Signs Of Turkish Front Heating Back Up

By Cernig

As if US and Iraqi government forces didn't have enough troubles in Southern Iraq, there are signs that the Northern border may be heating up again.

After Turkish crackdowns on Kurdish protesters recently, the PKK have vowed to retaliate. And now there are signs that the Turkish military are gearing up to mount a major offensive after the Spring thaw, following up on their reconnaissance in force in February:

A convoy of 250 Turkish military trucks and civilian buses is headed toward the border with Iraq, nearly a month after a Turkish cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels, a news agency reported Thursday.

The vehicles approached the border village of Derecik in Hakkari province on Wednesday evening, Dogan news agency said. The vehicles traveled with their headlights off, according to a news agency reporter who saw the convoy.

Helicopters also ferried dozens of troops to the border from the town of Semdinli on Thursday morning, Dogan said.

It was the largest reported activity by the Turkish military near the Iraqi border since Turkey ended an eight-day incursion into Iraq on Feb. 29.

The real truth about Gitmo

By Libby

With a deceitful administration and and a dysfunctional media, it's sometimes difficult to know who or what to believe about Guantanamo but I just ran across this article from my old hometown paper that laid to rest any doubt about the conditions there. It's subscription only, so I won't even bother to give you the link to the article itself, but here's the material quotes.

There is torture at Guantanamo Bay, said Eisenberg. He claims to have seen the results - a crippled hand, men walking with permanent limps, others with physical disfigurements and mental scars. There is little access to doctors for detainees, said Eisenberg.

One of his clients has a skin disease. Eisenberg suspects it is pellagra, a disease often associated with a lack of niacin or protein in a person's diet. The man's skin flakes off into small piles on the desk as Eisenberg talks with him.

There is no human contact for detainees beyond orders from soldiers, said Eisenberg. Detainees are kept in isolated cells almost 24 hours a day. Captives' cells are staggered so men are not within speaking distance of someone who would understand their language.

There is no rest at Guantanamo, said Eisenberg. The buzzing bulbs that light detainee cells and prison halls are never turned off.

This is hell's waiting room, as Eisenberg sees it, and he wants it shut down for good.

I've known Buz Eisenberg for over 20 years. He's a relentless civil libertarian, a great lawyer who has donated countless hours of free time to civil rights cases and a thoroughly honest man. If he says the inmates at Gitmo are being tortured, then they are being tortured. I surely hope our next president will make shutting down that hellhole a priority.

No Regrets?

By Cernig

Dubya says he has "no regrets" about invading and occupying Iraq.

Not one?

Not the fixing on intelligence around the policy to enable the invasion in the first place? not the setting of a dangerous precedent for other nations by invading without a UN authorisation? Not the disbanding of the Iraqi armed forces? Not the backing of corrupt exiles or the attempt to set up an Iraqi government without a democratic process? Not the failures in drafting a fair constitution that have made reconciliation a pipe-dream? Not the deplorable situation where the world's most powerful army is paralysed by the thought of a Bin Laden press release claiming his own victory if they withdraw? Not the outrageous domestic spying, the torture, the rollback of the rule of law, that have attended Bush's grand adventure? Not the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and not the trillions of dollars in deficit spending that have created a recession?

Not one?

I'm forcibly reminded of the Kerry/Bush debates of '04 when Dubya couldn't think of a single mistake he'd admit to. Sociopathic or pig-stupid, take your pick.

As for declaring the Surge a "major strategic victory in the broader war on terror" because the Awakening is now turning its back on Osama - when the Awakening had nothing to do with the Surge in the first place and when all those insurgents who now form the Awakening wouldn't have climbed on Osama's bandwagon without the U.S. invasion/occupation in the first place...

...well, that's just plain dishonest.

SNAFU

By Cernig

I try not to use profanity on the blog too often, even though I'm a big fan of the f-word. As my countryman Billy Connelly says, it's very direct. No-one ever wrote in a book "'fuck off', he hinted." Profanity definitely has its place, especially in devastating snark, and I guess it's OK if quoted...

So over to John Cole.

The NY Times has nine op-eds to mark the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Because I care about you all, I will simplify these op-eds into one sentence or less, each featuring the f-word. You will then be spared the pain of reading them.

Paul Bremer: “We fucked up, but it wasn’t my fault and I think Bush kinda fixed things last year.”

Richard Perle- “Things went great until those pussies at the State Department fucked up trying to fix what we bombed.”

Anne-Marie Slaugher: “This undertaking was fucked from the beginning.”

Kenneth M. Pollack- “If you think we are fucked right now, wait until you see what happens if we try to leave.”

Danielle Pletka- “The anti-war left was right about everything, but I still fucking hate them and will use this column to trash them.”

