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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #15 on: 2009-04-09 14:49:39 »
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Obama Administration quietly expands Bush's legal defense of wiretapping program

Source: The Raw Story
Authors: John Byrne
Dated: 2009-04-07

In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government's legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency's eavesdropping efforts.

In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil liberties group, the Justice Department argued that the government was protected by "sovereign immunity" from lawsuits because of a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act. The government's legal filing can be read here (PDF).

For the first time, the Obama Administration's brief contends that government agencies cannot be sued for wiretapping American citizens even if there was intentional violation of US law. They maintain that the government can only be sued if the wiretaps involve "willful disclosure" -- a higher legal bar.

"A 'willful violation' in Section 223(c(1) refers to the 'willful disclosure' of intelligence information by government agents, as described in Section 223(a)(3) and (b)(3), and such disclosures by the Government are the only actions that create liability against the United States," Obama Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz wrote (page 5). [ Hermit : I think that the fact that Hertz was appointed by the Obama administration means that it is unlikely that this will change anytime before the fast approaching 100 day point - or indeed, afterwards. Which leads me to agree with Mo that the Justice department should be called the Bush/Obama Justice Department, because the blackness at the heart of it has been not only preserved, but as we see here, bolstered. ]

Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the government over the warrantless wiretapping program, notes that the government has previously argued that the government had "sovereign immunity" against civil action under the FISA statute. But he says that this is the first time that they've invoked changes to the Patriot Act in claiming the US government is immune from claims of illegal spying under any other federal surveillance statute.

"They are arguing this based on changes to the law made by the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 223," Bankston said in an email to Raw Story. "We've never been fans of 223 -- it made it much harder to sue the U.S. for illegal spying, see an old write-up of mine at: http://w2.eff.org/patriot/sunset/223.php -- but no one's ever suggested before that it wholly immunized the U.S. government against suits under all the surveillance statutes."

Salon columnist and constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald -- who is generally supportive of progressive interpretations of the law -- says the Obama Administration has "invented a brand new claim" of immunity from spying litigation.

"In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad 'state secrets' privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they 'willfully disclose' to the public what they have learned," Greenwald wrote Monday.

He also argues that the Justice Department's response is exclusively a product of the new Administration, noting that three months have elapsed since President Bush left office.

"This brief and this case are exclusively the Obama DOJ's, and the ample time that elapsed -- almost three full months -- makes clear that it was fully considered by Obama officials," Greenwald wrote. "Yet they responded exactly as the Bush DOJ would have. This demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used -- not only when the Obama DOJ is taking over a case from the Bush DOJ, but even when they are deciding what response should be made in the first instance."

"Everything for which Bush critics excoriated the Bush DOJ -- using an absurdly broad rendition of 'state secrets' to block entire lawsuits from proceeding even where they allege radical lawbreaking by the President and inventing new claims of absolute legal immunity -- are now things the Obama DOJ has left no doubt it intends to embrace itself," he adds.

Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union say the "sovereign immunity" claim in the context of the case goes farther than any previous Bush Administration claims of wiretap immunity.

Writing about the changes to the Patriot Act last year, the EFF asserted that revisions to the Act involved troubling new developments for US law.

"Unlike with any other defendant, if you want to sue the federal government for illegal wiretapping you have to first go through an administrative procedure with the agency that did the wiretapping," the Foundation wrote. "That means, essentially, that you have to politely complain to the illegal wiretappers and tip them off to your legal strategy, and then wait for a while as they decide whether to do anything about it before you can sue them in court."

Moreover, they said, "Before PATRIOT, in addition to being able to sue for money damages, you could sue for declaratory relief from a judge. For example, an Internet service provider could ask the court to declare that a particular type of wiretapping that the government wants to do on its network is illegal. One could also sue for an injunction from the court, ordering that any illegal wiretapping stop. PATRIOT section 223 significantly reduced a judge's ability to remedy unlawful surveillance, making it so you can only sue the government for money damages. This means, for example, that no one could sue the government to stop an ongoing illegal wiretap. At best, one could sue for the government to pay damages while the illegal tap continued!"

The Obama Administration has not publicly commented on stories that revealed their filing on Monday.
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #16 on: 2009-04-18 13:05:00 »
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Source: The Daily Beast
Authors: Bruce Fein
Dated: 2009-04-18

Associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, Bruce Fein is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy

On Thursday, April 16, in response to a lawsuit initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union, President Barack Obama released four redacted Office of Legal Counsel memoranda from the Bush administration to the CIA justifying torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. (The CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were modeled on the Chinese Communist coercive brainwashing program against Americans captured in the Korean War to induce false confessions.) Each memorandum hedged its conclusions with substantial caveats, such as the absence of judicial precedents and concessions that reasonable persons could dispute their exculpatory conclusions. The memoranda were later renounced as bad law.

