CORRUPTION UPDATES 154
Posted: february 2, 2008, Draft edition
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U.S. law chief, Democrats face clash on waterboarding
By Randall Mikkelsen
reuters, January 30, 2008 MYT 3:15:56 PM
http://thestar.com.my/services/printerfriendly.asp?file=/2008/1/30/worldupdates/2008-01-30T123851Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-316689-1.asp&sec=worldupdates
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. law enforcement official faces a clash on Wednesday with Senate Democrats after he rejected demands to rule on the legality of an interrogation technique known as waterboarding.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who is to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, told chairman Patrick Leahy in a letter on Tuesday that he had reviewed the CIA's current techniques for interrogating terrorism suspects and found them lawful.
Mukasey declined, however, to say whether he considered waterboarding to be illegal. Such a finding could fuel pressure to prosecute officials involved in CIA's interrogation program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks.
A U.S. official confirmed last week that waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, was used in the past but had not been used in recent years.
"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of waterboarding. Other circumstances would present a far closer question," he said.
John Negroponte, the first U.S. director of national intelligence who served from 2005 to 2007, confirmed in a magazine interview published last week that waterboarding had been used in the interrogation program. But Negroponte, now deputy secretary of state, said it was not used during his term as spy chief "nor even a few years before that."
Although the Bush administration has been reluctant to discuss waterboarding publicly, Negroponte's remarks were in line with earlier reports that the CIA discontinued waterboarding in 2003, after using it on three "high-value" detainees.
Mukasey on Jan. 2 ordered the Justice Department to investigate the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2002. At least one of the subjects, Abu Zubaydah, was believed to have been subjected to waterboarding.
Mukasey has rejected calls to appoint an independent counsel for the investigation. He has indicated investigators would be free to pursue evidence of illegal interrogation techniques in their probe, but department officials have said the focus remains on the tapes' destruction.
“Judge Mukasey is a fine public servant who knows from experience the challenge that terrorism presents to our country,” Mr. Cheney said. Mr. Mukasey, he said, would “ensure that the rights and freedoms of the American people are protected, and that includes the freedom from fear of terrorist attacks.”
Dick Cheney
9-18-07
Let's understand what just happened here. The #1 "lawman" in the country just reviewed actions by the cia that are clearly against domestic and international law, and has done nothing. Combined with the president's open criminality, congressional silence, and the corporate media hiding torture behind soft words, we can see that the presidency has just acquired the power to kidnap, secretly imprison, and torture anyone they want.
It has been obvious from the first days after 9-11 that the dems would provide no counterweight to the seizure of complete executive authority by the bush administration.
The problem lays in the fact that the dems don't dispute the core assertion of the bush administration: the president possesses dictatorial power during wartime. Unfortunately for us, this proves beyond a reasonable doubt that both parties have failed their constitutional duties and oaths.
The constitution places war powers squarely in the lap of congress, not the president. This includes making rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. Congress, not the president, makes rules concerning captures on land and water. This means that bush's policies of kidnapping, secret detention, and torture are clearly illegal by congressional law, treaties, and international law.
And then the dems suggested, and confirmed mukasey's appointment to be Attorney General.
I don't know who is more dishonored by this act, the senate, mukasey, bush or our global reputation for justice under the rule of law.
The crimes of this president, and the salvation of the honor of congress, let alone our whole nation, depends upon the repudiation of these crimes through a swift and through impeachment proceeding.
The only thing standing in the way is nancy pelosi.
Will Dems Hold or Fold on Bush's Crimes? 10-18-07
The Dems will Fold as Predicted, 10-18-07
Mukasey's rulings predictable before confirmation, committee, 8-28-07
Schumer suggests, Bush Picks, an AG who will Protect Bush's Crimes
What did they expect? Mukasey's confirmation testimony supported:
Mukasey: cannot call waterboarding torture
Dems confirm unitary president, torture, and and all of Bush's crimes through Mukasey Confirmation
AG Mukasey Defies Congress, lat, 12-14-07
Other related topics
bush re nominates author of torture findings, nyt, 1-24-08
Bush legacy: Global retreat of freedom, ft, 1-17-08
judge scolds govt for destroying torture tapes, nyt, 1-18-08
Fed Judge backs off Torture Tape Case, wp, 1-10-08
Justice opens criminal investigation of torture tapes, lat, 1-2-08
Wagons circled at CIA over tapes' demise, lAT, 12-23-07
Cheney institutes torture in '02, wp, 6-25-07
Judge Orders CIA to Explain Torture Tape destruction, ap, 12-19-07
White House involved in Torture Tape Destruction, nyt, 12-19-07
Paki Kidnap-torture Program same as US, nyt, 12-19-07
torture links
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2) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.