Nathaniel Flick- “Our fuck-ups can all be traced back to the fear we would be slimed.”

Major General Paul D. Eaton- “The sycophantic Republican Congress has fucked the military for a long time coming.”

Fred Kagan- “I love my fucking pompoms, and am currently applying for the job of Chief Assistant Fluffer for General Petraeus.”

Anthony Cordesman- “Bush/Cheney- Worst fucking administration EVAH.”

If you think I am exaggerating, read these for yourself.

See what I mean? All the punditry you need on nine whole op-eds. Well done, John.

(Hat tip - Kat again)

Oh Look, Another Blethering Gobshite

By Cernig

Kenneth Thiesen of the Berkeley Daily Planet has an op-ed today entitled "Commentary: Why I Don't Support the Troops". He gets the same answer that shock-jock Joel Stein got when he tried exactly the same op-ed (only better written) back in January of 2006.

He's a blethering gobshite.

Of course, the Right loves it - "look! they really don't support the troops after all!"

And I'm personally sick of all the latte-sipping idiots of both Left and Right who want to tell working class people that they can't support other working class people without supporting an awful mission or the awful individuals who commit atrocities while carrying out that mission.

I'm going to be very rude and quote myself from January 2006.

just for the idiots I will lay it out as simply as I can.

We all have the right:

To agree or disagree with our nation's wars, even while they are being fought.

To disagree with the way the war is being fought if we think different leaders, strategies or tactics would fight it better.

To call for a halt to the war, or a portion of it, if we think the incompetence of national and military leaders means we aren't winning or suffering unacceptable/unneccessary losses.

To support each soldiers individual decision on whether their orders are lawful or not. Only the individual soldier can make that decision for him or herself.

To support the poor bloody infantry by wanting them to have the best of equipment, the best of leaders, the best of tactics and the luck or acumen to not have themselves killed or too many bystanders or enemies killed. We are all, first and foremost, human and every death is a tragedy to some extent.

I can support the troops, both British and American, while not supporting the war in Iraq and anyone who says otherwise is a blethering gobshite.

And Jason, I wasn't ignoring it - I was just busy with other things and got to it as soon as I could. Must I repeat myself every time just because you wish me too?

Bush Asserts Right To Open Your Mail

By Cernig

Mostly un-noticed, Bush has claimed for himself powers to open domestic mail without a warrant in a 2006 signing statement which directly contradicted the bill it was appended to.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 [2006]after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times' disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the president's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"You have to be concerned," a senior U.S. official agreed. "It takes executive-branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

...Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane changes. But the legislation also explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet, in his statement, Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Note that "exigent circumstances" doesn't just refer to some "ticking bomb" mythical scenario but also to any longstanding declared emergency - like the general 'war on terror". The administration could already ask for a FISA warrant to open any suspect mail - and the Postal Service already has the rigfht to delay delivery. But that's not good enough for power-hungry Dubya.

The same Congress who are now being so tame on telecom immunity promised to look into it back then. I hope you didn't hold your breath because we've not heard a damn thing about hearings on the matter.

Via Larisa, who asserts:

I left the Soviet Union only to find myself back where I came from. The label might say America, but it is clear that America is a long forgotten dream

That's soft totalitarianism for you, Larisa.

Update Post edited to show that the signing statement and bill date to December 2006, as does the Congressional promise to look into the matter. Hands up those who knew about that signing statement or who've heard anything about that promised oversight.

Condi - National Security Failure?

By Cernig

Related to the last post, there's another vast body of Literature about 9/11 which almost entirely falls into the "blame, exposed" category. Unlike books on the Iraq invasion, this genre hasn't really evolved a "blame someone else" sub-genre unless one counts a few vocal conservative assertions that somehow Bill Clinton was to blame for not killing Bin Laden sooner - something that the Bush administration has singularly failed to do since and which would probably have only meant Al Qaeda had a different figurehead at the time of 9/11 in any case.

But the Sidney Morning Herald has a noteworthy extract from "The Commission - The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation" by Philip Shenon which mostly blames Condi Rice in an "exposed" look inside what the 9/11 Commission was determined to play down. The extract focusses on briefings catalogued by 9/11 Commission investigators.

It was especially troubling for Hurley's team to realise how many of the warnings were directed to the desk of one person: Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser. Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, showed that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)

"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent"

(June 23)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile

Attacks" (June 30),

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)

Other parts of the Government did respond aggressively and appropriately to the threats, including the Pentagon and the State Department. On June 21, the US Central Command, which controls American military forces in the Persian Gulf, went to "delta" alert - its highest level - for American troops in six countries in the region. The American embassy in Yemen was closed for part of the summer; other embassies in the Middle East closed for shorter periods.

