'Casino Jack' in DC

365: I know this picture sucks, but it was a dark theater and I didn't want to use the flash from two rows back. From left, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart, 'Casino Jack' director Alex Gibney, former congressman -- the only one that was indicted for dealings with Jack Abramoff -- Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and former staffer for both Ney and Abramoff Neil Volz at E St. Theater.

It was the first public showing in DC of 'Casino Jack', the new documentary on the story of uber-lobbyist Abramoff's rise and fall. We saw the director's cut, so this version was bit exhaustive and very detailed. That was fine with me. It was a bit hacky and cheesy at times in its use of footage of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' to punctuate some kind of loss of innocence Abramoff supposedly symbolizes (Washington was corrupted and corrosive long before, and long after, that movie, so let's stop pretending and telling ourselves lies). Though that doesn't take away from the on-key editing and expansive research into Abramoff's (and associates') deceit and decadence.

Big week at Gitmo

The first military commissions trial under Barack Obama is set to begin tomorrow at Guantanamo Bay. The case of Canadian Omar Khadr, the alleged murderer of an American solider by grenade in Afghanistan eight years ago, will showcase how truly different Obama's changes to these tribunals are compared to those during George W. Bush's presidency.

Spencer Ackerman with what's at issue:

Khadr, a teenager when initially detained, has been held for nearly half his life at a facility that the Obama administration has pledged to close. He will be tried in a legal venue that Obama rejected as a Senator and embraced, in reformed fashion, as president. What happens this week at Guantanamo will determine whether Obama’s pledge that the new, revised military commissions can deliver internationally-recognized justice is meaningful: the pre-trial hearing in Khadr’s case will provide the first in-depth examination of whether Khadr’s treatment in U.S. custody amounts to torture; will determine whether prosecutors can use evidence against him acquired under abusive, coercive circumstances that civilian courts would never allow; and whether additional statements made by Khadr in subsequent and less-coercive circumstances are fair game or inextricable from his overall abuse.

The 15-year-old was in Afghanistan with his father, a supposed al Qaeda financier, when he we detained for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed an American. In the process, Khadr was shot twice. Evidence suggests that he was buried under rubble at the time of the American soldier's death.

Many have questioned why the Obama administration would pick this case, one of a child soldier who has been tortured, to be the first commissions exercise under Obama.

Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald (a Gitmo reporter extraordinaire) quotes former war court defense lawyer David Frakt today:

"They're starting off their very first prosecution of the Obama administration with a child soldier, a Westerner no less, and going into excruciating detail for two weeks of torture and mistreatment that he suffered,'' Frakt said. ``It's kind of the dream scenario for opponents of military commissions.''

Khadr claims he was at times beaten, left shackled so long in interrogation he urinated on himself and was subjected to solitary confinement and sleep deprivation -- claims that other detainees have also made through the years.

For a legal rundown of what's wrong in this case, read Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First:

Equally fundamental is that the military commissions were created to try war crimes. But even if Khadr were guilty of the acts charged - murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, and aiding the enemy - those aren't really war crimes. At least, they weren't war crimes until Congress declared them to be in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- four years after Khadr allegedly committed them. So to try Khadr for war crimes now is a violation of the Ex Post Facto clause of the U.S. Constitution, Khadr's lawyers point out. (Khadr could, of course, be tried in a civilian court for the crimes of murder and conspiracy.)

Khadr's case, then, underscores many of the fundamental problems with the military commission system - that it has no rules, little experience, almost no precedent and barely any law to guide it.

So why did the Obama administration decide to make the case of Omar Khadr its first trial in a military commission?

If the administration is hoping to showcase the strength of its military and the president's tough stance on terrorism, this probably wasn't the best way to do it.

How this case is handled will have deep ramifications going forward with the many detainee trials in queue now. And it will interesting to see how America and the media react to another remembrance of the scores of evidence of torture inflicted upon this teenager, guilty or not, and other detainees.

ADAPT protest for patients' rights

365: Protesters block off the road just off Conn. Ave., in front of the Hilton. ADAPT was advocating passage of the Community Choice Act, which would give more rights to disabled patients in choosing where and how they're cared for.




See more of my protest photos.

My Lai on PBS

I watched the PBS series American Experience: My Lai. Wow. I've had quite the pair of films today.

