January 14, 2009 archive

1. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post reports Guantanamo detainee was tortured, says official overseeing military trials.

   The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

   “We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution…

   In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. “It did shock me,” Crawford said. “I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it.”

2. Bloomberg News reports the Supreme Court rules Illegally obtained evidence can be used. “A divided U.S. Supreme Court gave prosecutors more ability to use evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution, ruling against a man who was arrested and searched only because of a police clerical error.”

   “In such a case, the criminal should not go free because the constable has blundered,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court…

   The justices voted 5-4 along ideological lines. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy joined John Roberts’s opinion. Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer.

   “Negligent recordkeeping errors by law enforcement threaten individual liberty, are susceptible to deterrence by the exclusionary rule and cannot be remedied effectively through other means,” Ginsburg wrote.

3. The LA Times reports Marine suicides in 2008 at a yearly high since Iraq invasion. Forty-one active-duty Marines committed suicide last year, more “than any year since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, although the suicide rate remained virtually unchanged because the Marine Corps is increasing in size… Nearly all were enlisted and under 24, and about two-thirds had deployed overseas.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with Patrick McGoohan’s obituary and a bonus Obama-icon maker.

First let me say that we want Eric Holder confirmed as Attorney General. We want him confirmed because of statements like this…

Washington, D.C. — Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration, asserted in a speech to the American Constitution Society (ACS) that the United States must reverse “the disastrous course” set by the Bush administration in the struggle against terrorism by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, declaring without qualification that the U.S. does not torture people, ending the practice of transferring individuals involuntarily to countries that engage in torture and ceasing warrantless domestic surveillance.

“Our needlessly abusive and unlawful practices in the ‘War on Terror’ have diminished our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more, safe,” Holder told a packed room at the ACS 2008 Convention on Friday evening. “For the sake of our safety and security, and because it is the right thing to do, the next president must move immediately to reclaim America’s standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights.”

We want the man who said those words to be our next Attorney General. Because in truth and in a logical world the best way, perhaps the only way, to “reclaim America’s standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights”…..is to investigate and then prosecute those who have criminally destroyed that standing. They destroyed it by using torture.

For those of you still on the fence as to whether the Bush Administration engaged in actual torture as opposed to merely “Enhanced Interrogation,” I offer this statement released today by a Bush appointee.

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture.”

One of the arguments made in defense of the Bush Administrations official policy of torture that first surfaced at Abu Ghraib is that it was “a few bad apples.”

Indeed:

Bush: I Personally Authorized Torture Of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

In an interview with Brit Hume that aired today on Fox News Sunday, President Bush admitted that he personally authorized the torture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said he personally asked “what tools” were available to use on him, and sought legal approval for waterboarding him:

  BUSH: One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. … And I’m in the Oval Office and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools, and I said are these tools deemed to be legal? And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

All of their false claims of legality come from one source, their own pet lawyers. Much of whose legal “work” has already been destroyed by the Supreme Court. Their only claim to legality comes from complicit lawyers in the White House and in the now famously corrupt and politicized Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice that Eric Holder has now been nominated to lead.  

The following was in the e-notice sent out by The George Washington University – The National Security Archive which is what can be found also on the page link to the announcement.

For Immediate Release:

January 14, 2009

To Search White House Computers and Preserve E-mails

Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

Tuesday afternoon the Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR), under President Michael Ratner, issued a Call for a Special Prosecutor to Investigate U.S. Torture, and over Executive Director Vincent Warren’s signature sent an emailed Action Alert to their large subscriber list, in which they also issued a…

…call to action to phone your senators with questions for Eric Holder’s hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General. The second is to send you a link to a report we released yesterday on the simple steps to closing Guantanamo.

While President-Elect Obama has said he will close the base, he has yet to say how or when, which are the most important questions. We are all excited at the chance for a new beginning: it is up to us to make it one we can be proud of. Please call your senators, and please download and distribute our report so we can end this terrible chapter in our history.

I. This Thursday, January 15th, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to decide whether nominee Eric Holder should be confirmed as the new Attorney General. While Holder’s public statements suggest he would be a marked improvement over Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey, it is critical that the American public be certain that our nation’s chief lawyer has an unwavering commitment to upholding the rule of law.

Senate Judiciary Committee members have a serious responsibility to put an end to subverting law to politics – and to ensure that President-Elect Obama appoints an Attorney General who will help him restore, protect and expand our human rights. And it is our responsibility to make our voices heard and stand against torture, racial profiling and other violations of human rights.

Please call the Senate Judiciary Committee members today and tell them that we need Eric Holder to make a clear statement against torture and racial profiling. Phone numbers are provided below. It will only take a few minutes to urge them to ask these two critical questions:

Are you, unlike your predecessor, willing to acknowledge under oath what U.S. military and civilian courts have recognized for over 100 years: that waterboarding is torture and therefore criminal? If so, will you fulfill your duty to ensure that justice and the rule of law apply to all by appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who have used, ordered, and authorized the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture?

I’ve saved the CCR Action Alert email I received as a web document so that you can read it in full here, if you hadn’t received it. It includes the list of Senators you can call, with their contact phone numbers, who will be involved in Holder’s confirmation hearings later this week.

Original article, an editorial, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

In 1848 The Communist Manifesto opened with the line, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. ” The spectre of Marx haunts world capitalism still.

Same As It Ever Was

Not Even Close

Talking Heads  Once in a Lifetime