But what had Rice done at the NSC? If the NSC files were complete, the commission's historian Warren Bass and the others could see, she had asked Clarke to conduct inter- agency meetings at the White House with domestic agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, to keep them alert to the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike.

She had not attended the meetings herself.

And on her utter denial of the nature of the threat as revealed in those briefings and as acted upon by some branches of the administration.

Asked if September 11 didn't represent an intelligence failure by the Administration, she replied almost testily: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Centre, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon - that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

Rice's news conference came eight months after the attacks. Yet she was suggesting that in all that time, no one had bothered to tell her that there were indeed several reports prepared within the CIA, the aviation administration, and elsewhere in the Government about the threat of planes as missiles.

Had no one told her in all those months that the Department of Defence had conducted drills for the possibility of a plane-as-missile attack on the Pentagon? Had she forgotten that when she and Bush attended the G8 summit in Italy in July 2001, the airspace was closed because of the threat of an aerial suicide attack by al-Qaeda?

In detail, Shenon's book can doubtless be used as a "blame someone else" opus by other members of the Bush administration who had exactly the same knowledge and exactly the same duty to do something with the knowledge. In that respect at least, it plays well into the hands of neoconservatives who have tried to blame Rice for all the major failings of the Bush administration in foreign policy and the "war on terror". There's little doubt that Condi could and should have done more with the briefings she was given - but that shouldn't detract from the fact that other administration officials - Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfield, Tenet and several others - had identical briefings and didn't bypass the then head of the NSC to insist directly to Bush on appropriate action. Like her, they apparently knew and did nothing.

Vote McCain for a Third Bush Term!

By Cernig

Dubya hi-jacked the Straight Talk Express today as he endorsed McCain for the White House.

In a press conference after a private lunch, a reporter asked the duo how McCain would “make the case that you’re going to provide the change that the voters seem to want.”

Bush quickly cut in, declaring that McCain is “not going to change”:

BUSH: And the good news about our candidate there will be a new president, a man of character and courage, but he’s not going to change when it comes to taking on the enemy. He understands this is a dangerous world.

Following up on the press conference, Rich Lowry of the National Review said on Fox News that Bush is framing McCain as embracing his old platforms, “someone determined absolutely to take on our enemy and someone with a big heart who cares for those who hurt.” Lowry said McCain was shaping up to be Bush’s “successor”.

So there you have it. The would-be moderate, "maverick" McCain has now been entirely co-opted by the wingnut base of the GOP, who insist that there be no change. Just another ventroloquist's dummy in an expensive suit.

Bush Vs Petraeus

By Cernig

The NYT's editorial page yet again drives home the message that Bush and his administration are not mainstream when it comes to the question of "Enhanced interrogations" - or torture, to you and me. Bush is about to veto a bill making the US Army Field Manual's provisions on torture applicable to all intelligence services. Those provisions include a blanket prohibition of torture and specific bans on:

¶ Forcing a prisoner to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner.

¶ Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a prisoner, and using duct tape over the eyes.

¶ Applying beatings, electric shocks, burns or other forms of physical pain.

¶ Waterboarding.

¶ Using military working dogs.

¶ Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.

¶ Conducting mock executions.

¶ Depriving a prisoner of necessary food, water or medical care.

The NYT correctly points out that such practises are banned under international law, making their practitioners guilty of crimes against humanity and, in wartime, guilty of crimes for which the Nuremberg trials sentenced practitioners and orderers of such techniques to death. These torture techniques are also supposed to be banned under US law, under US provisions that say international treaties become binding federal law. The Bush administration have simply ignored the law or invented spurious new "designations" for detainees to try to argue that existing laws don't apply.

Maybe, as the NYT says, Bush should be listening to the many senior retired officers and officials who have urged him to rethink his veto. Or maybe he should just listen, as he has always said he would, to General David Petraeus:

“Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy,” General Petraeus wrote. “They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.”

The Bush administration's use of torture - which is illegal no matter who is the victim - is the one clear reason, beyond all others, why impeachment should always have been on the table. More, each and every official and lawmaker involved in condoning or legalising such high crimes should face the full force of law. If that includes Dem leaders too, then so be it. Torture is a cancer deadly to democracy and freedom and should be something that is beyond partisan politics, a clear fork in the road between liberty and totalitarianism.

Pakistan - Charges In Bhutto Death Investigation

By Cernig

Pakistan has formally charged Tehrik e-Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and four other who also remain uncaptured with the assassination of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.

But they haven't, apparently, formally charged two people who they have in actual custody and who supposedly confessed to their part in the crime.

Weird.

