May xx, 199x US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

After two weeks of standing post along the fenceline, as reluctant bait for vengeful Cuban mosquitos and sand fleas, spent in dark solitude breathing the stagnant salt-marsh fumes and watching the mundane movements of the Cuban military, I was more than ready to relax and party hard at the Windjammer E-club.  It was a humid Friday night, and a few of us were on the ferry heading for the Windward side of the base to capitalize on our well deserved biweekly liberty privileges.  The ferry constantly taxied from one side of the bay to the other providing Marines, Sailors, and any other poor residents of The Rock a means for finding something to do seeing how everything worth doing was not on the Leeward side of the base.

As I stood against the railing, the salty air massaged the bruises and bites on my darker-than-usual skin. It was definitely relaxing. The 25 minute ride across the bay was the only peaceful moment that I could steal from the 24 hour obligation I had to Uncle Sam. The exhaustion of the previous two weeks slowly ebbed away as the distance away from the ferry landing increased. As I gazed out over the open water, I focused on faint distant lights which could have been easily mistaken for stars riding the invisible horizon; these were the cruise ships that sail out of Miami. I imagined the masses of people enjoying large buffets of all-you-can-gorge food, dancing with bodies pressed seductively against each other, gambling sweat-less money away while sipping on dirty martinis, and the hundreds of women who were getting drunk wearing low cut dresses with high riding skirts and giving every little bitch-boy slacker every opportunity to get laid.

I felt a surge of masochistic envy, and relished in knowing that I was suffering something that they would never have an privilege to experience. GITMO gave us Marines a sense of purpose in a world that at the time had no significant conflicts. We monitored the fenceline that separated two completely different worlds, which consequently had mutually exclusive political and social-economic philosophies.  Always on the lookout for any Cuban Asylum seekers; better known as CAS's, Marines here were always ready for anything.

The ferry's engines began to rev up loud as it was thrust into reverse to slow the approach to the dock. Everyone had begun to shift and gather themselves to prepare for the unloading. As the ramp lowered with a dull mettalic thud against the concrete dock I took one last glance to the passing cruise ship. It was nowhere to be seen, they had gone on their way just as I was now going on mine.

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"Car Bomb Strikes Police Headquarters in Islamabad," Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
"Missing American Journalists Turn Up in Syria," Al Arabiya TV, UAE
"Turkey Pounds Kurdish Sites in N. Iraq," Saudi TV, Saudi Arabia
"Hamas & Fateh Far from Reconcilliation," Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
"Kuwaiti Investors Force Stock Market to Close," Dubai TV, UAE
"Iran is Immune from Financial Crunch," Al-Alam TV, Iran
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The Economy Sucks and or Collapse

District Court, Judge Ricardo Urbina wants to release 17 Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo, who are not Americans. "The decision is momentarily stayed while the Government appeals  "He reasoned, despite the fact that the Uighur's are non-Americans held outside the United States, that they are vested by the United States Constitution with a right against indefinite detention.  The government has been trying to find a country that (a) will take them and (b) will not persecute them.  Where in the Constitution it says these aliens have a right to enter the United States and live among our population is not clear.  http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDcyNWRiYmFkM2RjMWYxNjA5MzM4YjI5YmNlMTc3NDk= Full report from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/10/07/ST2008100702270.html  The government cleared another 60 people in cleaning the Gitmo house but unlike the others- the Uighurs were reportedly trained at camps sponsored by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a group that the Bush administration designated a terrorist organization AFTER the men were detained, the lawyers have argued and thus would be certainly subject to horrors in their own homeland and sending them back would certainly be cruel and unusual.

Cruel and unusual?  Staying in Gitmo, going home or going free?  The government apparently provided no proof that they were enemy combatants or security risks in the first place, even after SEVEN YEARS in captivity.  They were never charged with any crime in the first place, only held in suspicion.  Is the American Justice System providing justice in interpreting the constitution to allow their release or providing a president to allow other prisoners freedom? 

SEVEN Years is a long time in the fight for a fair trial.  And for what crime?  Reading the rules of the constitution, I'd say we( and them)  are all vested against indefinite detention.  Charge them with something already, have a trial and be done.  Or let them go.  Whether they are guilty or not, the hatred of America must be paramount after Seven years in captitity,  so much so that if they were released- they might just jaywalk, spit or complain they might get arrested again. 

“The United States has made extensive and high-level efforts over a period of four years to try to resettle the Uighurs in countries around the world,” the State Department’s legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, said in an interview. Its lack of success, he added, “has not been for lack of trying.  ”Published: June 10, 2007 in an article "Chinese Leave Guantánamo for Albanian Limbo" where four Guantanamo Detainees were released into Albania.   http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/world/europe/10resettle.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Even E.T. got to phone and go home.

For the first time, a federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release prisoners held at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that 17 Chinese Muslims must be brought to his courtroom by the end of the week so that they can be set free.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said that the government's authority to hold the men had "ceased" and that they were entitled to be released...

The 17 are Uighurs who fled persecution in the far western reaches of China. U.S. authorities, fearing what Chinese officials would do, have refused to send them back to China, and no other country has been willing to take them.

The judge's order came more than six years after the men were sent to Guantanamo and more than four years after the Pentagon cleared most of them to be released. The Supreme Court ruled four months ago that judges can order the release of prisoners wrongly held at Guantanamo.