The New York Times wrote of the Barak Goodman documentary:

The film employs the usual archival images and talking heads, as well as audio recordings from the court martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was convicted of ordering the killings. But Mr. Goodman has gone well beyond that, persuading soldiers from Charlie Company, some of whom had never spoken publicly about the events of March 16, 1968, to sit for interviews.

They appear to be more interested in seeking understanding than in expressing remorse. “The people of that village were Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers,” says Kenneth Hodges, a squad leader. “Maybe some see it differently. That’s the way I see it.” Often, though, their words and their eyes seem to be telling different stories.

The first half of My Lai is deeply haunting.

M.I.A.'s "Born Free"

M.I.A.'s amazing video "Born Free" has been pulled from YouTube for its either too graphic or too "controversial" material. M.I.A.'s website then directed viewers to Vimeo. The violent Romain Gavras-directed work is nine razor-sharp minutes long. The narrative quite sinisterly weaves America's War on Terror/Gitmo and immigration policy and suspicion of the "other." It's allegory. And it's powerful.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Will the peasant mentality reign?

Matt Taibbi has a particularly piercing column in The Guardian today on the ramifications of the government's treatment of Goldman Sachs and the corrosive, backwards ideas inspired by Ayn Rand's brand of selfishness.

Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?


People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward "moochers" and "parasites" – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

It's time to reject the "vampire squid."

The Fox News empire

It's sad when it's left to comedians to discern fact from fiction amid the money-hungry, ethically-devoid wasteland that is the mainstream media (especially cable news) in America. The New York Times documents The Daily Show's hounding of Fox News, the propagandist noise machine for the Right masquerading as a news channel.

In many of the segments, Mr. Stewart questions Fox’s journalistic practices. He noted that Fox had hired former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be a political analyst in a January segment he called “News of the Weird.” But he wasn’t laughing when he asserted that Fox is “functioning as her de-facto rapid response media arm, and they’re paying her for the privilege of doing it.”

In February he noted that Fox News had stopped showing President Obama’s widely praised meeting with Republican leaders while CNN and MSNBC had carried it start to finish. Mimicking a Fox anchor, Mr. Stewart said, “We’re gonna cut away because” — humorous pause — “this is against the narrative that we present.”

Fox is alternate-reality news and a living, breathing example of the merging of a party with a news outlet. What does it say when they are the number-one rated news channel in America?

Devo Live 1980

In 2005, Devo released a CD/DVD of the M-80 Concert they did in 1980 at the Phoenix Theatre, in Petaluma.

The beginning of the DVD begins with Star Wars-like language scrolling off into the abyss, top to bottom. The message is a political, social statement of poignancy and conviction. And one of keen humor and satirical heft.

August 17, 1980. Planet Earth, the United States of America.

It was a dark time. The American President, Ronald Reagan, a former actor in motion picture entertainment, presided over the land. His oil-rich federation and fundamentalist Christian supporters sought to return the population to past times and practices that defied logic and would heap sorrow upon the masses.

But on this night in 1980 a revolutionary band of self-proclaimed "spudboys" who made strange new sounds and sang strange new words would make their presence known in a city by the water. The five young men traveled thousands of miles from an industrial wasteland known as Akron, Ohio, their collective place of birth. They had struggled against all odds to survive in a culture driven by fear and prevail in a ruthless business powered by sharks. They called themselves Devo, for they believed that de-evolution, not evolution, was the guiding force of humankind's future.

On this night in 1980, Devo had no idea that history would prove their cautionary vision to be so frighteningly correct. Now, 25 years later, the reign of President Reagan seems in retrospect like a ray of sunshine compared to the present day rule of Emperor "W" and his fellow fundamentalist enemies around the world.

De-evolution is real.

Like a sickle.

Bassist Gerry Casale, one of the founding members of the band's concept of de-evolutionary performance artists, wrote on the back cover:

This lone artifact offers indisputable evidence that in 1980 Devo had reached a turning point. We were no longer just art monsters, we were mainstream performers too.

Certainly a jab at the record industry's attitude toward Devo. This is a band that relied on being able to document the present's absurdity and predict the future's ominous fate. This quote touches on a sort of validity Casale is taking credit for in the year 2005. In Devo's latest resurgence in past year or two, I've been amused by the number of times the band members, especially Casale, remind everyone of what they said and how they were fucking right. But they always take that credit with a bemused smirk, as if they aren't surprised by any of the many troubling aspects of current day America. Thankfully, they've returned to continue mocking society's de-evolutionary behavior.

