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Monday, February 4, 2008 |
New court could try 6 terror suspects at once
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- On the eve of the resumption of its war crimes trials, the military on Sunday unveiled a new state-of-the-art court capable of trying six alleged terrorists simultaneously -- and silencing them from the outside world, if they try to spill state secrets.
The military offered a comprehensive look at its new court, part of a $12 million razor-wire-ringed legal complex that arrived by cargo plane and barge in prefabricated parts. Unlike a more ambitious plan to build a $125 million compound on the site overlooking Guantánamo Bay, the new compound can be dismantled and shipped back stateside once trials are done.
''We got it up in six months at a fraction of the cost,'' said Army Col. Wendy Kelly, director of operations at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions.
Architecturally, the bunker style building is a bland structure impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping.
Inside it has an up-to 20-seat jury box for the U.S. military officers who will be assembled from around the world, case by case, to sit in judgment; typical judges and prosecution tables, plus a bank of defense tables where six captives can sit at computers on faux leather chairs, unshackled but guarded by soldiers.
It also has a 30-seat adjacent room, behind a tempered-glass window, where observers can hear the proceedings on a broadcast basis -- and a kill-switch where a security officer or the judge can cut the sound in case someone divulges a state secret.
There is no black-out capacity or curtain, meaning the media, legal observers, dignitaries and family members who might attend a trial could watch but not listen.
Such measures could be necessary if the Pentagon presses ahead with plans to try alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed or any of the other 14 high-value detainees who arrived at this base in September 2006 from three-plus years of secret CIA custody.
The agency has classified the interrogation techniques it used on the men -- in secret sites, somewhere overseas -- as national security secrets. Were one to blurt out his treatment at trial, the judge or security officer could simply stifle their voices.
Kelly, a reservist called up to duty from work as a federal prosecutor, declared the court better than those she uses in civilian life in Philadelphia. ''When I got a chance, I built a better courtroom,'' she said.
It is inside razor wire along with five separate windowless cells where lawyers can meet clients who could some day include the alleged architects of the 9/11 attacks, the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in Aden, Yemen, and other suspected senior al Qaeda leaders.
First, however, lawyers return to the old court to argue, again, for dismissal of terror charges against Guantánamo's youngest detainee, Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan.
Khadr's Pentagon-appointed attorneys argue before an Army judge Monday that all war crimes charges should be dismissed against the Canadian man, now 21.
He is charged in the grenade killing of a U.S. Army medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., who was part of a Special Forces unit that attacked a suspected al Qaeda compound in Khost, Afghanistan, in July 2002.
Khadr is from a fundamentalist Muslim family, which sometimes celebrated Muslim feasts with the bin Ladens in Afghanistan, and he is also accused of conspiring with and supporting al Qaeda, attempted murder of other members of Speer's unit and spying by scouting on U.S. forces. Conviction could carry life in prison because, in consideration of his youth, the Pentagon waived an option to seek the death penalty.
Khadr's lawyers claim he should have been treated as a ''child soldier,'' not equally responsible to an adult, in part because he was 15 at the time of his capture.
''If jurisdiction is exercised over Mr. Khadr, the military judge will be the first in Western history to preside over the trial of alleged war crimes committed by a child,'' Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler wrote in a 15-page motion.
Moreover, Kuebler argued that the United States failed his client -- who has grown into beefy, bearded adulthood behind the razor wire here at Camp Delta.
But the chief prosecutor, Army Col. Larry Morris, disputes the defense characterization of the captive as a child soldier -- saying Khadr did not meet the definition under international law.
''The conventions on child soldiers establish the minimum age for conscripting soldiers,'' he said in a statement, adding, ``They do not provide amnesty for war crime activities on the battlefield.''
Unclear Sunday was whether Khadr would show up for the hearing Monday morning.
Khadr arrived at this remote prison camp at age 16, saw his first attorneys two years later and has periodically fired the lawyers who have volunteered to work on his case.
