The Reach of War

But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials here contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30.

The fate of Mr. Hekmati, the first detainee to die of natural causes at Guantánamo, who fruitlessly recounted his story several times to American officials, demonstrates the enduring problems of the tribunals at Guantánamo, say Afghan officials and others who knew him.

Afghan officials, and some Americans, complain that detainees are effectively thwarted from calling witnesses in their defense, and that the Afghan government is never consulted on the detention cases, even when it may be able to help. Mr. Hekmati’s case, officials who knew him said, shows that sometimes the Americans do not seem to know whom they are holding. Meanwhile, detainees wait for years with no resolution to their cases.

In response to queries, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, Cynthia O. Smith, said the military tribunals at Guantánamo contained “significant process and protections,” including the right to call witnesses.

While Ms. Smith would not discuss specifics, she said that there was nothing to indicate that Mr. Hekmati’s case was handled improperly, and that detainees at Guantánamo were given a range of protections, including “the opportunity for a detainee to be heard in person, call witnesses and present additional information that might benefit him.”

Whether those protections are sufficient has been widely debated and is now being considered by the United States Supreme Court. In the tribunals, which consider only whether detainees have been properly classified as enemy combatants, detainees are not allowed to have lawyers or see the evidence against them. The Supreme Court case will decide whether they have the right to broadly appeal their detentions in federal court.

Of the 275 detainees at Guantánamo, at least 180 have sought to challenge their detentions.

Several high-ranking officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government say Mr. Hekmati’s detention at Guantánamo was a gross mistake. They were mentioned by Mr. Hekmati in his hearings and could have vouched for him. Records from the hearings show that only a cursory effort was made to reach them.

Two of those officials were men Mr. Hekmati had helped escape from the Taliban’s top security prison in Kandahar in 1999: Ismail Khan, now the minister of energy; and Hajji Zaher, a general in the Border Guards. Both men said they appealed to American officials about Mr. Hekmati’s case, but to no effect.

“What he did was very important for all Afghan people who were against the Taliban,” Hajji Zaher said of Mr. Hekmati’s role in organizing his prison break. “He was not a man to take to Guantánamo.”

Hajji Zaher, whose father served as vice president under Mr. Karzai for six months, warned that the case of Mr. Hekmati, who is widely known here by his nickname, Baraso, would discourage Afghans from backing the government against the Taliban. “No one is going to help the government,” he said.

Mr. Hekmati never had a lawyer, said Zachary Katznelson of Reprieve, a British charity that represents a number of Guantánamo detainees. At his October 2004 review hearing, Mr. Hekmati specifically asked that Hajji Zaher and Mr. Khan be contacted to act as supporting witnesses.

The military tribunal president said the Afghan government did not respond to requests to locate the men, and ruled that they were “not reasonably available.”

Although both men are well known to the American authorities in Afghanistan, both Hajji Zaher and Mr. Khan said the American authorities had never asked them to appear.

Unidentified Accusers

In Mr. Hekmati’s tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004 to assess his status as an enemy combatant, American officials accused Mr. Hekmati of a variety of charges made by unidentified sources, and referred to him only as Abdul Razzaq, his first names, which are common in Afghanistan.

According to transcripts released by the Pentagon, the United States military charged, among other things, that Mr. Hekmati was “high in the Al Qaeda hierarchy,” acted as a smuggler and facilitator for it, and was “part of the main security escort for Osama bin Laden.” He was also accused of attending a terrorist training camp near Kandahar and of involvement in assassination attempts against Afghan government officials.

He was also identified as a senior leader of a 40-man Taliban unit, and even as supreme commander in Helmand Province.

That last allegation was rebutted by another unidentified detainee, who explicitly stated that Mr. Hekmati looked nothing like the Taliban commander and that the commander was “not the same person as the detainee,” according to the transcript.

Mr. Hekmati denied the charges, too, saying he did not even live in Afghanistan after the 1999 prison break, when he ran afoul of the Taliban. He insisted that most of the allegations had been directed against him by two of his personal enemies.