If I were a cynical sort, I'd say they'd deliberately charged the people least likely to ever stand up in court, with evidence and counter-evidence, while dropping a pair of possibly-tortured dupes down the memory hole.

Mukasey Jaunts To Gitmo

By Cernig

Attorney General Michael Mukasey had an afternoon jaunt to Gitmo on Wednesday, presumably to make sure prosecutors there would toe the administration line in the wake of several embarassing resignations. There are no reports that he tried waterboarding himself to see if he thought it was torture.

Amazingly, military tribunals are only expected to hear charges against some 80 detainees - out of the 275 still held at Gitmo and over 800 who have passed through Gitmo's gates in total. Even a ten per cent charge rate seems...inadequate recompense...for such a loss of American prestige and such a trampling on the rule of law.

Thirty four international law organisations, including Britain's Law Society, have signed a joint letter to Bush to express their condemnation of the situation in Guantanamo Bay. "We feel that it is inherently unfair to have one justice system for American citizens and another for so-called 'enemy combatants', particularly when such a system has no basis in international law.", UK Law Society president Andrew Holroyd said.

When Matt Outed Harry

By Cernig

Being a Brit, I suppose I should write a few words about the cross-pond scandal of Matt Drudge outing Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan.

I'm a wee tad conflicted on the Harry end - I'm no great fan of the concept of having royals in general and would rather think of Harry Windsor as just another second lieutenant from a privileged background who will either turn out to be one of the good guys or one of the banes of the squaddies lives, depending on whether he has sh*t for brains or not. He gets no slack from me just for being a Windsor - but that said, kudos for going within a million miles of the shooting when he could've used his birthrate to stay safe in the UK. His uncle Andrew got the same kudos in the Falklands.

Still, I understand why he has now been withdrawn. As the BBC's Jon Williams explains, and 2nd Lt. Windor's nickname "Bullet Magnet" suggests, it's not just about him.

this was never just about Prince Harry's safety, it was also about the security of the soldiers serving with him. No editor wants to be responsible for increasing the risk they already face from the Taleban. Nor do I think our audiences would have thanked us for doing so.

On Matt Drudge, I'm not in the least conflicted. What a low, unprincipled, headline-chasing slimeball.

Try a thought experiment. Replace "Harry Windsor" with, say "James McCain" and imagine his dad is president. Now imagine Drudge had leaked the location and unit of said presidential son on deployment in Iraq. Can you imagine the outrage? Drudge would be finished, if not in jail.

The Gitmo Tapes - Lies Of Omission

By Cernig

Just over a week ago, the Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy and Research published a report that said military records and statements showed over 24,000 tapes had been made of interrogations carried out at Guantánamo Bay. The same day, a Washington Post article following up on that report said that many of those recordings might have been taped over, destroying valuable evidence. That article was based upon a court filing "by Guantanamo's commander, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who said video surveillance recordings in several areas of the facility have been automatically overwritten and no longer exist".

However, in an email and a comment to the versions of my posts on the subject over at At-Largely, Michael Ricciardelli - one of the co-authors of the Seton Hall Law report - wrote "to point out and highlight what the Military actually said, and didn't say--as opposed to the inferences and conjecture that have been drawn from what they have said." He says Buzby's statement and the press coverage of them "have misdirected and now obfuscate the issue" by confusing surveillance security tapes with tapes of the interrogations themselves. That means that the 24,000 tapes should still exist, somewhere.

Michael wrote (bolded parts are partly mine, partly his from his emailed version):

There seems to be some confusion stemming from the Military (there's a surprise) and the press concerning the "automatic over-writes" on the video recorders in hallways and common areas in Guantanamo. These cameras (think in terms of the video cameras in convenience stores-- but more sophisticated) were said to have recorded "day-to-day" "mundane" life at Guantanamo. According to the Military, every certain number of days these "hallway" and "common area" monitor recording systems automatically taped over themselves( i.e., were "overwritten").

These statements came from a declaration of Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, United States Navy on February 8, 2008 (case 1:05-cv-00023-RWR Document84-4; Washington Post, February 14, 2008). Importantly, these "hallway" and "common area" monitor recordings are specifically NOT video recordings of interrogations-- And the Rear Admiral is exceedingly careful to NOT say that they are in his declaration; though, perhaps, it could be anticipated that because of the way the declaration was made the media would confuse the two separate and distinct issues. Which is to say, that the responsive statement's by Rear Admiral Buzby have misdirected and now obfuscate the issue. As such, some of the media reporting has failed to make clear this distinction between the "day-to-day" video recording and the video recording of interrogations. This distinction, however, is readily apparent if one looks to the partially redacted text of Rear Admiral Buzby's declaration.