Obama, however, promised non-prosecution of all CIA personnel complicit in torture who relied on the flawed OLC advice. He further pledged to defend them from criminal investigations initiated by foreign jurisdictions and to indemnify them if they are held liable in damages for constitutional or statutory wrongdoing. Obama is similarly defending former OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo against a torture suit initiated by Jose Padilla, convicted of terrorism in 2007 after the government dropped charges that as an "enemy combatant" he plotted to set off a "dirty bomb." The Yoo memoranda on torture have also been renounced and discredited. Obama also promised to follow the Bush-Cheney duumvirate in claiming secrecy for alleged national-security secrets because "the world is dangerous." Indeed, he did not voluntarily initiate release of the four OLC memoranda, but responded to a Freedom of Information Act suit. And President Obama has echoed the Bush-Cheney state secrets arguments to block lawsuits challenging the legality of spying on Americans without warrants in contravention of the Fourth Amendment or federal law, or seeking damages for torture. Moreover, Obama has been unable to recite a single instance where transparency proved more dangerous to the liberties of the American people than has secrecy, the birthplace of COINTELPRO, Shamrock, Minaret, Abu Ghraib, and torture of 14 "High Value al Qaeda" detainees in secret prisons abroad (according to the International Committee of the Red Cross).

On the same day Obama was excusing torture and promising more secret government, The New York Times published a front-page story disclosing the National Security Agency's apparently illegal interceptions of emails and phone calls of American citizens in the United States without individual judicial warrants. The interceptions exceeded even the sweeping group warrant authority to spy on persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States that were authorized in amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act enacted last September. President Obama has declined to sanction a single official implicated in the latest apparent violation of a statute he supported as a senator. He has similarly chosen non-prosecution for former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, and high-level officials at the NSA and CIA who authorized more than five years of FISA felonies: namely, warrantless NSA spying on American citizens on American soil in flagrant contravention of FISA, about which more anon.

The evidence is now undeniable. President Barack Obama is flouting his unflagging constitutional obligation enshrined in Article II, Section 3 to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." He is also reneging on his signature campaign promise to restore the rule of law, transparency, and accountability to the White House. He is displaying the psychology of an arrogant empire as opposed to a modest republic in continuing and escalating the Bush-Cheney duumvirate's global and perpetual war against international terrorism heedless of foreign sovereignties or the lives of civilians.

Even more disappointing, Obama has proven a political coward dangerous to the republic. Before April 16, he had decided against any criminal investigation of the Bush-Cheney duumvirate or their inner circles for their boasted complicity in torture, i.e., waterboarding, which Attorney General Eric Holder has declared is torture. He has similarly declined investigations of extraordinary renditions that have occasioned, among other things, the indictments and in absentia trials of 26 CIA operatives in Milan, Italy, for the kidnapping and torture of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar.

Obama made no effort to square his refusal to investigate credible and substantial evidence of felonies with his constitutional obligation to faithfully execute, not sabotage, the laws. He relied solely on politics, as though law was nothing more than a constellation of political calculations with ulterior motives. Obama insisted that investigations of Bush-Cheney would disturb the Toscanini-like symphony he had promised to the political class in the corridors of power. Comparable political calculations explain why Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai declines to prosecute the countless officials implicated in staggering corruption, inefficiency, and subjugation of women - all of which are deplored by President Obama.

In sweeping the Bush-Cheney lawlessness under the rug, Obama has set a precedent of whitewashing White House lawlessness in the name of national security that will lie around like a loaded weapon ready for resurrection by any commander in chief eager to appear "tough on terrorism" and to exploit popular fear. Obama urges that the crimes were justified because the duumvirate acted to protect the nation from international terrorism. But Congress did not create a national-security defense to torture or commit FISA felonies.

President Obama should have invoked his pardon power if he believed circumstances justified the crimes by Bush and Cheney and the CIA's interrogators. A pardon or lesser clemency properly exposes the president to political accountability, as Bush discovered with Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby and President Ford with former President Nixon. More significant, a pardon does not set a precedent making lawful what was unlawful. It acknowledges the criminality of the underlying activity, and acceptance of the pardon is an admission of guilt by the recipient. Pardons leave unsullied the doctrine of Ex parte Milligan (1866): "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men at all times and in all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."

Obama can be summoned against his own non-prosecution policy, secrecy, and non-accountability. In releasing the four OLC memoranda on April 16, Obama asserted: "Enlisting our values [like the rule of law or transparency] in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals [like the rule of law or government in the sunshine]." "I believe strongly in transparency and accountability." "The United States is a nation of laws."

These words should be taken cum granis salis. Bush and Cheney also insisted that everything they did was constitutional and indispensable to thwarting another 9/11. Obama's promise of change has proven nothing more than verbal jugglery.
« Last Edit: 2009-04-19 01:55:20 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #17 on: 2009-04-19 01:50:11 »
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Obama reprieve for CIA illegal-UN rapporteur

Source: Reuters North American News Service
Authors: Mark Heinrich (Reporting), Robert Woodward (Editing)
Dated: 2009-04-18

President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who used waterboarding on terrorism suspects amounts to a breach of international law, the U.N. rapporteur on torture said.