He has spent long portions of detention in special segregation for war-court candidates but more recently was moved to a POW-style compound where about 60 of the 275 or so detainees live in communal bunkhouses.
© 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
12:18:01 PM 
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US Company Seeks Permit to Import Nuclear Waste. WASHINGTON, DC - Bart Gordon, the Tennessee Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Science and Technology, does not want the United States to receive low-level radioactive waste from Italy, process it in Tennessee and dispose of it in a Utah waste site.
He says acceptance of the waste would put the U.S. on a path [...] [CommonDreams.org » Headlines07]
11:28:43 AM
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Rice Was ‘Uninterested In Advising The President’ Before 9/11, Wanted To Be His ‘Closest Confidante’.  Tomorrow, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon will release his book <a href="The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation">The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, revealing “failure at the highest levels of the United States government.”
Shenon singles out Condoleezza Rice as inept, more interested in being President Bush’s buddy than securing the nation. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas writes a preview of the book:
The official ineptitude uncovered by the commission is shocking. Dubbed “Kinda-Lies-a-Lot” by the Jersey Girls, Ms. Rice comes across as almost clueless about the terrorist threat. “Whatever her job title, Rice seemed uninterested in actually advising the president,” Mr. Shenon writes. “Instead, she wanted to be his closest confidante — specifically on foreign policy — and to simply translate his words into action.”
An example of this incompetence is the fact that on July 10, 2001 — two months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks — then-CIA director George Tenet met with Rice and warned her about a threat from al Qaeda that “literally made [his] hair stand on end.” Rice was polite, but gave them the “brushoff.”
The 9/11 commission, however, heard about this meeting only after it completed its report. Shenon reveals that commission executive director Philip Zelikow, a close friend of Rice, stopped staffers from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance prior to 9/11 as “amount[ing] to incompetence.”
Another particularly bumbling figure in Shenon’s book is John Ashcroft. On July 17, 2001, the then-Attorney General “received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target.” While Rice was interested in cozying up to Bush, Ashcroft was focused on protecting gun owners:
Attorney General John Ashcroft appears more interested in protecting gun owners from government intrusion than in stopping terrorism, and dismissively tells [acting FBI director Thomas] Pickard that he doesn’t want to hear any more about threats of attacks.
UPDATE: According to Shenon, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was intent on placing blame on the Clinton administration. When Ashcroft “unveiled a memo that seemed to cast the antiterror record of the Clinton Justice Department in an unflattering light, Gonzales and his aides high-fived each other.”
[Think Progress]
11:23:55 AM
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Sex workers get ‘more business’ at GOP conventions.. This summer’s political conventions are expected to be “a boom in business” for “the sex and adult entertainment industries,” but according to one veteran sex worker who spoke to the Rocky Mountain News, the GOP conventions are “a lot better for the sex workers.” “We get a lot more business,” Carol Leigh told the paper. “I don’t know if they’re just frustrated because of the family values agenda.”
[Think Progress]
11:14:31 AM
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Chris Durang: Obama, Smart and Prescient -- Full Text of His Speech Against Invading Iraq.
Good morning. How are you today?
I'm aware Super Tuesday is tomorrow, and I wanted to do something else to convince more people to vote for Barack Obama.
In my last post, I quoted part of the speech Obama gave opposed to invading Iraq. He gave it on October 2, 2002 in Chicago. (Unless he gave it on October 26, both dates come up when I search.)
October 2nd is when Congress voted to pass the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002." Hillary Clinton voted for that, and at the same time she voted against the Levin amendment which would have required Bush to come back to the Congress a second time, after he went to make his case to the United Nations, before he would have the authorization to use military force.
Bush and Cheney (and Rove and minions of the right) all claimed that that was intolerable, because then the U.N. would have veto power over our foreign policy.
Hillary says the same thing now to defend her vote against that amendment. Baloney.
It doesn't mean that at all. It means, watch out -- we're giving Bush a blank check to do what he wants militarily, let's put the brakes on, make him come back and discuss it before he takes that final step to war. Oh, and there's also that "Congress has the right to declare war" thing in the constitution too.