Paragraph 10 reads:

10. This declaration is not intended to provide a complete catalogue of all video and/or audio recordings made of detainees held at JTF-GTMO, although I am informed, and believe, that it is a complete discussion of those JTF-GTMO video and/or audio monitoring systems that included a standard recording feature as to which recorded data was automatically overwritten at specified intervals.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct. (emphasis added)

8 Feb 08 Mark A. Buzby
Rear Admiral, United States Navy
Commander, Joint Task Force--
Guantanamo

No one wants to be subjected to perjury charges. Importantly, Rear Admiral Buzby specifically states that his declaration is "not intended to provide a complete catalogue of all video and/or audio recordings made of detainees held at JTF-GTMO." Also, he never mentions interrogations in his declaration. His declaration states that it refers to recordings of "day-to-day" occurrences i.e., "hallway activity," and common area activity such as "eating, praying and recreating." Importantly, interrogation does not come under this aegis.

Also of great importance, in his declaration, the Rear Admiral pointedly does not mention the buildings and rooms at Guantanamo which are dedicated to Interrogation. He does, however, expressly name a number of other physical locations within GTMO to which his declaration pertains. Voluminous research of Government documents has shown that the overwhelming majority of interrogations in Guantanamo occurred at Camp Delta and Camp X-Ray-- compounds specifically set up, equipped, and designated by the Military as the site for interrogations. Rear Admiral Buzby's declaration refers only to "Camps 4, 6, Echo and Iguana." Rear Admiral Buzby's declaration does not mention Camp Delta, Camp X-Ray or any other known interrogation site.

I would suggest, as I imagine would Rear Admiral Buzby, that his declaration pertains to the places and activities, and only the places and activities, which he expressly mentions. As he does not mention the dedicated interrogation buildings and rooms, his declaration thereby does not include video and/or audio recordings in the dedicated interrogation building and rooms. Thus, his declaration does not include a statement regarding the "automatic overwriting" of any videotapes produced at the interrogation sites and does not include the "overwriting" of interrogation videotapes.

In addition, the Rear Admiral states that his declaration is "a complete discussion of those JTF-GTMO video and/or audio monitoring systems that included a standard recording feature as to which recorded data was automatically overwritten at specified intervals." Which is to say that:

a) if the interrogation recording apparatus does not include "a standard recording feature as to which recorded data was automatically overwritten," it is not included in the Rear Admiral's declaration;

b) if the video recordings of interrogations were not "automatically overwritten at specified intervals" they are not included in the Rear Admiral's declaration-- which again, pointedly, is "not meant to provide a complete catalogue of video and/or audio recordings."

c) even if, contrary to everything else Rear Admiral Buzby states (or fails to state) in his declaration, for some hard to imagine reason the video recordings of interrogations were "automatically overwritten at specified intervals," that is pointedly not to say that they weren't also saved onto files and disks or transmitted electronically to the Pentagon's video data repository and clearing house, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

The BSCT SOP, 2005:

Behavioral Science Consulatation Team
Joint Intelligence Group, Joint Task Force-GTMO
Standard Operating Procedures (U)
28 March 2005

6. Mission Essential Tasks

a) Provides consultation to interrogation staff in support of the intelligence collection mission.

b) Monitors Interrogations and other staff-detainee interactions...

9. Other Operational Procedures. The following procedures apply to the daily BSCT operations.

a.(1) Ensure that classified material (files, papers, photos, disks) are properly secured in the safe designated for BSCT use; at no time shall classified materials be left unattended in BSCT offices.


Those video recordings were/are a very valuable asset and resource to the teams of Interrogation Analysts employed at GTMO who could not all be at every interrogation. The Behavioral Science Cosultation Team ("BSCT"), a team of psychologists and psychiatrists charged with coming up with interrogation tactics to employ on detainees "to break them down," the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit ("BAU"), and the myriad other entitities employed by Defense Humint Services (DHS) (including private contractor analysts) ALL had reason to "check the tapes" and study carefully the subjects of their chosen profession. They would have been foolish (if not negligent) not to closely analyze video recordings of interrogations that they had made.

d) finally, video recordings would also preserve as "evidence" the statements that video recorded detainees may have made against themselves and against other detainees ("reliable" hearsay is admissable evidence in the Military "Hearings" and "Trials"). Records of such "evidence" would obviously be necessary in the event of a detainees transfer, release, change of story, or death. Video recordings of interrogations would also be invaluable as a training tool.

As you can see, the obfuscation and misdirection takes some time and effort to unravel, but it is ultimately discernible as just that-- obfuscation and misdirection. Rear Admiral Buzby's declaration addresses videotaping, but that is not to say that it addresses videotaping of interrogations.