The Bedwetter

365: Sarah Silverman at the 18th and L Border's, talking about her new book, The Bedwetter.

Adventures in hubris

Dick Cheney has endorsed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race over Florida governor Charlie Crist, now deemed an insufficient conservative in today's Republican witch-hunt climate.

Now read Cheney's statement in support of Rubio. Think about what he's saying. This man, who irrevocably altered America in ways too numerous to name at this point in the day, has the unbridled, runaway ego to say the following.

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms. America requires leaders to face down these challenges who are confident in who they are and what they stand for. Leaders who know that public service is about something bigger than climbing the political ladder and amassing greater political power…

“We can trust Marco to stand up to the Obama agenda that threatens our freedom, and promote clear conservative alternatives…Charlie Crist has shown time and again that he cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda. Lately it seems Charlie Crist cannot be trusted even to remain a Republican. I strongly urge him to either stay in the Republican Primary or drop out of the race.”

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms." Fear, paranoia, denial, self-loathing, it's par for the course for Dick.

"Public service is about something bigger than ... amassing greater political power." Laughable. This is the man that drove an unprecedented level of executive power.

And he says don't trust those that aren't one of chosen. Sounds like McCarthyism. What vicious dirtbag.

Who's naming the streets in Ashburn, Va.?

365: Could it be ... murder?

The battle for Kandahar

Get ready for a tough, bloody summer in Kandahar.

NYT:

The Taliban gunned down the deputy mayor of Kandahar, perhaps the city’s most effective and admired public official, late on Monday, demonstrating their ability to kill almost anyone in a region where security continues to worsen ahead of a planned summer offensive.

And in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, a NATO convoy shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle, including a police officer and 12-year-old student, according to local Afghan officials. But without offering proof, NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their “associates” — a disagreement that could prompt another dispute with the Afghan government over civilian casualties.


Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the United States-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the eight-and-a-half-year occupation. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban have been stepping up violence in the city with a series of assassinations and attacks on American and Western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.

Kucinich, one of the few liberals to speak up on assassinations of US citizens

Jeremy Scahill reports on Dennis Kucinich's view of the approved search to assassinate American-Yemeni citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.

Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. "With all the smart people that are in that administration, they've got to know the risks that they're taking here with violations of law," he says.

[...]

He added: "The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life."

Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make "a short-cut around the Constitution," saying, "Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy."

Scahill says that his attempts to reach Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, two usually tough liberals that have re-election campaigns to think about in 2010, went unanswered. Amid this silence of the "progressives" in Congress, I give Kucinich credit for saying something, anything substantive in way of a rebuke of the president's actions. But it's really a shame that it's come to this. Where is the Democratic leadership? They are getting rolled by Obama and they don't mind at all. They've got cover to get reelected if Obama is still semi-popular. Why should they expend their energy on pushing him from the left? If America likes him, that's better for our preservation, they think.

But back to the thoughts on Awlaki, Kucinich said, "We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy." He referenced the intelligentsia that must know what kind of Pandora's Box they're opening. It's not just those big, bad Bush-Cheney deadenders anymore. It's also the sellouts (though that term could be disputed) in the Obama White House. They have dutifully continued the lawlessness of their predecessors.

Our little Iraq is all grown up and torturing on its own

Freedom is on the march.

LA Times:

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

[...]

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

[...]

Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.

"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.

Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.

"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

Reading the whole story, I had to laugh at the eerie symmetry in which the torture, denial and cover-up mirror America's own treatment of Iraqis (at Abu Ghraib) and other detainees. Too bad the U.S. has no moral authority to legitimately condemn these actions.

This is your legacy Dick Cheney.

Drones and assassinations: Our legacy in the war on terror

Richard Wright makes some important points on Predator drone strikes in Pakistan -- void of the Pakistani government's full support or authorization -- and the order to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen now in Yemen implicated in inciting the Fort Hood shooter and the Underwear bomber.

If Harold Koh — the state department lawyer assigned the job of justifying Obama’s strategy — carries the day, America will be telling the world that it’s O.K. to lob missiles into countries that haven’t attacked you, as long as you think a terrorist may live there. Do we really want to send that message to, for example, Russia and China, both of which have terrorism problems? Or India or Pakistan?