Bill Clinton a while ago claimed he was "always" against the invasion of Iraq, a ludicrous statement and not true. If he was, he kept quiet about it. (I'm finding the Clintons very annoying. Months ago, I thought it was a plus Bill would be around Hillary's presidency. Now I have much more mixed feelings about it.)
In any case, there were others who did speak out against the invasion at the time of that unfortunate (maybe cowardly, maybe confused) vote of the Congress. Al Gore was one, and gave a stirring and strong speech against the invasion. And so did Barack Obama.
I hadn't seen the full text of the speech until I received it in an email from playwright John Guare this morning. (I'm name dropping, but thought it was interesting how I got it.)
In any case here's the full text of the speech printed below. He really hits every point correctly, while Hillary and so many others were busy saying to George W. Bush, "go do whatever you want, you've succeeded in frightening the American public, so we can't risk getting the public mad at us and thinking we're weak, so go to it, Dubya!" (And if they weren't scared of the public, or positioning themselves not to be "weak on terrorism," then they were in agreement -- and unwise.)
Obama's speech (October, 2002):
Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been
billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not
opposed to war in all circumstances.
The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only
through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we
could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from
our soil. I don't oppose all wars.
My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was
bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the
fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first
entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger
freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and
he did not fight in vain.
I don't oppose all wars.
After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the
dust and the tears, I supported this Administration's pledge to hunt
down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of
intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a
tragedy from happening again.
I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is
no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a
dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is
the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other
arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own
ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives
lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to
distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a
drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a
stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great
Depression.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on
reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is
a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to
secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted
UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and
coveted nuclear capacity.
He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off
without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the
United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in
shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and
that in concert with the international community he can be contained
until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin
of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US
occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with
undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a
clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan
the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than
best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of
al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our
children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a
fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting
down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland
security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the UN
inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a
non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies
like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear
material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the
terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms
merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage
across the globe.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called
allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing
their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and
inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up
without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits
of terrorist cells.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off
Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the
interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that
we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance.
Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.
The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may
have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our
freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not - we will not -
travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who
would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full
measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in
vain.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:54:20 AM
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David Wallechinsky: Super Tuesday: The Illusion of Democracy.
I have voted in every presidential primary since 1972, but because I live in California, my vote has never counted. By the time Californians got to vote, the candidate for each party had already been selected by voters in other states. When California moved up its primary to become part of so-called "Super Tuesday," it looked like my vote would finally count.
Prior to the Iowa caucuses that kicked off the 2008 election season, washingtonpost.com provided a 25-question feature, "Choose Your Candidate," that allowed you to match your own views on issues with those of the views of the candidates, as submitted by their campaigns, without having the candidates' names attached to their positions. I never finished the Republican questionnaire because the Republican candidates seemed to be aggressively competing to attract voters from among the 33% of Americans who think President Bush is doing a good job. I am not one of those people.
The Democratic questionnaire included answers submitted by the campaigns of 6 of the 8 Democratic candidates (Kucinich and Gravel did not respond). I answered as many of the questions as I deemed relevant and then, extremely curious, I clicked through to see with which candidates I was ideologically most aligned. Here are my results:
Joe Biden 16
Bill Richardson 16
Chris Dodd 15
John Edwards 2
Hillary Clinton 0
Barack Obama 0
Like a good citizen, I began reading more about the ideas and positions of Biden, Richardson and Dodd. I needn't have bothered because, by the time I did get to vote, all three of my candidates of interest had dropped out, as had, for that matter, John Edwards. I was left with a choice between my two zeros.
Supporters of Clinton and Obama will tell you that their candidates rose to the top because they were more electable than the other Democratic candidates. This is not true. What counts in terms of electability is not how the Democratic candidates match up against each other, but how they would match up one-on-one with the Republican candidate, presumably John McCain. You cannot convince me that Hillary Clinton would have an easier time defeating McCain than would, say, Chris Dodd. Another alleged factor of importance is experience. You cannot convince me that Barack Obama, a first-term U.S. Senator, is more qualified to be president of the United States than Bill Richardson, who served in Congress for 14 years, served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and as Secretary of Energy and is currently the governor of New Mexico.