"This is a historic day for the United States," said Emi MacLean, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "Finally, we are beginning the process of taking responsibility for our mistakes and fixing them."

The schmucks working for George W. Bush are trying to halt their release.

Thanks, K B

A federal judge yesterday ordered a small band of Chinese Muslims being held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison released into the United States by Friday, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that it could detain them indefinitely without cause.

It was the first time a U.S. judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, and the first time a foreign national held at the facility in Cuba has been ordered transferred to the United States.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina issued his ruling in dramatic fashion from the bench in a packed courtroom, saying he was ordering the release of 17

[...]

Urbina ordered the detainees and the Uighur families to appear in his courtroom Friday. A Defense Department spokesman said the military is working with other government agencies to prepare for the detainees' move to Washington.

But the Justice Department said it is filing an emergency appeal, because the judge's decision "presents serious national security and separation-of-powers concerns." A White House spokeswoman issued a statement saying that "we are deeply concerned by, and strongly disagree with" the ruling.

It should be noted that the men were caught fleeing Afghanistan from Pakistan. I hope the appeal works and this decision gets overturned. it would make for terrible precedent.

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=e4kU2GaG8z

I know there's a way to embed eyeblast... just haven't found it, yet.

Wolfson wrote (emphasis mine):

State polls are beginning to reflect this. If the election were tomorrow, Obama would win all of the states John Kerry carried and add Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Florida. Barack Obama is campaigning in Indiana, which last went for a Democrat in 1964 and North Carolina, which has gone for a Democrat only once in thirty-four years. At the same time John McCain has pulled out of Michigan and Sarah Palin has been forced to visit Nebraska.
This dynamic is very unlikely to change. John McCain's goal in the first debate was to discredit Senator Obama as a credible Commander in Chief and elevate the issue of foreign policy and national security. He didn't come close. Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the number one issue in the race, and there is little Senator McCain can do to make up his gap with Senator Obama on it.

ABSENT A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ATTACK.
Christ, Wolfson...they probably would have thought of it on their own, but now it's gonna look like YOUR fault.  Fuckin' idiot.
I'm no freeper, folks.  I do not believe that BushCo took down the WTC in a controlled demolition.  They're too fucking incompetent to have ever pulled off anything of that magnitude or complexity.
That said, I would not put it past the dirty, lying, sneaky Neocon, Rovian/Rumsfeldian shit bastards to gin up a terrorist threat, slam some poor, paranoid schizophrenic kid from Newark named Hussein into Gitmo, and blow up a car bomb in the Holland tunnel to swing this fucker back to Gimpy McMumblefuck.

Coming soon to a street corner near you:  RED LEVEL THREAT!  Citizens - Do Not Leave Your Homes!
Plastic sheeting, duct tape, anthrax, bottled water!  The MUSLIMS are coming!

AP - Dateline: New York
"A 16-year-old Muslim named Hussein Ibn Bin Hussein was arrested today by Homeland Security Agents after a massive bomb was discovered (insert video footage of swarthy teen wearing an Obama t-shirt being led away in handcuffs)...."

They don't even have to do it themselves, aside from hunting up some mentally deficient patsy named Hussein - someone they can lock away forever without anyone seriously objecting.  They just have to ignore some intelligence and let it fucking happen...just like last time.

On the bright side, this will give Bristol an excuse to call off the wedding, so there's that.

So you know we've talked about Guantanamo Bay and, specifically, the cases of Omar Khadr and Mohamed Jawad.  As a refresher, remember that in June the Supreme Court ruled in the Boumediene v. Bush case that Guantanamo Bay detainees do have a right to habeas corpus.  While hailed as a victory for the detainees, realists understood that the Bush administration would continue to use every possible option to keep these cases out of court.  An article in the New York Times this morning bears this out. 

According to Vijay Padmanabhan, a former State Department lawyer with responsibility for detainee issues who left in July to teach at Cardozo Law School:

The legal issues that are being raised by the administration are going to take longer than the remaining time of the administration.  It is part of a broader strategy which is not to make difficult decisions about Guantánamo and leave it to the next president.

So let's see, the Bush administration has screwed the next administration into a massive national debt, an $800b+ economic rescue plan for a sinking economy, some sort of agreement on our long term presence in Iraq (details tba), and Gitmo.  And in the meantime, these detainees, many of whom have been there for five years or more (Khadr has been there for seven), are stuck in legal limbo, even after the Supreme Court restored their rights.  It's pure insanity and not what we are about ... or should be about ... as Americans.

by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, October 1, 2008
Antifascist Calling... - 2008-09-30

White House officials discussed torturing suspected "enemy combatants" early in 2002, according to a detailed questionnaire put to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by Senate investigators. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) released a series of new documents that shed additional light on the origins of U.S. torture policies. The Washington Post reports,

The details of the controversial program were discussed in multiple meetings inside the White House over a two-year period, triggering concerns among several officials who worried that the agency's methods might be illegal or violate anti-torture treaties, according to separate statements signed by Rice and her top legal adviser. ("Top Officials Knew in 2002 of Harsh Interrogations," Joby Warrick, The Washington Post, Thursday, September 25, 2008; A07)

John Bellinger III, Rice's legal adviser at the State Department and during her tenure at the National Security Council (NSC), said in answer to written questions by Senate investigators, "I expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations."