In addition, the Military has responded that they were "not required" to videotape interrogations and did not do so "routinely." I would suggest that those statements are as important for what they do not say as what they have said. To say that one was "not required" to videotape interrogations is specifically NOT to say that one didn't videotape interrogations. And to say that one did not "routinely" videotape interrogations is also not to say that one didn't. Importantly, when given the opportunity to refute that they videotaped interrogations in Guantanamo, the Military, pointedly, did not.

Unfortunately, TV Stations and Newspapers seem to have neither the time nor the inclination to make such distinctions as are contained above. Which, I suppose, is where we come in. As such, please feel free to disseminate this post as freely and as widely as you like. Do what you can to shine further light on what are dim days for the Rule of Law.

Michael J. Ricciardelli

So there you have it. The military has not ever said it didn't record interrogations and statements on recordings are deliberately parsed in such a way as to sidestep possible contempt charges while simultaneously giving the misleading impression that no interrogation recordings which might have been made survived.

Yet standard procedure is for interrogations to be recorded and those recordings to be preserved.

Over to you, Congress. Time for some far more pointed questions and less blind acceptance of lawyer-speak.

FOX News' Top Law Analyst Says Protect America Act Unconstitutional

By Cernig

Andrew P. Napolitano, "a New Jersey Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel" and has written that FISA and warrantless seraches of all kinds are unconstitutional and that eforts to weaken Fourth Amendment protection still further ammount to an "Invasion of America" by UnAmerican idealogues.

Of course, he hasn't done so for FOX, but rather for the LA Times in an op-ed yesterday:

The FISA statute itself significantly -- and, in my opinion, unconstitutionally -- lowered the 4th Amendment bar from probable cause of "crime"to probable cause of "status." However, in order to protect the 4th Amendment rights of the targets of spying, the statute erected a so-called wall between gathering evidence and using evidence. The government cannot constitutionally prosecute someone unless it has evidence against him that was obtained pursuant to probable cause of a crime, a standard not met by a FISA warrant.

Congress changed all that. The Patriot Act passed after 9/11 and its later version not only destroyed the wall between investigation and prosecution,they mandated that investigators who obtained evidence of criminal activity pursuant to FISA warrants share that evidence with prosecutors. They also instructed federal judges that the evidence thus shared is admissible under the Constitution against a defendant in a criminal case. Congress forgot that it cannot tell federal judges what evidence is admissible because judges, not politicians, decide what a jury hears.

Then the Bush administration and Congress went even further. The administration wanted, and Congress has begrudgingly given it, the authority to conduct electronic surveillance of foreigners and Americans without even a FISA warrant -- without any warrant whatsoever. The so-called Protect America Act of 2007, which expired at the end of last week, gave the government carte blanche to spy on foreign persons outside the U.S., even if Americans in the United States with whom they may be communicating are spied on -- illegally -- in the process. Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee last year that hundreds of unsuspecting Americans' conversations and e-mails are spied on annually as a consequence of the warrantless surveillance of foreigners outside the United States.

So where does all this leave us? Even though, since 1978, the government has gotten more than 99% of its FISA applications approved, the administration wants to do away with FISA altogether if at least one of the people whose conversations or e-mails it wishes to monitor is not in the U.S. and is not an American.

Those who believe the Constitution means what it says should tremble at every effort to weaken any of its protections. The Constitution protects all "persons" and all "people" implicated by government behavior. So the government should be required, as it was until FISA, to obtain a 4th Amendment warrant to conduct surveillance of anyone, American or not, in the U.S. or not.

If we lower constitutional protections for foreigners and their American correspondents, for whom will we lower them next?

And then they came for the dissenters.

Doing "Stuff Like That"

By Cernig

I should have flagged this one yesterday - check out the former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Morris Davis, writing in the NYT yesterday:

Imagine the outrage if the Iranian government tied down an American, convinced him the choices were to cooperate or die, and then used his “confession” as evidence in a death-penalty trial.

My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.

Unfortunately, I was overruled on the question, and I resigned my position to call attention to the issue — efforts that were hampered by my being placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction.

At a Senate hearing in December, the legal adviser for the military commissions, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, refused to rule out using evidence obtained by waterboarding. Afterward, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is also a lawyer in the Air Force Reserves, said that no military judge would allow the introduction of such evidence. I hope Senator Graham is right about military judges, and it is unfortunate that any might be put in a position where he has to make such a decision.

Regrettably, at a Pentagon press briefing last week announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and five others had been charged and faced the death penalty, General Hartmann again declined to rule out the use of evidence acquired through waterboarding. Military justice has a proud history; this was not one of its finer moments.