The first was Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the post-Taliban governor of Helmand Province, who, Mr. Hekmati said, was directly responsible for his arrest after he reported the governor for corruption and for protecting a number of senior Taliban members in Helmand.

The second was Mohammed Jan, a distant cousin who had falsely denounced him as part of a long-running family feud. “It was one person who gave them wrong information and just because of this wrong person, I am here,” Mr. Hekmati pleaded at his October 2004 review hearing.

“They can’t prove anything against me because I never did anything wrong,” he went on. “The person that was giving you all that wrong information, this is the person that killed my two brothers, my sister, my father and two of my sons.”

Mr. Akhundzada denied any part in Mr. Hekmati’s arrest, attributing it to a mistake by American Special Forces. He said they were often fed false information.

But friends of Mr. Hekmati said he was arrested in 2003 by Afghan forces in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, during Mr. Akhundzada’s tenure and later turned over to American forces.

Mr. Hekmati maintained that he was opposed to the Taliban, whom he described as “dangerous and dirty people” who had deviated from Islam.

“Taliban and Al Qaeda are the same,” he said at his review board hearing in September 2005. “When I’m against Taliban I’m going against Al Qaeda. There’s an expression in Pashto that you cannot hold two watermelons in one hand at the same time.”

The only allegation that he accepted was that he had worked as a truck driver for the Taliban, but he said he had been forced to work for them three months a year, as every able-bodied man was during the Taliban’s rule.

Several people in Afghanistan, including Hajji Mir Wali, a member of Parliament, and Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, who was held in a cell next to Mr. Hekmati in Guantánamo for three months in 2003, confirmed that he was a truck driver for the Taliban government in the 1990s.

But Mullah Zaeef said Mr. Hekmati could never have worked for the Taliban again after 1999, such was their fury over the prison break he organized.

Hajji Wali, who knew Mr. Hekmati well, said: “It was the Americans’ mistake. I know he had no relations with the Taliban.”

Yet the Americans on his tribunal and review boards seemed unaware of how significant the prison break was, or how important were the men he had helped escape and whom he had asked to be called as witnesses.

The Prison Break

The 1999 escape was a deep humiliation for the Taliban government, which blocked roads and searched houses across the country for days afterward and offered $1 million for the capture of the escapees. Two of Mr. Hekmati’s relatives were badly tortured by the Taliban after the prison break as the Taliban looked for information.

Two of the men Mr. Hekmati freed, Mr. Khan and Hajji Zaher, returned to the battlefield to lead forces against the Taliban. They both received significant American support in 2001 and worked with Special Forces units.

A third man who escaped with them was another commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Gen. Mohammed Qasim.

According to Mr. Hekmati’s account in his hearing in September 2005, he organized the escape because he opposed the Taliban’s “ruthlessness and injustice.”

Mr. Hekmati said he had written a letter outlining his escape plan, which his son, Hekmatullah, who worked as an intelligence officer at the Taliban’s high security prison, smuggled in to Mr. Khan. Mr. Khan then put Mr. Hekmati in touch with his own son, who gave him $20,000 to buy a Toyota Land Cruiser for a getaway vehicle.

Mr. Hekmati said that because his son was trusted by the Taliban, he was able to walk the three prisoners out one night to where he was waiting in the dark with the vehicle. Hekmatullah corroborated much of his father’s account in an interview in 2002.

The men escaped to Iran, where Mr. Khan provided Mr. Hekmati and his family with a house and financial support in return for his daring. Mr. Hekmati said he returned to Afghanistan only in 2002, after the Taliban were toppled and Mr. Karzai’s interim government was installed. Within a year, he was arrested.

The Military Tribunals

In a report in February 2006 based on an analysis of documents released by the Pentagon, researchers at Seton Hall University School of Law, in Newark, concluded that no outside witnesses had ever been called to appear at Guantánamo. Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham, a former United States intelligence officer who had worked on the tribunals, stepped forward last June to criticize the tribunals.