As The New York Times reported,

The documents provide new details about the still-murky early months of the C.I.A.'s detention program, when the agency began using a set of harsh interrogation techniques weeks before the Justice Department issued a written legal opinion in August 2002 authorizing their use. Congressional investigators have long tried to determine exactly who authorized these techniques before the legal opinion was completed. (Mark Mazzetti, "Bush Aides Linked to Talks on Interrogations," The New York Times, September 25, 2008)

In other words, as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, indeed as with a host of other illegal White House programs across the entire "battlespace" of the "war on terror," legal niceties were supplied by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and then crafted, as with pre-war intelligence, "to fit the policy" (torture) already in place.

The Times reported that "Justice Department lawyers gave oral guidance to the C.I.A. before the secret memo was completed." Fearful of prosecution, CIA lawyers ordered the use of "harsh techniques" employed by CIA officers "suspended" until their formal authorization by White House proxies in the Justice Department.

Mazzetti reported that former National Security Council legal adviser Bellinger wrote "that during the White House meetings, Justice Department lawyers frequently issued oral guidance to the C.I.A. about the interrogation program. One who did was John Yoo, the principal author of the August 2002 memo, Mr. Bellinger said."

As ABC News revealed in April,

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. ("Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'," Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenburg and Ariane de Vogue, ABC News, April 9, 2008)

As chair of the National Security Council, Rice presided over the meetings but when the ABC News story first broke, the White House declined to comment on her participation. With good reason, as it turns out!

In 2002, the National Security Council's Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell as well as CIA Director George Tenet and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

According to ABC News "Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies." Discussions around specific techniques to be used by CIA interrogators were so detailed, ABC News reported, they "were almost choreographed" by high-level Bush administration officials.

The network also reported that at one meeting, Ashcroft famously complained: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly." Nor would federal prosecutors if America were a "normal" country.

Viewed as an exemplary means of expanding executive power, Cheney's shop instructed the Office of Legal Counsel to write a series of still-classified memos that gave the CIA formal legal authority to use what the administration and corporate media euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation techniques" on alleged al-Qaeda suspects.

The Bybee-Yoo memos, with major input from Cheney's legal adviser (now Chief of Staff), David Addington, are referred to as a "Golden Shield" for CIA repressors fearful of future prosecution as war criminals.

In her response to the question posed by Senate investigators, "Where did it [discussion of prisoner interrogation] take place (e.g., meeting at the Pentagon, etc)?" Rice confirmed ABC's report, "All of the meetings I attended on these matters occurred inside the White House."

When pressed by investigators: "Were you present at a meeting at which the OLC gave oral advice about the legality of interrogation techniques proposed for or in use by the CIA?" the Secretary of State replied, "I was present in meetings at which DoJ lawyers provided legal advice about the CIA program. I recall that John Yoo provided advice at several of these meetings. I do not recall if other members of OLC were also present. ... I do not know whether any oral advice provided by OLC attorneys differed from OLC's written advice."

But as congressional investigators and media reports have previously revealed, the OLC's "oral advice" most certainly did not differ from their "written advice" since it was supplied by torture-enabler Yoo who acted as a proxy for Cheney's legal adviser, David Addington.

SASC investigators then turned their attention to the Pentagon's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) programs. "On July 25, 2002 the Chief of Staff to the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) informed the DoD Office of the General Counsel [run by Addington protégé William J. Haynes II], that 'JPRA will continue to offer exploitation assistance to those governmental organizations charged with the mission of gleaning intelligence from enemy detainees.' Were you aware that JPRA was offering such assistance?" Rice replied, "I am unfamiliar with the JPRA and am unaware of whether it offered any assistance with interrogations."

Investigators then questioned NSC legal adviser John Bellinger III. Right from the start, Bellinger played the "Alberto Gonzales card" in his written responses: "The Committee's questions relate to events that occurred five and six years ago while I served as NSC Legal Adviser during an extraordinarily busy and taxing period. In many cases, I simply do not recall the specific details the Committee has requested." (emphasis added)

To the questions: "Was there any discussion(s) of specific interrogation techniques used or proposed for use in detainee interrogations?" And: "Was there any discussion(s) about physical and/or psychological pressures used in SERE training?" Bellinger replied: "I was present at meetings in 2002 and 2003 with some or most of the listed individuals at which specific interrogation techniques used or proposed for use in detainee interrogations by the CIA was discussed." And: "I was present in meetings at which SERE training was discussed. I recall being told that numerous U.S. military personnel had undergone SERE training without significant ill-effect."

But the policy on the use of reverse-engineered SERE tactics had already decided upon months earlier by Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Indeed, an April 16, 2002 email from Dr. Bruce Jessen, an outsourced psychologist employed by JPRA and the CIA, to Col. Randy Moulton, the Commander of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and copied to two other contractors, Christopher Wirts and Mike Dozier demonstrate JPRA's enthusiasm for the project. Entitled: "Draft Exploitation Plan," Jessen writes,

Sir,

My initial draft plan. If you decide to proceed with this I will have more details to add to this skeleton.

I am sending this to Mike and Chris so they can operationalize my draft into a CONOP [Concept of Operations] for your consideration.