That is not to say those subjected to waterboarding get a free pass. If the prosecution can build a persuasive case without using the coerced “confession,” then whether a defendant endured waterboarding is immaterial in determining guilt or innocence.

There are some bad men at Guantánamo Bay and a few deserve death, but only after trials we can truthfully call full, fair and open. In that service, we must declare that evidence obtained by waterboarding be banned in every American system of justice. We must restore our reputation as the good guys who refuse to stoop to the level of our adversaries. We are Americans, and we should be able to state with conviction, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

The crucial point that those truly guilty can still be convicted and executed without evidence gained by torture - indeed, I would argue, without the Bush administration's invention of a spurious third category of detainee which is neither fish nor fowl, the "unlawful combatant" - is something that is always overlooked by rightwing demagogues as they rush to call all those who would uphold the rule of law "defeatists".

What 9/11 Changed

By Cernig

9/11 took a generation of Playstation warriors and the previous generation's rightwing Black Helicopter Paranoia crowd and welded them into a constituency which drove America's policies and politics for seven long years.

Greenwald in great form.

Over the past couple decades, prior to the Bush Era, the people who needed the sort of psychological fulfillment that comes from prancing around as Hofstadterian faux-warriors waging Civilization Wars obtained their fulfillment from playing board and video games or, at worst, dressing up on the weekend in camouflage costumes and -- rather than playing golf or going fishing -- marched around in militia formations, primed to defend the nation from Janet Reno and her squadrons of hovering U.N. black helicopters. It was equally pathetic, but at least the damage was minimal.

But the 9/11 attacks and ensuing events catapulted their paranoia and powerlessness syndromes from clownish sideshow to dominant political faction. And their fevered, self-serving fantasies have empowered the Federal Government beyond anyone's wildest dreams, created a completely out-of-control domestic surveillance state, subordinated even the rule of law to the lawless dictates of Security State officials, and dismantled long-standing constitutional protections and political values so basic that they were previously beyond debate. In Civilization Wars, all is fair and justified -- torture, lawbreaking, domestic spying, limitless government power, because the imperative of their crusade outweighs all.

All of that is bad enough. But listening to the authors of these events martyr themselves by claiming that their crusades are "psychologically exhausting" is really too much to bear. The reason they pursue those crusades endlessly, and will continue to pursue them until stopped, is precisely because the only thing they find "psychologically exhausting" is the prospect of having to live without their Supreme War of Civilization, whereby they defend the greatest things ever, under siege from the most Evil villains ever, with them -- and only them -- courageous and tough enough to "do what needs to be done" to triumph.

Read the whole thing.

Wrongfully Accused 9/11 Pilot To Sue For $4 Million

By Cernig

The London Times reports that an Algerian pilot wrongfully accused of involvement in the 9/11 plot has been cleared by the Appeal Court in England to sue the British government for compensation.

The Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Secretary came in for scathing criticism from senior judges for making false allegations and withholding evidence from the courts in the case of Lotfi Raissi.

...the court said the British authorities used a US extradition warrant “as a device to circumvent the rule of English law” by detaining him for almost six months in Belmarsh prison.

...The court, presided over by Sir Anthony Clarke, the Master of the Rolls, “completely exonerated” Mr Raissi of any connection to the 9/11 attacks. That declaration marked a crucial personal breakthrough for Mr Raissi in his six-year legal battle to clear his name.

It ordered Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to reconsider the refusal by successive Home Secretaries to compensate him as a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Lawyers for Mr Raissi are expected to present a damages claim for the loss of his career as a commercial pilot, wrongful imprisonment and damage to health, which could exceed £2 million.

The Met and the CPS had originally told courts that flight logs at a flying school in Arizona had been falsified to cover up his training flights with Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon and that Abu Doha, an Algerian terrorist organiser, had Mr Raissi’s phone number in an address book. Both claims were false. The UK Government's defense was that both were simply passing along information from US authorities but the Appeals Court said they bore responsibility for not knowing better.

“There is evidence that the actions of the Metropolitan Police resulted in false statements being made to the courts contributing to the decision to refuse [Mr Raissi] bail.

“We consider that the serious allegation relating to the destruction of flight records covering the period of training with the hijackers (allegedly resulting from carelessness or incompetence by the police) would be capable of amounting to serious default which had a causative effect on the decision to remand [Mr Raissi] in custody”.

The court questioned whether the CPS had disclosed all revelant evidence in its possession and reminded the prosecuting authority that it owed the courts “a duty of candour and good faith”.

The judges said the “primary responsibility for the falsity” in alleging that Mr Raissi had contact with Aby Doha lay jointly with the Yard and the CPS.