"The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

Nowak did not think Obama would go as far as to seek an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel and therefore U.S. courts could still try torture suspects, he said on Saturday.

Obama has affirmed his unwillingness to prosecute under anti-torture laws CIA personnel who relied in good faith on Bush administration legal opinions issued after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Obama said he had ended harrowing techniques used against detainees by Bush-era CIA personnel, but that U.S. intelligence agents still operated in a dangerous world and had to be confident they could perform their jobs.

Nowak, an Austrian, suggested an investigation by an independent commission before suspects were tried and said it would be important for all victims to receive compensation.

Human rights advocates have attacked Obama's decision, saying charges were necessary to prevent future abuses and hold people accountable. Some U.S. lawmakers have called for public investigations.

The four memos Obama released approved techniques including waterboarding, week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity and putting insects in with a tightly confined prisoner.

His administration also said it would try to shield CIA employees from "any international or foreign tribunal" -- an immediate challenge to Spain where a judge has threatened to investigate Bush administration officials.
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #18 on: 2009-04-21 05:01:40 »
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The Nuremberg Defence Plus

Wasn't it wonderful that Obama chose to use April 20, Hitler's birthday, to announce his intention to illegally offer a pass to those who actually performed torture on detainees under the Bush administration, on the grounds that they were just following orders. This despite the US having executed people offering that defence at Nuremberg as well as in the Asian theatre; and the US having a treaty in force mandating the prosecution of anyone involved in torture.

Obama did go one better than the defendents at Nuremberg, call it Nuremberg Plus, when he offered a free pass to those who gave the orders to commit torture, and to those who putatively justified it, on the grounds that they did not engage in it.

What a wonderful thing is a legally trained mind.

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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #19 on: 2009-04-21 07:11:45 »
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-04-21 05:01:40   

The Nuremberg Defence Plus

Wasn't it wonderful that Obama chose to use April 20, Hitler's birthday, to announce his intention to illegally offer a pass to those who actually performed torture on detainees under the Bush administration, on the grounds that they were just following orders. This despite the US having executed people offering that defence at Nuremberg as well as in the Asian theatre; and the US having a treaty in force mandating the prosecution of anyone involved in torture.

Obama did go one better than the defendents at Nuremberg, call it Nuremberg Plus, when he offered a free pass to those who gave the orders to commit torture, and to those who putatively justified it, on the grounds that they did not engage in it.

What a wonderful thing is a legally trained mind.


[Blunderov] Yes indeed! (Under the circumstances I don't think Godwins Law applies here...)

huffingtonpost.com


Shayana Kadidal: The Torture Memos: Berlin, 1937 Version

21 April 2009, 08:56:31 | Shayana Kadidal

The problem: The nation has been on a war footing for years. Elected leaders believe it is full of sleeper cells of subversives. Officials in the capital decide that torture should be applied to detained subversives (whether to spread terror among their fellows, extract intelligence, or produce confessions is unclear). But law enforcement officers are uneasy about applying "more rigorous interrogation" techniques. Although the judicial system doesn't seem to mind that defendants show up in court bearing obvious signs of torture, the officers are bureaucrats in a legal and political culture that has always esteemed the Rule of Law. (Indeed, the political party in charge was elected on a law-and-order platform.) What to do?

The solution: a confidential memorandum, the joint product of the highest officials in the intelligence and justice departments, setting forth in extraordinary detail when certain techniques could be applied, the specific equipment to be used in such interrogations, the number of times certain techniques could be used on certain categories of detainees, and so forth - and specifically promising immunity from prosecution when the rules are followed scrupulously.

The place: Not Washington, DC circa 2002-2005, but rather Nazi Germany, June 4, 1937.

The memorandum, issued by the Reich Ministry of Justice, followed a meeting of several Justice Ministry lawyers and public prosecutors with several high-level Gestapo officials. I'll let it speak for itself:

Confidential!
To: Chief Public Prosecutor in Düsseldorf .
Subject: Mistreatment of Political Prisoners

Meeting at the Reich Ministry of Justice on June 4, 1937

It has been recognized by government leaders at the highest levels that more rigorous interrogations are necessary and indispensable. In such cases, it would be nonsensical to prosecute the officers carrying out the interrogation for exceeding their authority. However, public prosecutors must carry out the letter of the law and have no possibility of choosing to prosecute or not as they may judge fit ... At present, we thus have a situation which cannot continue: a deficient sense of what is right on the part of judicial officers; an undignified position for police officers, who try to help matters by foolish denials [that torture has taken place in court proceedings]. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the possibility of relevant limits. There followed a discussion of individual questions:

Question 1: For which offenses are more rigorous interrogations permissible?
There was general agreement that, in principle) interrogations of this kind may be undertaken in cases where charges involve the immediate interests of the state. ... chiefly treason and high treason. Representatives of the Gestapo expressed the opinion that a more rigorous interrogation could also be considered in cases of Jehovah's Witnesses, explosives, and sabotage. ... It was unanimously agreed that charges under paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code [that is, charges of homosexuality] should not be considered as grounds. A more rigorous interrogation is, as a general principle, never permissible in the case of foreigners. ...