In a submission to the Supreme Court, he condemned them for relying on generalized evidence that would have been dismissed by any competent court, and as being devised to rubber-stamp the administration’s assertion that the detainees had been correctly designated “enemy combatants” when they were captured and that they could be held indefinitely.

In a second submission, to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in November, Colonel Abraham explained that he was “not aware of any realistic attempts” to “identify or even attempt to bring before the tribunal witnesses or their statements,” and concluded that the whole process “was designed to conduct tribunals without witnesses other than the accused detainee.”

That is one of the reasons Afghan officials have asked that Afghan detainees be transferred from Guantánamo to Afghanistan. “Of course a judicial process needs witnesses and documents and evidence,” Minister of Justice Mohammad Sarwar Danish said. “Most of these cases have not come to trial, and are not proceeding, and that is why we asked them to be moved here.”

After Mr. Hekmati was arrested, two of the men he broke out of prison, Mr. Khan and Hajji Zaher, said they appealed to American and Afghan officials for his release. “I asked President Karzai to help, but unfortunately it did not help,” Mr. Khan said. He said he also asked the American ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad, with no result.

“We did try but it was not working,” Hajji Zaher said in a phone interview. “When they are sending someone to Guantánamo, they have their own rules.”

After Mr. Hekmati’s death at Guantánamo, his body was returned to Afghanistan and quietly buried in an unmarked grave in Kandahar on Jan. 8. His family did not dare attend the funeral, fearful of both the Taliban and the Americans, friends said.

As the Taliban has reasserted itself in much of southern Afghanistan, Mr. Hekmati’s son remains in hiding. Neither he nor any relative or elder of their tribe collected his father’s body.

“He is caught in the middle,” said Hajji Wali, a family friend. “He is scared of the Taliban and scared of the government and the Americans, because the Americans took his innocent father and they could take him, too.”

US unveils new 'court" as Guantanmo trials resume

Do you ever have those days when your heart is BREAKING?

Today is such a day for me.

It was heart breaking to go and read just what got released on HiLIARy's incessant demand$ for more and more ca$h -- not quite enough about released for these tired old bones, heartbreakingly little for my taste.

I went and did a check of the blogs to see how ole HiLIARy was faring and, nope, not enough but some interesting stuff .. some give until 11 February to quit the race. No tears will be streaming from these eyes then! None, at all. The Queen will have to give up her naked ambition, and all those DELUXO women clowns who support her will just have to find their Fairytale Princess in someone else. As far as I am concerned, THAT woman should be knitting silk stockings in a Chinese factory for the rest of her life with music piped in from a band that supports Obama.

But this below - this item on Omar Khadr is the most heartbreaking of all, and that's not easy to say after reading about and watching the video on the woman who was stripped searched by police after calling them for help. I'll get around to posting about that tomorrow, after my PTSD attack wears off.

Connection between the two items in case that is going over your head /// how can a society's morals slip this low - that a thief and a liar gets major headlines day after day after killing god nows how many people during her "career" and a minor, a child soldier must endure such humiliation and mistreatment day after day after day when they should enjoy the support of a legal system that is supposedly designed to protect their interests?

HiLIARy is a disgrace to the legal profession, and yet, and yet those lawyers who support Omar Khadrs cause are not granted hero's status nor given the opportunity to give legal remedy to their client? There are many tormentors in this young, very young man's story .. not least among them Canada's press and OpED writers - save the exception of Michele Shepherd at the Toronto Star ...

I wonder if Omar will be wearing a stun belt. I hope not, but I am certainly afraid he will be.

And let me take this opportunity to say SHAME ON CANADA, this man should not be going to court at all! You, Stephen Harper, toady of George W. Bush and his band of international criminals are truly not in the spirit of Canada. You are an abuser and a total disgrace to my new nation!! SHAME!! Stephen Harper! SHAME!!

Thank you Michele,
Virginia

The reader here will find many comments on Hamden v. Rumsfield in the swicki to your left.


http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN03517884


Visit freedetainees.org to take action on behalf of Omar Khadr

and Mohamed Jawad, also a minor when captured.