Bruce

Jessen's "concept" has been conveniently redacted from SASC documents but Moulton's reply is significant in that JPRA's Commander whole-heartedly endorsed reverse-engineering SERE techniques for prisoner torture.

Doc,

We need to craft a 10-12 slide briefing to take up for approval to include what generated this requirement, why we (USG) need it, how it falls within our Chartered responsibilities (or if not, why we should do it) and then make a recommendation.

Colonel Randy Moulton

Commander JPRA

Jessen, as we've subsequently learned, supplied what JPRA and their Pentagon masters were looking for in spades. Along with partner James Mitchell, another outsourced psychologist employed by JPRA and the CIA, the duo's Spokane, Washington-based Mitchell, Jessen & Associates was located close to the Air Force's SERE school program. The pair, along with military psychologists, did the heavy-lifting to tailor SERE for CIA and Pentagon torture programs. According to investigative journalist Jane Meyer,

Soon, the former SERE psychologists were training CIA interrogators and advising the CIA on implementing a program that one knowledgeable source describes as "a Clockwork Orange kind of approach." As psychologists they were unusually well-equipped to understand the human psyche. (Jane Meyer, The Dark Side, New York: Doubleday, 2008, p. 163)

"Well-equipped" indeed. According to SASC Chairman Senator Carl Levin, in July 2002, Richard Shiffrin, a Pentagon Deputy General Counsel called Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baumgartner, the Chief of Staff at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) "and asked for information on SERE techniques." Baumgartner responded by drafting a memo with three attachments. According to Levin's June 17, 2008 statement and supporting documentation released by the SASC,

One of those attachments (TAB 3) listed physical and psychological pressures used in SERE resistance training including sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, waterboarding, and slapping. It also made reference to a section of the JPRA instructor manual that talks about "coercive pressures" like keeping the lights on at all times, and treating a person like an animal. Another attachment (TAB 4), written by Dr. Ogrisseg, also a witness today, assessed the long-term psychological effects of SERE resistance training on students and the effects of the waterboard.

During SASC hearings last Thursday, Colonel Steven Kleinman, a senior officer at the Air Force Academy who supervised that service's SERE program said in testimony he was "shocked" when he witnessed use of the harsh physical and psychological tactics used to train combat pilots facing potential capture during hostile encounters, employed haphazardly on Iraqis in a U.S. prison camp.

Kleinman told Senate investigators that SERE training "had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn't cooperate." He testified that he told the task force commander "that the methods were unlawful and were in violation of the Geneva Conventions."

But as we now know, SERE techniques were reverse-engineered on orders from the highest levels of the Defense Department and the Vice President's office precisely as a mechanism to break recalcitrant "al-Qaeda" and Iraqi prisoners stripped by White House lawyers of all rights under the Geneva Conventions.

Disingenuously however, Kleinman claimed that SERE tactics were adopted from torture methods used by "Chinese communists." While historically accurate up to a point, Kleinman failed to disclose their current provenance: the decades-long programs developed by both the CIA and U.S. Military Intelligence that refined crude Stalinist-era methods of psychological torture.

After the Korean war, the CIA embarked on a nightmarish program, MKULTRA. Indeed, as I wrote in April, the programs employed at Guantánamo Bay, CIA "black sites" in Europe and Afghanistan and at prisons across Iraq were a distillation of coercive techniques devised during the 1950s and 1960s by MKULTRA psychiatrists.

Indeed, as Scott Shane reported in The New York Times, a 1957 Air Force study titled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War," written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist, served as one of the primary sources of the CIA's torture manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation."

CIA-Military Intelligence PSYWAR programs were further crystallized with the publication of the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983" (HRE). The secret manual, compiled from sections of the KUBARK guidelines and from U.S. Military Intelligence field manuals were "written in the mid 1960s as part of the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program code-named 'Project X'," The National Security Archive reports.

In other words, while "Chinese communists" may have gotten the psychological torture ball rolling, the United States Government's intelligence apparatus picked it up and ran with it.

The "refined" methods described in KUBARK and HRE included: forced drugging, hooding, sexual humiliation, extended sensory deprivation, prolonged interrogation, environmental and dietary manipulation, beatings, stress positions and other methods of "self-inflicted pain." CIA officers and their Military Intelligence doppelgängers, at the urging of White House masters, systematically committed war crimes on defenseless prisoners in their custody.

In a major breakthrough that demolished the mendacious claims of the Bush regime, documents released by the Senate Armed Service Committee in June, provided irrefutable evidence that top Pentagon and CIA officials sought out military and "outsourced" mercenary personnel, including psychologists like Jessen and Mitchell, precisely to reverse-engineer SERE tactics for use on prisoners designated "enemy combatants" by the administration.

Psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz, Salon investigative journalist Mark Benjamin and Jane Meyer's reports in The New Yorker have all documented that moves by Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) tasked to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, followed hot on the heels of explicit demands by the Bush torture team to "take the gloves off." At Guantánamo and elsewhere, BSCT psychologists held operational positions and did not function as mental health providers but rather, were present at Guantánamo for the purpose of instructing personnel in the use of "enhanced interrogation" tactics, torture.

While hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee has provided solid evidence of widespread human rights abuses by the Bush administration and their minions, the Democratic-controlled Congress has systematically failed to bring these war criminals to justice.