Question 2: Nature of corporal punishment?
As a general principle, in more rigorous interrogations only blows with a club on the buttocks are permissible, up to 25 such blows. The number is to be determined in advance by the Gestapo (see Question 3). Beginning with the tenth blow, a physician must be present. A standard club will be designated, to eliminate all irregularities.

Question 3: Who may order a more rigorous interrogation?
As a general principle, only Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin. Local state police stations must obtain permission in advance from Berlin. Without permission a more rigorous interrogation may not be conducted.
...
Question 5: What assurance exists that innocent persons will not be interrogated with the more rigorous measures?
This question is answered by the measures named under Question 3.

Question 6: How are judicial officers to deal technically with cases:

(a) in which permissible corporal punishment has been inflicted under the terms stated above? If an office of public prosecution receives a complaint, it contacts the state police and confirms that permission was granted (by the Gestapo Berlin). If said permission is shown to have been given, no charges are pressed, and a formal announcement should be made: "Investigation has shown that a criminal act was not committed."
(b) in which corporal punishment has been inflicted that is not permissible under the terms stated above?
If it transpires that permission was not obtained, commence investigation immediately and report at once to the Central Office of Public Prosecutions [in Berlin]. ...

The Gestapo will receive a copy of [this memo] from the Ministry [of Justice], whereupon it is to act on them immediately ... and issue instructions to state police stations. The Ministry of Justice will for its part then issue instructions to public prosecutors.


(I first saw this memo several years ago in Deborah Lucas Schneider's translation (which I've altered a bit above) of the excellent Ingo Müller, Hitler's Justice, at pages 178-180; the original is in Ilse Staff, ed., Justiz im Dritten Reich (1964; 2d ed. Frankfurt: Fischer Taxhenbuch-Verlag, 1978, pp. 106-).

I realize that, as a matter of principle, there is a strong bias against making Nazi analogies to any events happening in our modern world (sometimes described in internet discussion groups as "Godwin's Law"). But here we have: (1) a system set up to allow torture on certain specific individual detainees, (2) specifying standardized equipment for the torture (apparently down to the exact length of the club to be used), along with physician participation to ensure survival of the victim for the more several applications, (3) requiring prior approval of the use of torture from the central authorities in the justice department and intelligence agency in the capital, so as to ensure that (6) the local field officers actually carrying out the abuse are immune from prosecution. About the only significant difference between the OLC memos released last week and this one is that, remarkably, the above categorically states that non-German citizens should "never" be subject to such abuses (question 1), and that torture that exceeds the limits shall result in investigation for criminal prosecution (question 6(b)).

Of course, putting Godwin's Law to one side, the most enduring principle that our global civilization has extracted from the tragedy of the Third Reich is the notion that we must never allow such things to happen again. It's quite difficult to see how we will ever be true to that principle without insisting on personal accountability to the law on the part of those who authorized and carried out torture in our names. We can write as many statutes and sign as many treaties as we want banning torture, but, as the last eight years have shown, when officials feel that there is no chance that their own freedom will ever be in jeopardy from future criminal prosecutions for violating those laws, they will show no compunction in carrying out abuses at the direction of their superiors.

--April 21, 2009




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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #20 on: 2009-04-29 04:55:21 »
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Court Reins in ‘State Secrets’ Privilege

[ Hermit : If not reversed on appeal, definitely one in the face for the fascists skulking in the Obama Administration. ]

Source: Inter Press Service
Source: William Fisher
Source: 2009-04-29

In what may become a landmark decision, a federal appeals court ruled Monday that the "state secrets privilege" – routinely used by the government to block lawsuits against its officials – can only be used to contest specific evidence, but not to dismiss an entire suit.

The ruling, which was hailed by human rights advocates, came in connection with a lawsuit against a company known as Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the government’s "extraordinary rendition" program during the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The suit charges that Jeppesen knowingly participated in the rendition program by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to forcibly "disappear" five men to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture.

Jeppesen is a subsidiary of aerospace giant Boeing. The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

During the Bush administration, the government intervened when the case first came before a lower court in 2007, successfully asserting the "state secrets" privilege to have the case thrown out in February 2008. On appeal, the administration of President Barack Obama followed the same road as its predecessor. On Monday, the appeals court reversed that decision.

But lawyers for the men who brought the case also sounded a note of caution. "This historic decision marks the beginning, not the end, of this litigation," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, who argued the case for the plaintiffs.