U.S. unveils new court as Guantanamo trials resume

Sun Feb 3, 2008 5:14pm EST

(Corrects salary to monthly from weekly in paragraph 13)

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military unveiled its new war crimes courtroom at Guantanamo Bay on Sunday as it prepared to resume pretrial hearings this week for Osama bin Laden's Yemeni driver and a young Canadian seeking protection as a child soldier.

The new court building looks like a khaki-colored metal warehouse on the outside and a traditional courtroom inside. It has enough room to simultaneously try up to six prisoners, lined up on faux-leather chairs at cherry-veneer tables.

It is part of a $12 million mobile court complex that includes prefabricated holding cells shipped by barge and cargo plane to the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, where the military holds about 275 captives in the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism.

The court complex is rising even as most of the candidates vying to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush in January 2008 have pledged to shut down the widely criticized Guantanamo prison camp. The court complex is designed to be moved elsewhere if it is no longer needed at Guantanamo.

"Whatever we're told to do, we can pick it up and move it to another location," said Army Col. Wendy Kelly, operations director for the Pentagon office overseeing the war court.

It will be ready for use in March and is part of the military's plan to try as many as 80 Guantanamo prisoners on war crimes charges. So far only one captive has been convicted at Guantanamo, an Australian who pleaded guilty to training with al Qaeda. After being held at Guantanamo for more than five years, he finished his nine-month sentence in his homeland in December.

HEARINGS THIS WEEK

Pretrial hearings resume in another courtroom this week for two other prisoners captured in Afghanistan after the United States invaded following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Lawyers for Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of throwing a grenade that killed one U.S. soldier and wounded others during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, will argue the charges should be dismissed because Khadr was 15 when captured and prosecuting him would violate international law protecting child soldiers.

Khadr, now 21, is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier who often took his family to stay at bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan.

His lawyers also plan to argue Khadr cannot be tried under the 2006 law creating the Guantanamo court because the acts he is accused of were not classified as war crimes when they occurred.

Khadr, who was gravely wounded by U.S. soldiers during the firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound, faces life in prison if convicted on charges that include murder and attempted murder of American soldiers. His lawyers said in trial documents that killing enemy soldiers had never before been recognized as a war crime and that "doing so is, almost by definition, a fundamental element of armed conflict."

Prosecutors will argue that Khadr was a terrorist and not a lawful combatant because he was not part of any regular national army that followed traditional laws of war. They said Khadr told interrogators he wanted "to kill lots of Americans" because he would collect a $1,500 reward for each one killed.

Bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, will also face hearings at Guantanamo this week on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. He has said he never joined al Qaeda but acted as bin Laden's chauffeur because he needed the $200 monthly salary.

His lawyers will argue that prolonged solitary confinement at Guantanamo has impaired him mentally and compromised his ability to aid in his defense. A psychiatrist who works for the U.S. Veterans Administration has examined and diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression and said he has nightmares, panic attacks and paranoia.

Prosecutors say Hamdan, who is in his late 30s and faces life in prison if convicted, was a trusted al Qaeda member who transported weapons and helped bin Laden elude U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (Editing by Chris Wilson)

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/bal-te.detainee22jan22,0,2665231.story

Ex-Md. resident writes from Guantanamo about CIA torture

Mcclatchy-tribune

January 22, 2008

MIAMI

In a handwritten plea, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has written a federal court about his alleged torture in CIA custody - details hidden from public view by censorship.

"Think of me as a human being ... not a terrorist," Majid Khan, 27, wrote last month in careful English penmanship between heavily censored portions of a federal court filing made public Friday.

Lawyers for Khan also argue in the filing that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden "was demonstrably incorrect" when he said in a statement issued last month that videotaping of interrogations stopped in 2002.

"The agency stands by that statement," George Little, a spokesman for the CIA, said yesterday.