There is no mistaking the pattern: given ample opportunity to purge the American political landscape of these miscreants, Congress has abnegated its legal right and moral duty to remove Bushist malefactors from power.

With "impeachment off the table," as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously declared in 2006, from preemptive wars of conquest to warrantless wiretapping, and from the systematic looting of the economy to the heinous torture of prisoners of war, the Democratic Party is fully complicit with the Bush administration's high crimes and misdemeanors.

The cover-up continues...

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

see

Bill Moyers Journal: Torture Hearings + Jane Mayer + Fritz Hollings

Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation’

Torture

Human Rights Watch says Ethiopian military interrogators and guards reportedly subjected detainees to brutal beatings and torture. Detainees said that guards pulled out their toenails, held loaded guns to their heads, crushed their genitals, and forced them to crawl on their elbows and knees on gravel until they were bloodied and exhausted. They were forced to sign (or fingerprint) papers they could not read.

Salim Awadh is talking to me from inside a cell somewhere in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

There are seven other prisoners kept in the same small, dark room, he starts to tell me.

Then he suddenly stops speaking. I can hear frantic whispering in the background. Then he says it is safe to carry on.

"The conditions are really bad: we don't have enough food, we don't have enough access to medicine. The cell is wet," he says.

"We sleep on the floor rather than the sodden mattresses. One of the other prisoners was beaten so badly he's had his leg broken."

Salim is able to speak to me because he has bribed a guard and got access to a mobile phone.

For weeks I have been trying to find out information about him and other detainees in what has been called "Africa's Guantanamo". It is a story the governments involved do not want to talk about: The first mass rendition of terrorist suspects in Africa.

In January 2007, Ethiopian troops had taken control of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an Islamist movement which had controlled much of southern Somalia for the previous six months.

Al Amin Kimathi believes Ethiopia was seen as the ideal destination.

"It was the most natural place to take anyone looking for a site to go and torture and to extract confessions. Ethiopia allows torture of detainees. And that is the modus operandi in renditions."

In April last year, Ethiopia acknowledged that it was holding 41 people from 17 countries, describing them as "suspected terrorists".

"I'm not sure whether they have appeared before a court. The investigation continues," Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Tekede Alemu told the BBC.

After Salim got access to a mobile phone, he was able to speak to her from his cell for the first time in more than a year.

Now the phone has stopped working, Salim has disappeared once again.

For the whole article, visit BBC World News.

Hysteria surrounds global economic crises, presidential politics, international tension and speculation about the future.

Obama supporters are convinced without their man in the White House, we are headed for hell in a hand basket.

McCain supporters are convinced without their man in the White House, we are headed for hell in a hand basket.

Hell hath no fury like a Leftist scorned.   Some people predict if Obama loses, we will see race riots.  Certainly people will insist evil Republicans stole the election, despite ACORN’s proven attempts to steal elections for 10 years.   When Rightists lose, they don’t get mad, they modify, paving a road to hell with centrist intentions. 

Ultimately, God is in His heaven, and nothing happens beyond His notice, nor will ultimate outcomes escape His will.

As a strong McCain supporter, all this got me thinking about what will likely happen if Obama is elected.

Let’s look on the bright side.  It could be good.

Obama will face the same presidential meat grinder all presidents face.   He will be confronted daily with no-win situations, a series of Catch 22 circumstances, forced to make “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” decisions.  Despite all his good intentions, he will be vilified, first from this sector, then the next.   He will look at the same intelligence Bush reads every day and Obama will soon realize the options are few.   Many days he will ask himself: what was I thinking aspiring to this hellish office?

The real problem is Obama has never made an executive decision.   He has no experience to fall back on.   His advisors will simply drive him crazy with hundreds of divergent suggestions.

This will force him to rely on his political philosophy and his instincts.  His political philosophy is rooted in expediency, moral relativism and radicalism which is inherently anchorless.  Without a set of core values, a person is made to drift with the winds of political fortune, which invariably translates into chaos, and weakness, and serial crises, devoid of legislative consensus,  ala Jimmy Carter.   Animals run on instinct, and exclusive reliance on instinct always means a focus on survival.

At that point the meat grinder will accelerate. 

Sure, with Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, in the near term Obama will be able to railroad higher taxes, massive spending on federal entitlements, defense cuts, radical Left judicial appointments, and education “reform” which forces students into indoctrination centers prepping them for enrollment in Public Allies where they will study “Rules for Radicals” and “The Communist Manifesto” 24/7.   The 250 million people in this country who believe in God will be alarmed to learn they have to keep quiet about it.   Gay marriage will flourish.  Pastors will be jailed for hate crimes simply for preaching from the Bible.

Moral decline, our worst problem, will hasten the generalized train wreck.

Eventually, sooner, not later:

The economy will decline even further.

Terrorism will increase.

Class warfare will escalate.

Everyone will be alienated.

The misery index will increase.

Illegal immigration will skyrocket.

American sovereignty will diminish.

Multiple enemies abroad will take their shots.

We’ll go bankrupt.

Uncle Sam’s checks will bounce.

Obama will be immobilized.

Taking a cue from Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. military will storm the Capitol and take over.

Radical Leftist Anti-American Agitators and Community Organizers will be shipped to Cuba to expand Gitmo, making it their own Collective.