"Our clients, who are among the hundreds of victims of torture under the Bush administration, have waited for years just to get a foot in the courthouse door. Now, at long last, they will have their day in court," he said.

The three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the government could take steps to protect national secrets as the case proceeded. The suit should be dismissed only if secret information is essential for the plaintiffs to prove their case.

"According to the government’s theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law," Judge Michael Hawkins said.

Allowing the government to shield its conduct from court review simply because classified information is involved "would … perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of judicial process," Hawkins said.

The court did not address the plaintiffs’ claims that they were kidnapped and tortured, but said judges have an important role to play in reviewing allegations of secret government conduct that violates individual liberties.

"As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a ‘gross and notorious … act of despotism,’" Hawkins said, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision.

"The extraordinary rendition program is well known throughout the world," noted Steven Watt, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. "The only place it hasn’t been discussed is where it most cries out for examination – in a U.S. court of law."

He told IPS that he had spoken with one of the plaintiffs, Bisher al-Rawi, who was released from Guantánamo last year without ever having been charged with a crime. Al-Rawi, now back in Britain, told Watt, "It’s like winning the lottery."

Monday’s appeals court ruling means that the government can assert the "state secrets" privilege for any specific piece of evidence, but not to end a case before it begins.

That means that the privilege is primarily an evidentiary privilege, a definition civil libertarians have long sought. The State Secrets Protection Act, now pending in Congress, would turn that definition into law.


The case was brought on behalf of five men who were allegedly kidnapped by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.

Al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen and long-term British permanent resident, was kidnapped and later secretly flown by the CIA to Kabul, Afghanistan. He was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured at two separate CIA facilities in Afghanistan, before being transferred to the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was imprisoned there for more than four years until his release on March 30, 2007. He returned to his home in London, where he currently resides freely. No charges were ever brought against him.

Ethiopian citizen Binyam Mohamed was stripped, blindfolded, shackled, dressed in a tracksuit, strapped to the seat of a plane, and flown to Morocco, where he was secretly detained for 18 months and interrogated and tortured by Moroccan intelligence services.

Then he was once again blindfolded, stripped, and shackled by CIA agents and flown to a secret U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, where he was again tortured and eventually transferred to another facility and then to the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo. He was released without charge in February and is currently suing the British government for being complicit with the CIA in his rendition.

Abou Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, was handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped, dressed in a diaper, chained, and flown by the CIA from Pakistan to Morocco, where he was tortured by Moroccan intelligence agents.

In December 2001, Egyptian citizen Ahmed Agiza was chained, shackled, and drugged by the CIA and flown from Sweden to Egypt, where he was severely abused and tortured and where he still remains imprisoned.

In October 2003, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah was taken into custody by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department and tortured and interrogated. In October 2003, he was turned over to CIA agents who beat, kicked, diapered, hooded, and handcuffed him before secretly transporting him to the U.S. Air Force base at Bagram, Afghanistan. He was freed in March 2006, having never faced any charges related to terrorism.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British legal charity Reprieve, which represents Binyam Mohamed in his British suit, told IPS, "This is a tremendous step forward in the battle to stop corporations making money off the rendition, torture, and suffering of the prisoners we represent."

"Binyam Mohamed, and perhaps many others, are one step closer to making the CEOs of these companies stop and think before they commit criminal acts for profit," he said.

The Obama administration now has three options. It can do nothing, which will mean the case will finally go before a U.S. court. It can ask the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case. Or it can appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

If the case goes to trial, the government can still argue that disclosing anything about Jeppesen’s relationship with the United States government would jeopardize national security secrets. But now it can no longer simply "assert" that privilege; it will have to convince a judge by arguing the point in court.
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #21 on: 2009-05-14 04:05:20 »
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Generals Pressed Obama to Block Photo Release

Is President's Reverse Meant to Avoid Bad Press During Egypt Visit?

Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2009-05-13

President Obama’s sudden reversal of the Pentagon’s decision to release photos of detainee abuse came, it has been reported, after several top generals including Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno cautioned that they believed [ Hermit : Believe: To accept something as true despite the lack of evidence for that acceptance, or the existence of evidence contradicting such acceptance ] the release would cost American lives.

The President’s explanation during today’s press conference was certainly perplexing. He simultaneously argued that the photos didn’t contain anything “particularly sensational” and that releasing them would “further inflame anti-American opinion.” The ACLU has condemned the move, saying it was “profoundly inconsistent with the promise of transparency that President Obama has made time after time.”

The timing of the release may have as much to do with his decision as any serious concerns about the troops. The Pentagon release was due on May 28, while President Obama intends to deliver a high profile talk in Egypt only a week later, on June 4. The release of yet more photos detailing the abuse of prisoners by US forces would likely cast an uncomfortable shadow on the Obama talk.
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #22 on: 2009-05-14 12:16:11 »
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #23 on: 2009-05-14 13:11:15 »
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Quote from: MoEnzyme on 2009-05-14 12:16:11   
Given that assumption, can those of us who recognize that give the man enough of a break to say that he's not failing dismally? I know its a modest recognition, but not insignificant.