And are we sure we want to say that, actually, due process of law isn’t really guaranteed all American citizens so long as there’s a war on terrorism — which, remember, is a war that may continue for eternity?

(For more background, Koh gave a speech recently defending many of the national security policies the Obama administration adopted from the Bushies. Adam Serwer gave a detailed breakdown of Koh's points on drones and assassinations.)

Sandy Levinson asks, What if it were Bush?

It is widely known that Obama has ordered more drone strikes in his year in office than George W. Bush did in his entire administration. One can only wonder what the response of the left would be if it were Bush (and, say, John Yoo) engaging in (and defending) the actions that seem central to the Obama Administration's policy in Pakistan (and Yemen and....). The most ominous part of Wright's column is an argument that the policy is very likely to be counterproductive, for a number of reasons he goes into. So there may be a "negative trifecta," i.e., a policy that raises serious moral and legal questions and is counterproductive to boot.

But more to the point, Is this what we want America to be? How can we realistically disallow other powerful countries from conducting similar activities -- especially in the case of drones -- without completely losing all credibility (if we haven't lost enough already)?

And I'm not really sure why I'm even asking because I know why: Where are all the Bush haters that complained about these very same procedures? There are MORE drone strikes mowing down civilians and vague, unverified "suspects" now and Bush never targeted an American citizen for DEATH. Where are the liberals, progressives, civil libertarians and others on the Left now?

Dawn Johnsen's bow out: Inevitable

Glenn Greenwald laments the death of Dawn Johnsen's nomination to be head of the Office of Legal Counsel. As for reasons to the breakdown with Johnsen, Greenwald points out the contradictions of Obama's past and present positions on executive power.

I don't know the real story behind what happened here -- I had an email exchange with Johnsen this afternoon but she was only willing to provide me her official, pro forma, wholly uninformative statement -- but here's what I do know: virtually everything that Dawn Johnsen said about executive power, secrecy, the rule of law and accountability for past crimes made her an excellent fit for what Candidate Obama said he would do, but an awful fit for what President Obama has done.

[...]

What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do -- from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of "state secrecy" in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that "opennees will empower terrorists" to the overarching Obama dictate that we "simply move on." Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President "must not do"?

The legal opinions of Dawn Johnsen and Barack Obama diverged a loooooong time ago.

Nuclear overlords: You are the key to a more appealing tomorrow for all of us.

365: DC's finest gather to "talk shop" outside the Convention Center, the lock-downed site of tomorrow's Nuclear Security Summit.

And speaking of nuclear paranoia, take the Devo song study.

The Great Karl Rove-Chelsea Handler Rivalry

Everyone's favorite talking pile of mashed potatoes Karl Rove made it into today's New York Times profile of comedienne Chelsea Handler:

Signing copies of her book for about 300 fans who had waited around after her first show in Seattle, she muses on the fact that “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” had come out the same week as Karl Rove’s memoir. And that it was her R-rated book — topics include third-grade masturbation and black Cabbage Patch Kids — and not one from the former Bush adviser that hit No. 1.

“I picture Karl Rove sitting there in his underwear, staring at that list,” Ms. Handler says. “I’m sure he was thinking, ‘Who the hell is Chelsea Handler?’ ”

But Karl Rove aside, I didn't know much about Handler -- other than that she had written a book or two and had a show on E!, or some such -- until I read some recent reviews of her show in Slate and Salon. The Slate piece (unflatteringly titled The drunken-slattern shtick of Chelsea Handler) described her as thus:

Here's the vibe: Imagine Handler hungoverish at the 10-items-or-less counter at Safeway, swinging her basket of goods—a home pregnancy test, a Boston cream pie, a handle of designer booze—up to the conveyor belt. She snatches a glossy tabloid from the rack for a greedy eyeful of hot-pink messes. Sniping aloud at the tackiness within with vulgarity in kind, she rolls her eyes so hard that she gags as she slaps enough magazines on the conveyor belt so that now she's buying 12 items. She swipes her platinum card with a contemptuous gesture.

[...]