Clinton and Obama advanced not because of their positions on issues or because of their qualifications, but because they were successfully marketed as celebrities, and because, early on, they attracted major financial contributions from large law firms, securities and investment firms and from the real estate industry.
The media, television in particular, played a major role in winnowing down the candidates to two Democrats and two Republicans not so much because they cared about the individual candidates, but because one-on-one contests attract better ratings than confusing multi-candidate races. To continue the sports analogy implied by the name "Super Tuesday," the day's primaries and caucuses are being pitched to us like conference championships: the winner of the Clinton-Obama game will play the winner of the McCain-Romney game in the National Championship.
I will vote in the primary, even though all of the candidates I liked are already gone, but I will do so with disappointment, knowing that, like the voters in more than 40 states, I never got a chance to vote for the candidates with whom I most agreed.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:52:09 AM
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Omid Memarian: Record-Breaking Administration: 935 False Statements in Two Years.
Mainstream media should pay closer attention to the report published by The Center For Public Integrity that states, "The Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003." The report questions the source of the disseminated misinformation, and more importantly, highlights the consequences of subsequent incidents:
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
During the last five years there have been many journalists, activists and former officials, who have been consistently warning us about unreliable statements and lies about Iraq and other national security issues, made by top ranking officials. We are conditioned to accept what "a high ranking official" says as gospel, in spite of these precautions, without questioning the reliability of the sources, and continue to believe erroneous statements we hear and read in newspapers, radio, and TV channels.
Despite the difficulty in finding the truth in minefields of lies and fabrications, maintaining integrity and remaining objective is now more vital than ever, especially for journalists. There are grave consequences for a society when a faction of mainstream media becomes part of an administration's propaganda machine and leads a nation astray; conversely, fighting for truth and maintaining journalistic integrity has its price as well, as in the case of Phil Donahue whose show was canceled when he openly opposed the attacking Iraq on his program, or Jeff Cohen who lost his job for taking a stance against the war in Iraq. Regardless, if we as journalists cannot catch and take stance against over 395 lies, who can?
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:48:48 AM
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Russell Shaw: Don't Dislike Obama-Endorsing Maria Shriver Just Because She's Married To Arnold.
Over the weekend, I tuned in to the Barack Obama rally at Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus.
Among the speakers: California's First Lady, Maria Shriver. Accompanying her cousin Caroline Kennedy as well as Oprah Winfrey, Shriver announced her support for Sen. Obama.
Watching the crowd, I noticed that while most attendees enthusiastically applauded Maria's endorsement-delivering speech, at least a few women in attendance chose not to emote at all.
I realize that I'm at a disadvantage because I wasn't there. But still, if my observations were and are correct, I have to think the lack of unanimous acclamation for Maria Shriver was driven in part by the fact that her husband happens to be California's Republican Governor, the McCain-endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Among the progressive California women voters I know, what I have just described is not a unique sentiment.
To be sure, some of these voters admire Maria Shriver for being "her own woman." Others, including some with that sentiment, also feel that a loving marriage is quite possible across political divides.
But I have to tell you. Those who seem to have sat on their hands when Maria spoke yesterday remind me of some women I know who think that any true progressive female dare not marry a Republican. Especially one with the public persona of Arnold.
In this type of thinking, any accomodation of that type is surrender to the enemy.
Going along with that line of thinking, there's the argument that any progressive that falls in love with someone from the enemy camp should at best be pitied.
Well, I have something to say to those progressive, Obama-loving women at yesterday's rally.
You have the perfect right to sit on your hands when wives of Republicans speak. But if your blood is so boiling with "us against them" that you cannot embrace Maria Shriver's honest intent, then please understand that your attitude is unrepresentative of the uniting force Barack Obama hopes to before this nation.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:40:24 AM
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The Best Excuses For Calling In Sick. Did you hear the one about the woman who couldn't go to work because her chickens' feet were frozen to the driveway? It's not a joke -- it's an actual excuse given to a boss.