IMO,


[Blunderov] I'm inclined to agree. He obviously has to be careful to pick his battles judiciously. The wingnuts are looking to decrease his political capital by any means possible, fair or foul and moonbats like me are exasperated by the apparent lack of significant progress. He does seem to be prepared to let nature take it's course with regard to the torture issue and he is showing very hopeful signs of reigning in the despicable Zionist unregime. Liebermann's speech in Egypt was positively docile - I think there is some pressure there.

"Softly, softly catchee monkey" ? Here's hoping.

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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #24 on: 2009-05-14 20:03:12 »
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That said, the hundred days are passed and the administration is more embedded in war than it was in January, Troops are looking more impacted in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq than they were in January, The Department of Injustice continues to advocate policies more rabid even than Bush. Key Democrats in the house have been shown up as liars and Harmon as a possible overt Israeli asset, all to no comment from a Whitehouse. Bankers have proved that they totally own the new US government as thoroughly as they owned the old, though perhaps for rather more money, as well as the previously and currently owned media. The Whitehouse just finished threatening British courts that if they publish torture allegations that the US will reconsider sharing "intelligence."

So from our perspective the Obama administration and Democratic House has so far appeared to be much longer on words than on form - though I grant that anything is an improvement - however slight - on the previous unregime.

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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #25 on: 2009-05-15 02:53:38 »
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U.S. Again Warns Britain on Detainee Memo

[ Hermit : As I was saying ]

Source: New York Times
Authors: John F Burns (Author, London), Eric Schmitt (Reporting, Washington), Raymond Bonner (Reporting,St. Andrews, Scotland)
Dated: 2009-05-14 page A10 of the 2009-05-15 New York edition

Renewing a warning given to Britain while President George W. Bush was in office, the Obama administration has threatened to curb the exchange of intelligence information between the countries if a British court makes public the details of the interrogation techniques used against a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who claims he was tortured.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, a former Guantánamo detainee, is now living in Britain.

In a letter forwarded to the High Court in London by British government lawyers this month, the Obama administration said the flow of information could be affected if the court made public a summary prepared by the Bush administration for Britain’s Foreign Office on the treatment of the former detainee, Binyam Mohamed. Mr. Mohamed, 30, a citizen of Ethiopia who was arrested as a suspected terrorist in Pakistan in 2002, was released from Guantánamo and flown to Britain three months ago.

Lawyers acting on his behalf confirmed that a letter containing the Obama administration’s warning was submitted by the British government to the court hearing a petition by a group of news organizations, including The New York Times, that are seeking the release of the Bush administration memo.

The renewed threat of curbs on intelligence cooperation was first reported by news agencies covering the British court case last week, and quotations from the Obama administration letter appeared in The Washington Times on Tuesday.

Although the Obama administration has criticized the harsh interrogation methods approved during the Bush years and has vowed to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the White House has declined to take certain tough actions demanded by critics of the previous administration’s stances.

On Thursday, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, George Little, said that the issue would not cause a breach in American-British relations, “including on matters related to counterterrorism.”

Lawyers involved in the court case are bound by a court order not to disclose the contents of crucial documents, including the letter threatening curbs on intelligence cooperation, at least until the judges decide whether to order the publication of the summary of Mr. Mohamed’s treatment. That decision is expected within weeks. But the lawyers confirmed the accuracy of the quotations from the letter that appeared in The Washington Times.

The letter warned that if the British government “is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in the future.”

The letter also said the “seven paragraphs at issue are based upon classified information shared between our countries,” and that “public disclosure of this information reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the United Kingdom’s national security” if the United States withheld intelligence information in the future.

Under pressure from the British government, Mr. Mohamed was flown to Britain in February after terrorist charges against him at Guantánamo were abandoned. The charges were dropped after American officials acknowledged that some of the evidence against him was obtained during the questioning of Abu Zubaydah, a senior figure in Al Qaeda who was subjected to waterboarding — simulated drowning. [ Hermit : Acknowledged by all sane people - and even the New York Times when performed on Americans by other countries - as torture. ]

Britain sought Mr. Mohamed’s his return to Britain on the grounds that he gained the temporary right of asylum here in the mid-1990s. He was released from custody hours after arriving in Britain. He has claimed that he was tortured during the seven years he was moved by the United States to prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan before he was taken to Guantánamo.

He has said that interrogators in Morocco tortured him by using razor blades to score his genitals and chest. He has denied American claims that he attended a Qaeda-run terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration was dealt a setback in another case involving Mr. Mohamed last month when a federal appeals court ruled that a civil lawsuit brought by him and four other men who say they were tortured could proceed. The Bush administration had intervened in the suit against an American aircraft services company that was contracted to assist in the transfer of detainees, asking a judge to throw out the case because its subject matter was a state secret.