Those who would yawn at her act as a played-out "trangressive" role-playing might turn to the second page of Handler's current best-seller, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, with its compound sentence on the author's preadolescent addiction to her intimate anatomy: "I wasn't prepared for what kind of ride this little magic muffin was going to take me on, but I reminded myself that we never choose who we fall in love with, and I had no choice when my little hot pocket in a pita took over my life for the good part of the third and fourth grades." While any healthy man will squirm in contemplating this image, the more discerning of them will acknowledge the craft in the way the sentence pivots from puerile snack-time metaphor-making to a lilting bittersweet statement and back again.

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams was a little more assured of Handler's shortcomings in her critique, titled The unfunny business of Chelsea Handler:

I speak on behalf of slutty, Belvedere-imbibing women from New Jersey when I say: I want to like Handler. But every time I hear how outraaageous she is, I wonder what I'm missing. This is a woman who delicately refers to the female anatomy as a "Pikachu" and defecation as "shadoobie," so excuse me if I'm not seeing the transgressiveness. On her talk show, "Chelsea Lately," she never seems like a loose cannon, ready to do something crazy at any moment. Instead, she's as stiff and rote as any other late-night host. She just gets bleeped more often. It also doesn't help her badass rep that she spent four years dating Ted Harbert, who, in addition to being filthy rich and 20 years her senior, is also the president and CEO of Comcast -- which owns "Chelsea Lately." The heart wants what it wants and all that, but therein lies the paradox that is Chelsea Handler: She's built a career on being the crazy chick with a taste for vodka and hookups, but what could be more conventional than a pretty girl dating the boss?

[...]

The sad truth is that, outside of her "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" comfort zone, Handler has remarkably little to say. But, hey, if college taught us anything, it's that a girl can go far on "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" Like, say, the New York Times bestseller list. Hey, Chelsea Handler is pretty and she seems nice enough and, wow, she's daring enough to opine that Jon Gosselin is "disgusting." She'll be around forever and bury us all. In that sense, I suppose, Handler is a groundbreaker. Like Dane Cook or Jeff Dunham of any number of high-profile, low-wit stars, she's proven that a woman in comedy can be just as lame as any man.

I have not seen her outside of a few clips on ads for her show. So it's hard for me to judge. But it sounds like Handler's act, like Rove's, is probably not as novel and everlasting as it seems to be at first glance.

Shorter New York Times

Here's the NYT's headline and blurb today on Republicans, the SCOTUS nomination fight and the midterm election:

G.O.P. Weighs Political Price of Court Fight

By PETER BAKER and CARL HULSE 30 minutes ago
The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens presents a test for Republicans as they weigh how much they want to wage anideological battle before midterm elections.

Or in other words: How batshit crazy do they wanna get?

The Lost City of Seattle

I finally took the time to upload my Seattle photos. Here's a slideshow of the entire 100+ shots.

Some highlights:

The world needs Lil' Dead Pope

In honor of the latest news of the Pope's abandonment of innocence in his career as a fierce protector of rapists, molesters and pedophiles, it's time to revisit a Wonder Showzen's Beat Kids classic, Lil' Dead Pope (The link will have to suffice. There was no embed option.).

The Newt Gingrich Comedy Hour

Live! From his alternate reality! It's Neewwwwwwwwwt Ginnnnnnngriiiiiiiich!



Defund the Department of Health and Human Services! Zing! Soak me in your delusions, Newt! Douse us with your crazy!

Saturday Night Live should just play unedited clips of Newt rather than actually do their own pathetic skits.

Waiting for Mohammed al-Madadi

365: Cameras lined up outside of the Qatar embassy building, presumably waiting for word on Mohammed al-Madadi.

Military commissions: Making it up as we go

Daphne Eviatar delves into the charade and sham that is the military commissions system at Gitmo as the tribunals begin again with Noor Muhammed, a detainee that has wallowed in legal limbo at Guantanamo since 2002.

The military bureaucratic conundrum seemed to leave everyone in the courtroom – and in the observers’ gallery, which was walled off by bullet-and-sound-proof glass -- scratching their heads. (Observers at this courtroom, which was built specially to try the 9/11 suspects, only get to hear the proceedings via an audio feed that transmits the sound after a several-minute time-delay.) Like many questions that arise in these military commission hearings, the answer to this one could not be found anywhere in the rules or the military commission precedent.

That’s partly because the current military commissions, created by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 – have no rules. The military hasn’t issued them yet. The now-outdated rules that governed the previous commission, created by a 2006 law, don’t address this situation either. And there is almost no military commission precedent to speak of. After all, in the eight years since they were created, the military commissions have tried only three cases. Of those, only two detainees even put up a defense. Both have since been released from prison.