The rest of us can get back to work expanding the American dream according to the Founders' vision: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Take heart Americans. 

It could be a good thing, kind of like a good, cleansing fast, coupled with a mineral water intestinal flush.

Obama: the psycho-socio-political enema!

[Or, it could shake out another way.  Obama will agree to political equivalence with Raoul and Hugo, and together, they will make the entire Western Hemisphere a neo-Soviet empire, while the rest of us high tail it to Australia.   Great Beaches!    Let’s just be sure to spike the canons before we leave!]

"Gee Dad, that's a silly question. You know I want a Toy Airport Passenger Screening set by Playmobil!!"

And really, what contemporary kid wouldn't want this fine, fun-filled example of a failing bureaucracy in an ever-growing fascist state?

Your child will have fun for hours watching X-rays and trying to figure out "who's carrying a knife and/or in possession of an unlawful container of banned accelerant or incendiary shoes".

Each set comes with one passenger with enough melanin in his skin tone to warrant racial profiling and two Office of Homeland Security "officials"--both with TSA screening certification AND proof of two Scranton Public School System administered G.E.D.'s .

The actual screening machine has a hand crank conveyor belt that moves, a plastic bin to place shoes and a metal detector wand that actually makes authentically embarrassing detection sounds, especially when placed near breasts and genitalia.

Perfect for Global Terrorism enthusiasts ages four and up and at ONLY $14.99 , an absolute steal by Playmobil!

And new this spring, you can buy the Full Body Cavity Search Room.  A pair of tiny, opaque surgical gloves and a miniature tube of AstroGlide sold separately.

But wait!!   There's more!!!!!

Make sure your kids are the first on your block to get a Gitmo Detention Center Play Set and if THAT doesn't get your progeny excited about the Geneva Convention, how about the Abu Gharib Prisoner Interrogation Fun Four Pack!!!!

Your kids will love this newest Playmobil addition with it's three nude Iraqi prisoners and one bendable P.F.C. Lyndie England Action Figure.

She comes complete with an Indigo Girls CD, a carton of candy cigarettes and opposable thumbs!!!

.

(Much of this post was published early this past Spring.  Why put up a "used" post?   If this country is teetering perilously on the verge of a violent and difficult fiscal Depression...the likes we've not seen since the 30's and Shirley Temple...then I think it would behoove us all to get used to hand-me-downs and second hand crap.  Thanks Fannie Mae!!!)

Europe Stocks Post Steepest Drop in Eight Months; Fortis Falls

Europe's Stoxx 600 fell 5.5 percent to 251.43, the steepest decline since Jan. 21. The gauge is down 31 percent this year as banks worldwide racked up more than $590 billion in credit losses and writedowns, pushing the global economy toward a recession. Full read : http://tinyurl.com/42sawt

Oil prices plummet $10 a barrel as House votes down US bailout plan

Oil prices tumbled more than $10 a barrel Monday, dropping back below $100 as a U.S. financial bailout failed to win legislative approval, raising fears of a prolonged economic downturn that could drastically erode global energy demand. Full story: http://tinyurl.com/4lfu3w

Fed Pumps Further $630 Billion Into Financial System

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities. Full story: http://tinyurl.com/43vbz6

Citigroup to buy Wachovia banking operations

Citigroup agreed Monday to purchase Wachovia's banking operations for $2.1 billion in a deal arranged by federal regulators, making the bank the latest casualty of the widening global financial crisis.The deal greatly expands Citigroup's retail franchise—giving it a total of more than 4,300 U.S. branches and $600 billion in deposits—and secures its place among the U.S. banking industry's Big Three, along with Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Full story: http://tinyurl.com/52guxk

Tread carefully!

InternetPlays.com
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Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/29fqep

A military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has resigned because his office withheld exculpatory evidence against an Afghan detainee, the prisoner's lawyers say.

The attorneys for Mohammed Jawad say the prosecutor, Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, backs their bid to get charged dismissed against Jawad, who is accused of throwing a grenade that injured two U.S. soldiers. Vandeveld could not be reached.

Michael Berrigan, the tribunals' deputy chief defense counsel, said today that Vandeveld told them the prosecutor's office was refusing to hand over the evidence.

full article: www.insight-info.com

Interesting story in the Erie Times News concerning Millcreek Township lawyer and Lieutenant Colonel U. S. Army Reserve Darrel Vandeveld and his resignation from a case at Gitmo because of "duty to our country and the Constitution" and the improper handling of evidence in the case. Go to www.GoErie.com and read this story.  This could be a topic of great discussion about our nations values and morals and the Constitution and what we should be standing for in this nation.

I must admit that I read the GoErie Forum on occasion on a variety of topics. It especially is lively debate anytime there is an article in the Times News about deployment of the guard and reserve troops locally. It gets pretty heated as do the discussions of crime stories like the murder of DaQuan Crosby.  I find it difficult and sometimes downright hurtful to read some of the sobering comments on the forum [I'm trying to be kind in my appraisal of some of the "opinions" expressed.]  i just want to say right now, that everyone is entitled to their opinion of the War in Iraq but please do not disparage the men and women who have volunteered at great personal cost to serve our nation when you remark on the war.  Remember they all have mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands who worry about their safety and pray for their return.  Think before you write hateful and harmful things about a  person or a story whether it be about the war or about the tragic death of a fifteen year old right here in Erie. Wait for the facts. Believe only half of what you read and none of what you hear![Isn't that how the old saying goes??] If you having nothing good to say, don't submit it. If you do not want to offer solutions to the problems, please reconsider your comments.  We are all entitled to our opinions but putting them out their in the ether of the Internet should be done with forethought and caution. That's all I want to say about that.