Gone are the days when an employee called in sick and coughed a little to make the story believable. Today, workers give a variety of excuses when they stay home from the office. And they're doing it a lot.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:35:02 AM
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Republicans have become the credibility-free party. Substantial attention has been paid to the historic unpopularity of the Bush presidency, but relatively little attention has been paid to the accompanying collapse of the Republican Party's credibility. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle every issue of any significance, including -- by a now fairly wide margin -- "the U.S. campaign against terrorism":
 From a purely political perspective, one would expect that Democrats would seek to highlight contrasts with such an unpopular and discredited party, not to emulate and capitulate to it. Republicans are distrusted across the board, and thus -- as the 2006 election demonstrated (in which Karl Rove made Terrorism-exploitation the campaign's centerpiece) -- the GOP's standard fear-mongering tactics and accusatory attacks are plainly impotent, even counter-productive. Americans continue to turn against anything the Republicans touch. The most vivid example of that is public opinion on the Iraq War. Even with the press corps and Beltway elite insisting by consensus that the Glorious Surge has made everything so much better in Iraq -- we're finally winning! -- and even as we were endlessly told that the war was only unpopular because we were losing, Americans hate the Iraq War more than ever before. The poll asked: All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat? The results: only 34% believe it was worth fighting, a record low. A resounding 65% believe it was not worth fighting, and 53% believe that "strongly" -- both one point away from the record high. It simply doesn't matter how well things are going in Iraq: the vast (and still increasing) preponderance of Americans have concluded that the war was a stupid, wasteful thing to do and they will not change their minds, no matter how much happy news springs forth. GOP propaganda and Terrorism-exploitation now affect nothing. Unsurprisingly, even as Congress has low approval ratings, it is Republicans in Congress who bear the brunt of that unpopularity, while Democrats in Congress remain marginally more popular:
 But this is where the real lesson is to be found. The approval rating for Democrats in Congress has plummeted steadily since the American electorate gave them control of Congress in early 2007. Early on, ratings for Congressional Democrats were consistently near 50% as Americans had high hopes for their willingness to change the course of the country and place real limits on the deeply unpopular Republican policies. But as Congressional Democrats became more and more characterized by capitulation and an unwillingness to stand up to Republicans, their approval numbers steadily dropped to its current mark, just one point away from their lowest approval rating of the last 14 months. The more willing Democrats are to stand up to Republicans and oppose their defining policies, the more popular they become. The less willing they are to do so, the more eager they are to erase distinctions and accommodate this deeply unpopular party, the more unpopular Democrats become. The empirical evidence for those propositions is close to indisputable. The profound rejection by the country of the Republican Party permits only one lesson: the country wants a party that opposes them, not resembles or fears them. The Senate begins debate today on the various amendments to the FISA bill at 2:15 p.m. (I'll be on a plane when that happens, but FireDogLake and others will live-blog the proceedings). Impervious to these lessons, there will almost certainly be more than enough Senate Democrats eagerly lined up to ensure the failure of any amendments which Dick Cheney dislikes and which would trigger a veto. Those are Democrats who either believe in those policies or who are hopelessly stuck in 2002 and refuse to accept political reality. But once the Senate votes for a bill containing telecom amnesty and the vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers demanded by the President, the battle will turn to the House, which ought to apply the lessons which become increasingly clear by looking at American public opinion. Merits aside, Americans want more than anything else to see someone -- anyone -- willing to chart a different course than the one we have been on for the last seven years, prominently including national security and Terrorism policies. It's not just Bush, but the Republican Party itself, which has become politically radioactive. What rational politician would fear their discredited attacks or seek to do anything other than draw as many vivid distinctions as possible with the defining policies of the Republican Party?  [Salon: Glenn Greenwald]
7:31:19 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Patricia Thurston.
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