The Obama administration pressed forward with its predecessor’s stance. [ Hermit : In fact, as we have seen previously in this thread, the Obama administration increased the claims to state secrecy in comparison to that of the Bush unregime. ]   The court said the government could ask judges to conduct a case-by-case review of what documents to disclose.
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #26 on: 2009-05-16 07:49:04 »
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Obama's Military Tribunals

Another Friday, another bow to Bush's antiterror legacy.

[ Hermit : Isn't it fun when conservative journals can note that Obama is now endorsing Bush's policies. And even more fun when Democrats profess themselves incapable of noticing that there might be a bit of hypocrisy involved in this? ]

Source: The Wall Street Journal, page A10
Authors: Not Credited
Dated: 2009-05-16

President Obama's endorsements of Bush-Cheney antiterror policies are by now routine: for example, opposing the release of prisoner abuse photographs and support for indefinite detention for some detainees, and that's just this week. More remarkable is White House creativity in portraying these U-turns as epic change. Witness yesterday's announcement endorsing military commissions.

White House officials insist that their tribunals will be kinder and gentler, stressing additional due-process safeguards for terrorists on trial for war crimes. But the debate that has convulsed the political system since 9/11 isn't about procedural nuances. It has been over core principles, with Democrats decrying a "shadow justice system" and claiming that "Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

The latter quote is from a speech by Senator Obama in 2007 denouncing "a legal framework that does not work." He also referred to the civilian criminal justice system and courts martial that Democrats then claimed, and many still claim, are the right venues for antiterror prosecutions. After the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision gave terrorists habeas rights, Mr. Obama again laid into the Bush Administration's "legal black hole" and "dangerously flawed legal approach," which "undermines the very values we are fighting to defend."

At least some people in the White House must now be embarrassed by their boss's switcheroo, though you can't tell from Friday's declaration. Part of the tribunal face-lift is that "the accused will have greater latitude in selecting their counsel." Say what? Enemy combatants already have better access to attorneys -- white shoe and pro bono, no less -- than nearly every criminal defendant in America. Perhaps this means Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 90 Yemenis and the rest will now be able to choose lawyers from both Shearman & Sterling and Covington & Burling, instead of one or the other.

Another red herring is supposedly tightening the admissibility of hearsay evidence. Tribunal judges already have discretion to limit such evidence, and the current rules are nearly indistinguishable from those of the International Criminal Court. The sensible exceptions involve evidence obtained under combat conditions or from foreign intelligence services, which are left untouched by Mr. Obama's nips and tucks.

In any event, Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney -- and which, contrary to the narrative that Democrats promulgated for years, will be the fairest and most open war-crimes trials in U.S. history. Meanwhile, friends should keep certain newspaper editors away from sharp objects. Their champion has repudiated them once again. [ Hermit : Perhaps Senator Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats is now counterbalanced by President Obama's defection to the Republicans. ]
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #27 on: 2009-05-18 12:33:16 »
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[letheomaniac] Take the Nuremberg defense, add a little hypocricy and spin thoroughly. Garnish with war crimes... 

Source: http://www.counterpunch.com
Author: Mike Whitney
Dated: 15/5/2009

From My Lai to Bala Baluk

Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Barack Obama is aggressively stepping up the war in Afghanistan. He's intensified the cross-border bombing of Pakistan and he is doubling the number of U.S. troops to 68,000 by 2010. He's also a strong proponent of pilotless drones even though hundreds of civilians have been killed in bombing raid blunders.

On May 4, 2009, 143 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Bala Baluk, a remote area south of Herat. Obama brushed off the incident with terse apology never intimating that the US policy for aerial bombardment would be reviewed to avoid future mishaps. Patrick Cockburn gave a summary of the incident:

    I did not meet survivors but I did talk to a reliable witness, a radio reporter called Farooq Faizy, who had gone to Bala Baluk soon after the attack happened. He (had) some 70 or 80 photographs and they bore out the villagers' story: there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.

US military spokesmen denied the news reports and concocted a wacky story about Taliban militants rampaging through the village hurling grenades into buildings. It was a ridiculous narrative that no one believed. The facts have since been verified by senior government officials, high-ranking members of the Afghan military and representatives of the Red Cross. The United States military killed 143 unarmed villagers and then they tried to cover it up with a lie. None of the victims were fighters. After the bombing, the villagers loaded body parts onto carts and took them to the office of the regional governor who confirmed the deaths. The photos of grief-stricken Afghans burying their dead have been widely circulated on the Internet.

From Reuters:

    Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies.

    The list, obtained by Reuters, bears the endorsement of seven senior provincial and central government officials, including an Afghan two-star general who headed a task force dispatched by the government to investigate the incident.