Today's quote ~"Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right; by these we reach divinity." ~John Donne.

However, one of the matters that shun through McCain is that he aims to conduct foreign policy basically in the same style as George W. Bush, or worse, with the help of nationalism that feeds itself with simplistic perceptions of the world such as evil and good.

While he spoke out against Guantanamo and torturing detainees, McCain played more on conservative Republicans and was not that appealing to independent, undecided and swing voters. Even though Bush should understand by now that his foreign policy has been ineffective, costly and ruinous, McCain still believes that the US can go around being the world policeman.This may, however, be difficult for the next administration considering how much credibility and economic might the US has squandered under Bush.

One of the big differences between the presidential hopefuls was on the Iraq War. McCain does not seem to understand that it is that war in Iraq that has not only brought world shame to the US, but undermined it by becoming heavily indebted to country's such as China. About $10 billion is spent every month by the US in Iraq. McCain still believes that the US can win the war, while Obama sees the main focus against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

If there is a criticism to Obama, that would be that he sounded hawkish on issues such as Afghanistan and bombing Taliban bases in Pakistan. True, that Central Asian country may have a growing insurgency, but history has shown that Afghanistan cannot be won militarily. Ask the Russians if you disagree.

In sum, apart from the financial turmoil that either candidate will have to deal with from January, the other huge disaster they will have to grapple with is the US' standing in the world.

Who has a better chance of addressing such a foreign policy challenge? Obama, in my opinion, is that person. He offers a new hope whereas McCain still believes in the old approach of military might and the convoluted world of Reagan geopolitics, which will only lead us to a new world war.

We learned late today that Army Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, the lead prosecutor in the military commissions case against Mohammed Jawad, has resigned in protest because the prosecution team was not providing the defense evidence that could indicate Jawad's innocence. Jawad was a teenager when he was captured in Afghanistan and he's one of the two youngest prisoners at Guantánamo.

Jawad, who was 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense (Jawad doesn't know his birth date) - is a victim. His parents kicked him out when he was 13. Jawad who is a homeless Afghan, was drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States who have detained him for the last five years. Not only does he not understand the legal process--after basically growing up at Gitmo and being detained for so long-he doesn't believe he will get a fair hearing from the U.S. Military. Understandable considering, the government alleges they have a signed confession from Jawad. There are several problems with the confession, first it is in Farsi - a language Jawad does not speak also he is illiterate and the "signature" on it is his thumbprint, because Jawad does not read or write.

Here are the U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the prosecution turning over evidence to the defense; also, legal theorists interpretations.

In 1963's Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prior to trial, prosecutors must turn over evidence in their possession that is materially helpful to the defense. Failure to do so violates the defendant's right to a fair trial under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.

Some legal theorists have argued that suppressing exculpatory evidence violates not only the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, but the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel as well, by making it impossible for defense lawyers to thoroughly investigate any case for reasonable doubt.

Interpretations of materiality are crucial here. Under 1999's Strickler v. Greene, such information can fall into two categories: exculpatory evidence that tends to exonerate the defendant, and evidence that tends to impeach government witnesses by discrediting either their testimony or reliability.

With the pressure being applied politically for convictions, none of these men have a chance at a fair trial. Scott Horton, who teaches law at Columbia University Law School has this to say: "The fact that Haynes said there can be no acquittals will stain the entire [tribunal] process," says Scott Horton, who has written extensively about Haynes's conflicts with the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) corps, the judicial arm of the armed forces, which is charged with implementing the military commissions.

I can only hope that the nation will wake up and realize--that this is a violation of human rights and justice which is the cornerstone of what this nation was founded for.

Update: ACLU posted the update on the resignation.  Link.

: : : : : : : : : :

An Army prosecutor has resigned from the Guantanamo war court in a crisis of conscience over plans to try a young Afghan accused of throwing a grenade rather than settle the case out of court, according to an affidavit filed with the court Wednesday.

Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a reservist from the Pittsburgh area, becomes the fourth known prosecutor to quit the Pentagon's controversial military commissions, which the Bush administration set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A former chief war crimes prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, quit last year, saying he had been pressured to rush trials ahead of the national elections and to sacrifice transparency. 

In war, their soldiers try to kill our soldiers. That doesn't make their soldiers murderers, not in any meaningful historical sense of the word. And, needless to say, under Bush's rules any of our troops who get captured are TOTALLY FUCKED.

Then again, when your military experience consists of going AWOL, the idea of being a POW probably never occurs to you.

Christy Hardin Smith has more. 

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Fight Bush.

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Actual economists respond to the infamy of conservative blame shifting to minority communities.

Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded.

In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face -- kind of like the claim that the earth is flat. Free market conservatives know that the claim that Fannie and Freddie were responsible is ridiculous. They just say it because they know that news outlets like Market Place will treat it as a serious proposition and thereby muddy the waters in the mind of the public. 