Throughout yesterday’s hearing, if there was one thing that the prosecution, defense and judge could agree on, it was that there simply is no law to guide many of the situations that come up in the military commission cases of the Guantánamo detainees.

That there is any possibility that these commissions will continue, much less whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in one of these awful excuses for American justice, is a sad commentary on our post-9/11 climate of fear, paranoia and lack of confidence in our own justice system.

Military commissions are back by unpopular demand

You wanted indecision, you got it! The Obama administration is going forward with military commissions (and its stellar record of convictions ... that was sarcasm) today, reports the Miami Herald.

Still operating under Bush-era policies that President Barack Obama last year called "a mess," the Pentagon will resume military commission hearings for accused terrorists Wednesday in a top-secret compound originally designed for the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

War court critics denounced the decision to go ahead with hearings this week, saying that without new rules the Obama administration has yet to complete the commissions are operating with uncertain procedures.

"It's really like a lame-duck commission," bristled Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense counsel.

First up on the war court's agenda is a pretrial hearing in the case of Noor Uthman Mohammed, a Sudanese man who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and brought here soon after for interrogation as a suspected al-Qaida operative.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder approved Noor's military trial in November on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism for allegedly helping to run the Khalden terror training camp in Afghanistan.

At that same time, Holder approved civilian trials for the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - and this week's hearings also are a reminder that the Justice Department remains undecided on how to proceed with the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four accused co-conspirators.

After New York officials objected to holding the 9/11 trial in lower Manhattan, the White House announced that it would reconsider the decision. It remains unclear where and in what forum Mohammed and the other alleged plotters will face charges.

That indecision will be on display as the court convenes Noor's case in the maximum security, $12 million Expeditionary Legal Compound that the Bush administration built for the accused 9/11 conspirators.

USA! USA! USA!

Update: Though the defendant has spent 8 years in U.S. custody, the judge said today it will take up to another YEAR to sift through his evidence. Sorry kid.

Update II: Daphne Eviatar highlights the case of the detainee (Noor Muhammad) as a prime example of a colossal government fuckup.

The King has decreed: Assassinate the "guilty" peasant

And it is written: The king, our wise and fearless leader, has decreed ye a terrorist upon secret evidence only the king and his cohorts may view. The king, he of compassion and the Nobel Peace Prize, orders the extra-judicial execution of ye, an insubordinate subject, the mongrel the state knows as Anwar al-Awlaki.

NYT:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Now read the brazen comments in the Washington Post made by an (anonymous) official on the assurance that assassinating an American under the guise of his alleged involvement in "terrorism" is justifiable and legal.

"He's recently become an operational figure for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said a second U.S. official. "He's working actively to kill Americans, so it's both lawful and sensible to try to stop him." The official stressed that there are "careful procedures our government follows in these kinds of cases, but U.S. citizenship hardly gives you blanket protection overseas to plot the murder of your fellow citizens."

So how about the two incidents the U.S. points to as proof of Awlaki's involvement in attempting to kill his fellow Americans? They would be the Fort Hood shooting (Nidal Hasan) and the underwear bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab). WaPo:

Aulaqi corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., last year. Aulaqi is not believed to have helped plan the attack, although he praised Hasan in an online posting for carrying it out.

Concern grew about the cleric's role after he was linked to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by detonating an explosive device he had smuggled in his underwear. Aulaqi acknowledged teaching and corresponding with the Nigerian but denied ordering the attack.

That doesn't sound like solid proof of anything beyond incitement. But apparently our constitutional law professor-in-chief knows what we shouldn't mess our pretty little heads with.

Even the Bush administration's torture troll John Yoo didn't agree with these executive powers.

Spencer Ackerman contends:

There’s no doubt al-Awlaki is exploiting his citizenship, but there’s also a reason why the guarantees of citizenship can even be exploited, and to take those away in this case, based on secret evidence and asserted claims leads us down a very dark path.

Dark path indeed. Obama has continually emphasized a break from Bush-era excessive executive wartime powers. He promised to close Gitmo, he ended torture techniques and ordered closing of black site prisons. Admittedly, it was a low bar. But those differences the Obama administration claim to embrace are much less substantial when a record of Obama and Bush policy is examined.