    Titled "list of the martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province", it includes the name, age and father's name of each alleged victim.

    The youngest was listed as 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, son of Sayed Adam. Fifty-three victims were girls under the age of 18, and 40 were boys. Only 22 were men 18 or older. ("List of 140 Afghan Killed In US Attack Includes 93 Children", Reuters)

Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration has acknowledged that 93 children were killed by American bombs. [letheomaniac] FAIL.

Military operations in Afghanistan have increased under Obama especially in the south where the Taliban are most heavily concentrated. The fighting has spread into Pakistan where President Asif Ali Zardari has been pressured into deploying his troops the Swat Valley to fight militants despite growing public disapproval. Nearly 850,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last few weeks to seek shelter in the south. For the most part, the humanitarian crisis has gone unreported in the western media, but Obama knows what is going on and is sticking with the same policy. Hundreds of thousands of people are now living in tent cities without food or clean water because of the escalation in the violence. It's a disaster.

OBAMA PICKS A GENERAL: Enter the assassination squads

This week, General David McKiernan was replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. Here's how the Washington Post summarized McChrystal's qualifications for the job:

    "McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer....

    Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting. As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.("High-value-target hunter takes on Afghan war" Washington Post)

Obama chose McChrystal because of his "black ops" pedigree, which suggests that the conflict in Afghanistan is about to take a very ugly turn. According to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, McChrystal ran the "executive assassination wing" of the military's joint special-operations command. (JSOC) The experts believe that he will breeze through congressional confirmation hearings because many Senators believe that his counterinsurgency theories helped the surge in Iraq to succeed. There's some truth to this, too. But it would be more accurate to say that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad helped to reduce the violence. That is the truth about the surge; it's a public relations moniker for ethnic cleansing.

McChrystal's appointment suggests that Obama supports the idea that hunter-killer units and targeted assassinations are an acceptable means of achieving US foreign policy objectives. Obama supporters should pay close attention; this is a continuation of the Rumsfeld policy with one slight difference, a more persuasive and charismatic pitchman promoting the policy. Other than that, there's no difference.

Obama knows of McChrystal's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Camp Nama, just as he knows of his role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. None of this matters to Obama. What matters is winning; not principle, ideals, human rights or civilian casualties. Just winning.

FROM MY LAI TO BALA BALUK

On March 16, 1968, the US military was involved in a similar incident which soured the public on Vietnam and eventually helped bring the war to a close. Barack Obama was only seven years old when Charlie Company--led by platoon leader second Lieutenant William Calley--entered the small hamlet of My Lai and proceeded to slaughter 347 unarmed civilians. This is Sam Harris's account of what took place on that day 40 years ago:

    "Early in the morning the soldiers were landed in the village by helicopter. Many were firing as they spread out, killing both people and animals. There was no sign of the Vietcong battalion and no shot was fired on Charlie Company all day, but they carried on. They burnt down every house. They raped woman and girls and then killed them. They stabbed some women in the vagina and disemboweled others, or cut off their hands or scalps. Pregnant woman had there stomachs slashed open and were left to die. There were gang rapes and killings by shooting or with bayonets. There were mass executions. Dozens of people at a time, including old men, women and children, were machined-gunned in a ditch. In four hours nearly 500 villagers were killed." (Sam Harris from his book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason")

The only difference between My Lai and Bala Baluk is the degree of savagery. In both cases the guilt can be traced directly back to the White House.

Obama believes that civilian casualties are an unavoidable part of achieving one's policy goals. The end justifies the means. He has strengthened the Bush policy, not repudiated it. So much for "change".
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #28 on: 2009-05-21 19:26:16 »
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Obama administration sides with Bush officials against outed CIA agent

Source: Raw Story
Authors: John Byrne
Dated: 2009-05-21

The Obama administration has decided to oppose the reinstatement of a civil lawsuit filed by outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

The move represents the first public position by the administration on the issue. Obama’s position mirrors that of President George W. Bush, whose aides found themselves in the cross-fire after the agent, Plame Wilson, was outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak.


A Washington, D.C. district court dismissed the suit — Wilson v. Libby et al. — which posited that key Bush and Cheney officials violated the constitutional rights of Plame and her husband, a former ambassador. Those sued included former Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage for their gross violations of the Wilsons’ constitutional rights, as well as “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the case.

Obama’s Justice Department says the Wilsons have no legitimate claim to sue. They also put forward another startling claim.

“The Obama administration has gone one step further, suggesting Mr. Wilson failed to provide any evidence that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby harmed him,” Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility reported on their blog Wednesday. “This is particularly ironic because the government had moved to have the case dismissed before the Wilsons had the opportunity to uncover the details of how Ms. Wilson’s covert identity was revealed.

In a statement, the group’s director said they were “deeply disappointed.”

“We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson,” CREW chief Melanie Sloan said. “The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions.”
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Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #29 on: 2009-05-22 16:16:21 »
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