"At a bare minimum, General Hayden is not fully informed about the CIA torture program," countered Wells Dixon, one of Khan's attorneys.

The documents are part of the latest legal salvo between the Bush administration and Khan's attorneys, who allege he was subjected to "a ruthless program of state-sponsored torture" during three years of secret CIA custody at a so-called "black site" overseas.

The CIA and the Bush administration contend that they do not engage in torture. There is no way to independently verify either Khan's claims or those of the government.

Now, the letters are part of an additional filing in the case, written by Khan last month at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. All references to what he says happened to him are concealed by a censor's pen.

In one five-page handwritten account from Khan to his lawyers, only a single sentence survives the censor's pen. It says, "I was 'practically' an American who lived a comfortable live [sic] under freedoms of America, who never lived in caves or Afghanistan."

The U.S. government alleges that Khan was tasked by Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to conduct research on poisoning reservoirs and blowing up gas stations in the United States.

Born in Pakistan, Khan moved with his family to the United States at age 15 and became a legal resident. In 2002, while he was visiting Pakistan, security forces captured him and handed him over to the CIA, which held him secretly until he was sent to Guantanamo in September 2006.

None has been charged with crimes. But Khan is the only one of the 15 to see an attorney so far, spending days describing his treatment to Gitanjali Gutierrez and Dixon of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights.

Based on those interviews, they have filed sworn statements, now sealed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

His lawyers have filed a petition asking the court to rule that he was tortured in U.S. custody; it's the only court empowered by Congress to review the detention of Guantanamo captives, who today number about 275.

At Guantanamo, his lawyers say, Khan has only shared recreation time and the opportunity to speak with one other detainee, an alleged senior al-Qaida operative named Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA has said it created its "terrorist detention and interrogation program" after capturing Zubaydah in Pakistan and videotaping his interrogations in 2002. It said the videotapes were destroyed three years later to spare agents retribution by al-Qaida or its sympathizers.

A former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who was involved in the program, has said in successive media interviews that the agency engaged in waterboarding, strategically, in the war on terrorism as part of special techniques made legal by President Bush. Waterboarding simulates drowning.

In his letters, Khan describes himself as a one-time U.S. resident who paid $2,400 a month in U.S. taxes, now caught in a "big mistake" by the CIA. "I ask you to give me justice ... in the name of what U.S.A. once stood for and in the name of what Thomas Jefferson fought for ... allow me a chance to prove that I am innocent."

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

Stories we Missed in 2007

I am having a horrible day. I am out of sorts and totally tired of denial and CRAP.

The Court decisions on Guantanamo and certain forms of "shoot the messenger" that I see going around me have me really out of sorts.

It's really hard to want to keep blogging or writing anything at all. Cuz What IS the POINT? No one really listens anyway. They choose to take the Easy Way rather than put in the effort it's gonna take to change this society into something livable for future generations.

Yes, I think the system is that cunning, baffling, powerful and insidious that it's looking pretty hopeless. I am having real trouble staying optimisitic or hopeful today.

I don't feel like anyone appreciates ME. I don't feel like anyone has any idea what it FEELS like to be the one that they system has "done in" and they couldn't care less. I try to keep myself on an "even keel" and do pretty well at it most of the time. Today is NOT one of those times.

I feel, rightly or wrongly, totally misunderstood and unappreciated. Continuing to swipe at The System (and the mean ideology that feeds it), is to be made weary on a year to year basis. I've been at this FORTY YEARS and while I know The System is entrenched, I just find the DENIAL too much to take some days.

My posting on Guantanamo this week became the stuff of real upset.

Watching the video below made it all the worse because what he says is TRUE; the men who are held in "detention" are just not getting ink. I try to correct that. I write about Omar Khadr. I try also to ALWAYS put in the real faces of the people who are so badly abused and get the reader's heart into feeling the outrage these men's families feel.

It's ain't no "tea party" - the gut wrenching reality is bound to make people feel something.

Yet, those who make a serious attempt to portray this as a HUMAN reality are shot down; it's not just some POLITICAL thing to comment on, which is mostly what I see floating around.