The judges ruled: “It does not appear to us that the CPS can be absolved from all responsibility for this state of affairs. There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the police and the CPS were responsible for serious defaults.”

The authorities, the court concluded, had abused the legal process to keep Mr Raissi in prison for almost six months while the FBI conducted inquiries about him.

The judges ruled: “The extradition proceedings were a device to secure the appellant’s presence in the US for the purpose of investigating 9/11... We consider that the way in which the extradition proceedings were conducted in this country, with opposition to bail based on allegations which appear unfounded in evidence, amounted to an abuse of process.

“The proceedings were used as a device to circumvent the rule of English law that a terrorist supect could (at that time) be held without charge for only seven days.”

If The Defense Budget Were Spent At Lowe's

By Cernig

The reason I love reading IOZ is that no-one else can create snark that flows like finest wine and reads like Wilde come to the 21st century. But when he lands a punch, oh boy does it hurt.

Take this.

Our government is desperate to deploy ever more preposterous devices in order to prevent another 9/11 by detecting dangerous items that have nothing to do with the way 9/11 was carried out. Turns out that only required locks on cockpit doors, which means that we could have avoided the TSA and Homeland Security and the thousand perversions of this late, security-state, global-gulag America for the cost of a Lowe's gift card. Think on that, if you will.

I bet IOZ would hate Norfolk.

Tainted Trials

By Cernig

I personally believe that the six terror suspects to be tried before a military commision are guilty of their alleged crimes. But that they are guilty and will be found guilty doesn't matter any more.

I also personally believe, for instance, that Bush, Cheney and others are guilty of war crimes. Do you think if George or Dick or Donnie was waterboarded, subjected to sleep deprivation or hypothermia that they would confess? You betcha. And I'm also sure they'd confirm their confessions to some nice folks who came along later and asked them to do so - because they'd already know what would happen if they didn't play ball.

In all conscience, I wouldn't support their conviction under such circumstances. That they'd be guilty and found guilty wouldn't matter anymore because torture taints everything it touches.

So does illegal rendition and secret detention. So does a lack of proper due process. So does a system of unequal justice without the consent of the accused. These trials are in violation of international law to which America is party, and thus U.S. law.

Instead of putting some very nasty people cleanly behind bars or in their graves, the Bush administration opted for the worst possible path of tainted trials. It is now impossible to cleanly convict and sentence these men.

The trial will not begin for at least four months, possible far longer, which means the trial itself will be a major news item as the U.S. goes to polls in November. It will be far from over, inviting candidates to take stances on the trial's legality and applicability. If Dems do as they should and condemn it's method while also condemning the evil of those on trial, they are suddenly open to a new round of rightwing sloganeering and hounding for being 'soft on terror". In such circumstances, the White House's claim that it had no influence over who would be tried or when begins to sound thin to the breaking point.

Nor will this trial likely be over by the time the next president is inaugurated. Bush has left his legacy for the next incumbent - become complicit in perpetuating Bush's mistakes and crimes or restore America's honor and justice at the price of allowing these evil people to walk free. The latter is political suicide at home, the former is diplomatic suicide abroad. What a fine mess the George W. Laurel and Dick Hardy years have gotten America into.

Will U.S. Help Iraq With MeK Warrants?

By Cernig

According to UPI, the Iraqi authorities have issued arrest warrants for three members of the neocons' favorite terror outfit, the Mujahedeen e-Kalq. US and Bulgarian troops guard the MeK at their salubrious Camp Ashraf inside Iraq but it has always been uncertain whether they are guarding Iraqis from the former Saddam bully-boys who aspire to be Iran's next government, or vice versa.

In addition to incursions into Iran and targeted killings of Iranian officials and security agents, MEK attacks have often killed civilians there. The MEK has been accused of attacking coalition troops in Iraq, carried out attacks on the Iranian consulate to the UN and 12 other Iranian embassies in 1992, assisted Saddam Hussein in his suppression of Shiite and Kurdish insurgencies in the early 1990s, and killed U.S. military and civilian personnel working in Iran in the 1970s out of anger for American support of the shah. Members of the MEK also supported the 1979 takeover and hostage taking at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

There have been persistent rumors that the U.S. is using the MeK as proxies to fight the current Iranian regime and it's certainly true that their political wing has been the source for many rightwing claims about secret Iranian nuclear programs, the vast bulk of which have proven false on investigation. It's a marriage of convenience - both the neocons within the Bush administration and the MeK hate the current Iranian government and the neocons get fuel for their war hype while the MeK hopes to goad the US into attacking Iran so that they can then take over.

So the big question is - will the U.S. military and the Bush administration allow the Iraqi warrants to be served, or will they bow to neocon pressure and protect the MeK from scrutiny again?