Eli Lake:

But these differences in style mask a sameness in substance that should worry civil libertarians. When it comes to the legal framework for confronting terrorism, President Obama is acting in no meaningful sense any different than President Bush after 2006, when the Supreme Court overturned the view that the president’s war time powers were effectively unlimited. As the Obama administration itself is quick to point out, the Bush administration also tried terrorists apprehended on U.S. soil in criminal courts, most notably “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid. More important, President Obama has embraced and at times defended the same expansive view of a global war against Al Qaeda as President Bush.

The U.S. still reserves the right to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charge, try them via military tribunal, keep them imprisoned even if they are acquitted, and kill them in foreign countries with which America is not formally at war (including Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). When Obama closed the secret CIA prisons known as “black sites,” he specifically allowed for temporary detention facilities where a suspect could be taken before being sent to a foreign or domestic prison, a practice known as “rendition.” And even where the Obama White House has made a show of how it has broken with the Bush administration, such as outlawing enhanced interrogation techniques, it has done so through executive order, which can be reversed at any time by the sitting president.

Our unending war on terror continues, and our reckless leaders have the power to do whatever they want, including the order to kill an American without explaining or proving why. That's our America in 2010.

All hail the death of journalism!

CNN vs. Al Jazeera coverage on Monday

Tiger Woods and iPads vs. Wikileak's video of American forces indiscriminate firing in Iraq. It speaks for itself.

How treating Bagram as the new Gitmo could backfire

Dawinder Sidhu on the prospects for habeas rights at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan:

Reports are now emerging that the White House is considering making Bagram Air Base, the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, the functional replacement for Guantánamo.

Understandably, this has provoked significant outcry from civil liberties advocates, who charge that any such move would be a conscious effort to evade the rule of law. But it might actually be a blessing in disguise, because if the administration does pursue this course it would set the stage for a long-overdue court ruling that could very well vest Bagram’s prisoners with the right to challenge their detention.

At issue is the precarious reach of the writ of habeas corpus -- the time-honored legal right to petition a court to ensure that the executive has sufficient cause to detain an individual. In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees are entitled to habeas. As the Boumediene case resolved only whether habeas applies to detainees at Guantánamo -- and not other international post-9/11 American facilities -- it remains unclear whether foreign detainees at Bagram can invoke the habeas writ.

Indeed, this very question is at the heart of al Maqaleh v. Obama -- an ongoing legal battle between several current Bagram detainees and the Obama administration. Because these Bagram detainees have not yet been accorded the habeas right, there is concern that the administration’s proposal would place all prospective foreign terrorism suspects beyond the rule of law, without fundamental habeas protections.

In reality, though, this could actually open the door to the al Maqaleh court ultimately holding -- against the government -- that habeas does extend to foreign detainees in Bagram. In other words, in resolving an important policy question, the administration could seriously weaken its legal case.

Sidhu goes on to explain how the U.S. couldn't just pass off "official" oversight of Bagram to the Afghan government, all the while ultimately controlling operations there.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the government may not "game" the system -- that the habeas writ "cannot be contracted away" and that the administration can’t decide for itself "when and where [the Constitution’s] terms apply." For this reason, when the government posited that habeas proceedings cannot take place in Bagram because it is an "active theater of war," the district court responded by pointing out that it is the government that was responsible for bringing the detainees, captured outside of Afghanistan, to Bagram.

From nearly the beginning of Obama's term, the administration has argued against affording detainees in legal black holes like Bagram any rights to trials. Indefinite detention has been the priority from the start in a continuation of one of the most egregious Bush-era disparagements of basic human rights. To think that this scenario would be a surprise to them would be pretty naive. I'm sure they have a plan to combat habeas corpus rights at Bagram no matter what.

The Orwellian logic of our government pertaining to U.S. detainee and foreign policy in the midst of "democracy promoting" ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan consistently amazes. Indefinite detention = justice, brute force = democracy, reckless Predator drone strikes = a kinder, safer insurgent eradication, war = peace, the examples are endless.

But Sidhu's explanation gives some hope. Unfortunately, when your only speck of hope is the government (maybe) losing the right to imprison suspects indefinitely without a trial, the climb back to respectability and the rule of law is long and steep.

Never mind killing pregnant Afghans, Tiger's back!