I even think Cliff Schecter does that when he doesn't show you the faces of the men. He isn't getting across HIS emotional attachment to the story. It's NOT the blow to American prestige nor bad policy to maintain Guantanamo; it's that it is an affront to life itself to continue to kidnap and then detain and then torture other human beings. And that's the bottom line.

For myself, it's a Bad Day.

For the men inside Guantanamo, there is a good chance that they don't even have an idea of what day it is. On some days (and we don't know which ones, or how often) the torturers in there make sure that they don't know if it's day or night as part of the torture.

Is this not one of the saddest things you've ever heard? If not, why not?

I REFUSE to call Guantanamo GITMO - why?

It is to my mind part of the trivilizing of the trevails and suffering of these men who are held there. Part of the euphemisation, the trashing of their suffering.

I think the following video is INSTRUCTIVE. But part of the instructiveness of it is not all that obvious.

When, in a brand spanking new millenium, the suffering of nearly 1000 people (and that's a guesstimate, which says something, too) - is portrayed as a press shortcoming rather than asking WHY the hell people are not screaming daily at the press to TELL THESE STORIES shows a symptomology.

It was pointed out that ONLY Michele Shepperd here at the Toronto Star was up to speed when the military tribunals were held at Guantanamo, ONLY her. No US reporter had been given the money to pursue the story or understood the details.

Why are people buying these RAGS, these insults to human intelligence? Why do they support the demise of investigative journalism for paying to be advertised AT -- afterall, all they REALLY are is a medium to dessiminate the "business as usual" mindset.

BUY! Buy! BUY! consume, consume .. let the corporatocracy run the world. If you don't buy, you are unpatriotic; if you DO but are middle class and run up debt, YOU've ruined the economy - an economy that has been predicated to keep the unnatural consumption of oil and nukes for over 50 years.

Only torture in the interest of keeping the insane system going should make us all stop dead in our tracks and insist that it STOP. We must all become intervenors when it comes to torture and abuse. Otherwise we are less than fully human.

It comes as no surprise to me that these men have no "faces" - they're just part and parcel of the game that fuels the system, a symbol that we, too, are expendable and keeping the bottom line going on PROFIT$ for the corporations is far more important than PEOPLE.

I realize that my logic isn't making sense.

Torture has that effect on me.

Veeger

Posted by Adam Howard, AlterNet

Investigative reporter A.C. Thompson reflects on the stories the news media is largely missing at a time of great turmoil in the industry.

The video made by New America Media, features A.C. Thompson, an award winning investigative reporter, reflecting on the stories the news media is largely missing at a time of great turmoil in the industry.

Tagged as: ac thompson, media

Adam Howard is the editor of PEEK.

Six years since an American Gulag was Created in Cuba

Posted by Cliff Schecter, Cliff Schecter's Blog

Today marks the 6th Anniversary of when our democracy was officially put in shackles under cover of the night.

Stories We Missed in 2007 [VIDEO]
Adam Howard AlterNet

Yesterday, we got to "celebrate" the ill-advised surge in Iraq, or as they called it back in the Vietnam days, escalation.

While a couple of pipe-heads like new NY Times golden boy Bill Kristol and his BFFs McCain and Lieberman prattle on about how this was a success--because now only fewer American troops are getting killed for there to be no political solution as opposed to say, NONE--the truth is that this war has been a disaster for U.S. foreign policy any way you slice it.

Which brings me to Guantanomo. Today marks the 6th Anniversary of when our democracy was officially put in shackles under cover of the night. Six years since an American gulag was created 90 miles off our shore. No, not hyperbole, or the plot to the next sci-fi thriller, but our present reality.

How ironic, don't you think, that our justification all those years for trying to take out Castro was that we were attempting to bring freedom to Cuba. Instead, we brought a "black site.":

1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

1. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Not to mention the extra-legal manner from which all its "residents" benefit, like being declared "enemy combatants" so they cannot challenge their detention. Thank you Bush-style "democracy!"