Dean Baker

 

Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco. In fact, Fannie and Freddie, after growing rapidly in the 1990s, largely faded from the scene during the height of the housing bubble.

Partly that’s because regulators, responding to accounting scandals at the companies, placed temporary restraints on both Fannie and Freddie that curtailed their lending just as housing prices were really taking off. Also, they didn’t do any subprime lending, because they can’t: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn’t meet the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income.

So whatever bad incentives the implicit federal guarantee creates have been offset by the fact that Fannie and Freddie were and are tightly regulated with regard to the risks they can take. You could say that the Fannie-Freddie experience shows that regulation works.

Paul Krugman

Blame shifting, scapegoating — whatever you call it, conservatives are again showing their bright YELLOW colors by refusing to accept the blame for a mess they made, a mess they aggressively created. A mess that grownups tried to clean up, but each time they tried they were shouted down by the very loud, astonishingly infantile hard right. [Who are rivaled only by the infinitely wise economists who understand and forgive all, especially when it comes to grossly overpaying CEOs!]

Rick Perlstein recounts some of the Right's favorite economic myths, while David Sirota questions Warren Buffet's potential windfall profits.

After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism – often punctuated by chants of “USA, USA!” and “We’re No. 1!” – Americans are waking up with a painful hangover, facing a grim “morning in America,” not the happy vision that Ronald Reagan famously sold them on.

Robert Parry

See also Lily Ledbetter on where George Bush can shove his suggestions.

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Lacking any significant criticisms, wingnuts go after the NY Times crossword puzzle for political favoritism.

These are people for whom the number 4,171 has no meaning, or at least no significance comparable to the DJIA. (And forget the bloody mess in Afghanistan all together.)

But yes, the Right will defend to their last spittle-flecked rant the right of John McCain to stiff David Letterman to do Katie Couric.

At no time ever do these ass clowns rise above petty politics to address the real crises facing our nation, but for some reason they think John "hasn't cast a vote in Congress since April 8th" McCain has all the solutions. Then again, anything would be better than letting Norman "let Paulson and Bernanke decide" Coleman call the shots.

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Glenn Greenwald issues an apology.

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Veep debate to be cancelled? Rumors are that McCain's people will go to almost any length to keep Palin from speaking publicly while unscripted, and it's pretty damned hard to script an entire debate.

More on flopsweat.

In other rumors, yes, Chuck Grassley is going to start drug testing his speechwriters.

More Tild.

WINston on the "other meth."

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Sept. 25 -- A military prosecutor involved in war crimes cases here has quit his position, citing ethical concerns about his office's failure to turn over exculpatory material to attorneys for an Afghan detainee scheduled to go to trial in December.

Because one bailout is never enough (emphasis mine):

With Congress preoccupied with the massive, $700 billion bailout plan for the financial industry, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have finally secured Part One of their own federal rescue plan. A bill set to be passed by Congress and signed by President Bush as early as this weekend—separate from the controversial Wall Street bailout plan—includes $25 billion in loans for the beleaguered Detroit automakers and several of their suppliers. "It seemed like a lot when we first started pushing this," says Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, one of the bill's sponsors. "Suddenly, it seems so small."

By David Cole
www.motherjones.com
September/October 2008 Issue

Will a new president give back the authority that Bush and Cheney grabbed for the executive?

As President Bill Clinton assumed office in January 1993, I held out great hope that the Immigration and Naturalization Service's long-standing effort to deport my clients—eight people arrested in Los Angeles in 1987 for distributing magazines for a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization—might finally come to an end. We'd begun the case under President Reagan, and continued under the first President Bush. We had consistently prevailed in the federal courts, before judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents. The FBI director had admitted that none of our clients had engaged in any criminal activities, and that they were arrested only for their political associations. Surely the new Democratic administration—where some of my best friends were going to work—would abandon this ill-conceived effort?

Hardly. Instead of dropping the case, the Clinton Justice Department took it all the way to the Supreme Court, where it obtained a favorable ruling written by none other than Justice Antonin Scalia. The Clinton administration also aggressively used secret evidence to seek the deportation and detention of numerous Arab and Muslim immigrants, despite repeated court rulings that such tactics violated the Constitution. And after the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton signed into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which "streamlined" habeas corpus for all prisoners (accused terrorists or not), created a special court to remove "alien terrorists" (again using secret evidence), and made it a crime to provide "material support" to blacklisted groups, effectively resurrecting the McCarthy-era tactic of guilt by association.

So: While there may be many reasons to support Barack Obama, don't assume that a Democratic president will necessarily transform the counterterrorism policies of the current administration. Government officials do not as a rule like to give up power, and President Bush has grabbed plenty of power for the executive branch since 9/11. Democrats in particular often feel vulnerable to being portrayed as soft on crime or terrorism, and far too many tack to the right on these issues, as Clinton did. If the problem is to be fixed—and it is essential that we fix it—it will only be because of sustained and popular pressure for change.

[...]

The Next Prez's Superpowers.

see

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State? By Naomi Wolf

Our Republic Raped and Still No Revolution! by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Welcome to the final stages of the coup… by Larisa Alexandrovna

Bush Extends 9/11 National Emergency Yet Again by Peter Dale Scott

Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war

Executive Privilege