The International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), led by U.S. General Stanley A. McChrystal, has admitted its own guilt in the deaths of five Afghan civilian (two were pregnant) during a night raid in Gardez in February.

That's a tragedy on its face. But NATO led a cover-up operation of this incident following a Times of London report on the inconsistencies that existed between NATO's explanation of the raid and the claims of survivors and witnesses.

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

This story appeared in the Times on March 13. ISAF proceeded to obfuscate further, going as far as to call out the reporter, Jerome Starkey, by name in response.

KABUL, Afghanistan (March 13) - The allegation made by Times UK reporter Jerome Starkey that NATO "covered up" an incident that was conducted outside Gardez in Paktia province is categorically false.

Additionally, Mr. Starkey incorrectly quoted Rear Adm. Greg Smith of ISAF when he did not include the word "armed" in the following sentence: "If you have got an [armed] individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don't have to be fired upon to fire back."

All the while, keep in mind that McChyrstal has implemented policy (announced BEFORE Gardez) limiting night raids in Afghanistan -- ignoring Hamid Karzai's call for an outright band -- to curb civilian casualties.

Then, ISAF released this late Easter Sunday:

KABUL, Afghanistan (Apr. 4) – A thorough joint investigation into the events that occurred in the Gardez district of Paktiya Province Feb. 12, has determined that international forces were responsible for the deaths of three women who were in the same compound where two men were killed by the joint Afghan-international patrol searching for a Taliban insurgent.

The two men, who were later determined not to be insurgents, were shot and killed by the joint patrol after they showed what appeared to be hostile intent by being armed. While investigators could not conclusively determine how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence, they concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.

So what is the physical proof of the coverup? There have to be bullet holes, right? The New York Times:

A NATO official also said Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. On Monday, however, a senior NATO official denied that any tampering had occurred.

[...]

The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.

And in what could be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”

The investigators, the official said, “alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.”

Digging bullets out of the victims? Denying medical treatment to buy time for cover? Of course, the investigation is (supposedly) ongoing, but the implications are quite dire here.

But, true to form for the likes of cable news, it's too bad this isn't a major story this morning. CNN and Fox are all over a Tiger Woods press conference (SEX!), scheduled today for 2 p.m. One would think this atrocity and cover-up would be front and center for any news outlet. Not so. That's a commentary on the sad state of mainstream news outlets. I credit sites like Rethink Afghanistan (not to mention Jerome Starkey, who broke this story, and the NY Times for ... at least having it) for keeping focus on this unfolding exposition. But Rethink Afghanistan is no cable news conglomerate. I sincerely hope this gets attention down the road. Without coverage, such egregious behavior in our name goes without accountability. It's time the media stand up to the Pentagon's PR machine.

Update: Glenn Greenwald expands on the American media's failure in this case, specifically that of CNN and the New York Times, as opposed to international reporting that relied on actually legwork and not official Pentagon sources.

Escape hatch/deep thought for Easter weekend

You get in a bind this Easter weekend, trapped in a corner with dear Aunt Spanish Inquisition, try this discussion topic on her: The holiday versions of ourselves are much less substantial than who we really are.

Year review on DADT just coverage for a repeal?

Nancy Youssef ponders how the yearlong review of 'Don't ask don't tell' squares with a service that feels the policy change is a lock. MIght the review supposed to serve the purpose of buying time for Congress to craft a repeal?

On Thursday, the New York Times ran a piece quoting John McHugh, the secretary of the Army, as saying that he no longer implements Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He said he had decided to ignore the law in light of the Obama administration’s call to repeal the law. Then the firestorm began. How does the military apply the law? And what about the other services? In response, the secretary issued a lengthy clarification that I have included below. But really, the whole issue raises bigger questions. The military is essentially trying to bypass a reluctant Congress and make changes to the law Congress itself repeals the law. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced more stringent requirements to kick someone out of the military under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, all while there is a year-long study of the issue under way. All of this has led to a flurry of confusion. And for me, it raises questions about how effective a year-long review can really be. If service members feel the change in inevitable, will the review lead to an honest assessment of how the military can repeal the law or is the change in the law already under way? If so, the review may become a means to buy time while Congress considers a repeal.

That seems unlikely, but the review is still a curious exercise. Who's being placated by this year study? I'm interested to see how this "study" is conducted.