Please do something about this. Namely, try and help get the Harkin Bill passed to Shut It Down. The ACLU has much more on this, go to their site and find out how you can help end one of the many Bush assaults on our republic.

Tagged as: gitmo, guantanamo bay, torture, bush administration

Cliff Schecter blogs at Brave New Films.

Human RIghts: Stop the lieing, close Guantanamo

From the Center for American Progress

www.americanprogressaction.org

(and don't say I didn't warn EVERYONE about Michael Mukasey .. I surely did -
on here and at OpEd News

I also warned people about Alito and made myself SICK doing it.)

Bush's Legal 'Black Hole' Enters Seventh Year

Six long years ago today, "the first orange-clad, shackled and blindfolded prisoners arrived at Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray." Worldwide protests are marking today's anniversary. The ACLU notes, "Since that dark day in recent American history, more than 700 people have been detained without due process and not a single trial has been completed." For six years, Guantanamo has existed as an island outside the boundaries of law, staining America's reputation as a nation that respects the rule of law. In April 2006, the Center for American Progress laid out a comprehensive strategy for dealing with suspected terrorists after the closure of Guantanamo. "The best solution to the challenges of Guantanamo lies in working with our allies to create a Special Tribunal for International Terrorist Suspects in order to share the responsibility of detaining, trying, and imprisoning terrorists," wrote analyst Ken Gude. In June 2006, Bush declared, "I'd like to close Guantanamo." Two months ago, Condoleezza Rice echoed his point: "The President has said, and I fully agree, we would like nothing better than to close Guantanamo." But those words have proved to be little more than lip service. The Bush administration appears willing to leave office without addressing Guantanamo, leaving its successor to deal with the legal "black hole" it has created. Sign the ACLU's petition to close Guantanamo here.


BUSH FAILS TO HEED CONSERVATIVE VOICES: In June 2007, Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo -- not tomorrow, this afternoon," explaining that "we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open." Even former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee acknowledged that Guantanamo has become a damaging symbol for the United States and is "not in our best interests." Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly pushed to close Gitmo because he felt the detention facility had "become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate." Despite these and other prominent conservative voices who have spoken up for closing the facility, Bush has failed to act. Vice President Cheney, who has long expressed objections to shutting down Guantanamo, appears to have found renewed strength with the appointment of Attorney General Michael Mukasey. "I can't simply say we have to close Guantanamo," Mukasey told Congress during his confirmation hearings. The Financial Times reported recently that anti-Cheney forces inside the administration "had lost the intensity needed to have a realistic chance of closing the prison."

WHAT HAPPENS IN GITMO STAYS IN GITMO: Interrogation practices at Guantanamo have reportedly included the use of waterboarding and other torture tactics in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In November, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on the effectiveness of Bush's "enhanced" interrogation program and sought the testimony of Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor. Couch had declined to prosecute a "high value" detainee because he concluded at the time that the prisoner's incriminating statements

"had been taken through torture, rendering them inadmissible under U.S. and international law."

Couch's knowledge of Guantanamo's inner workings posed such a threat to the administration that officials prevented him from testifying before Congress. In December, the Senate sought the testimony of Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Gitmo. Davis resigned his position last fall because he felt the justice system had become "deeply politicized" and too willing to allow evidence obtained through torture. Unsurprisingly, the administration also blocked Davis from testifying. Last month, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the current legal adviser at Guantanamo, refused to condemn waterboarding.

CONGRESS PICKING UP THE SLACK: In the absence of presidential leadership, Congress is stepping up to address the problems created by Guantanamo. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has introduced legislation that would close the detention facility and restore due process rights to those being held at Guantanamo. Congress also passed a bill to require the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual on interrogation, which bans waterboarding, mock executions, and other harsh interrogation methods, but Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently placed a hold on that legislation. Additionally, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Chris Dodd (D-CT) are still pushing legislation to restore habeas corpus review for detainees, one of the rights that was eliminated with the passage of the 2006 Military Commissions Act.