Lawyers charge the CIA tortured their client in secret prisons
By Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers
December 8, 2007
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200/story/22830.html
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a terrorism suspect from suburban Baltimore who's imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba claim they have evidence that their client "was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture" while he was in CIA custody.
The lawyers for Majid Khan are asking a federal court to order the Bush administration to preserve evidence of how their client was treated during his three-plus years in CIA custody, saying they have ample evidence that he was tortured.
Their heavily censored court filing, which was delivered under seal Thursday to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and obtained by The Miami Herald, comes as Congress and the Justice Department have opened preliminary investigations into the CIA's destruction of tapes of interrogations of two men who were held with Khan in a secret prison camp for "high-value" detainees at Guantanamo.
Defense lawyers Gitanjali Gutierrez and Wells Dixon met with Khan for two weeks in mid-October at Guantanamo, where he's held in Camp 7, a previously unknown part of the prison that's reserved for former "ghost detainees", according to declassified notes of their meetings.
In the notes, the two wrote that they found Khan with a scar on his arm from trying to gnaw through an artery, and that he still suffers psychological trauma. Their brief, which includes two still-secret appendices, was crafted from those interviews and speaks of Khan's treatment in captivity and that of other prisoners who, it alleges, "were similarly abducted, imprisoned and tortured by U.S. personnel at CIA black sites around the world."
CIA censors redacted, or blacked out, whom the lawyers allege ran what they call "The CIA Torture Program." Censors also blacked out two full pages in which the lawyers argue why, "There is no doubt that Khan was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture."
There was no way to test the lawyers' allegations independently, and the U.S. government denies that it engages in torture. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin Saturday said that the government was "reviewing the allegations" and preparing a response to the lawyers' motion.
No one but his lawyers and U.S. military and intelligence officials has seen Khan, and none of the other former CIA captives who've been detained at Guantanamo for more than a year has seen an attorney.
Still, the notes of the two attorneys from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights offer a glimpse inside the prison-within-a-prison at the detention center.
Camp 7 was opened when the alleged high-value detainees arrived at Guantanamo, around Labor Day 2006, to prevent their tales from spreading to the other 300 or so prisoners.
The lawyers' notes claim that Khan and another alleged al Qaida terrorist, Abu Zubaydeh, had contact with each other. The disclosure that the CIA destroyed tapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydeh triggered the ongoing investigations.
Khan was born in Pakistan but grew up near Baltimore, where he graduated from a suburban high school, and got political asylum in the United States, where his father still lives. The son was visiting Pakistan in March 2003 when, he claims, CIA officers kidnapped him in Karachi. He then disappeared into a secret interrogation program shielded even from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which tracks prisoners around the globe.
President Bush ordered Khan and 13 other former CIA captives, among them alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, transferred to military custody in September 2006.
In October, granting the lawyers access to Khan, the Pentagon charged that he "reportedly had links to al Qaida operatives and facilitators, some who . . . involved him in a discussion of smuggling explosives into the United States."
Khan hasn't been charged with any crime, and his lawyers say in their brief that the alleged CIA torture "will be the central focus of any military commission proceedings involving Khan." They also allege that while he was in CIA custody, "Khan admitted anything his interrogators demanded of him, regardless of the truth."
The information is being disclosed now because, under lawyer-access rights at Guantanamo, the attorneys had to turn all 500 pages of notes of their conversations with their client over to classification inspectors and only recently have had four pages of a summary cleared for public disclosure.
The beginning of years of domestic and international legal fallout over american kidnapping, disappearing, and torture program
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
besides the international war crimes issue, there is one fact roundly ignored by the article above. Khan is an american citizen.
A terrible power has risen in the us that this article provides the outline of, but does not state: Bush has claimed the "right" to secretly kidnap anyone in the world, including american citizens, hold them in secret beyond law or oversight, torture them, and finally, place them before drumhead tribunals that assure conviction.
If any of these victims end up in the federal courts, it appears that the administration has destroyed the direct evidence of they held documenting the torture. The rest is hidden behind the shield of "national security."
This seems strange, as the accusations concern crimes by the government. Regardless of if these crimes were committed in the pursuit of national security, they are crimes nonetheless.
That's why we have impeachment, but pelosi has firmly put herself between the crimes of this president and justice.
So mr. khan will continue to be held in conditions that amount to torture, while "our" congress continues to feed itself at the trough of corruption, as our country's rights bleed away.
FBI working to bolster Al Qaeda cases: Bush-CIA Torture threatens Legitimacy of US "Terror" Cases, Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2007
Government criminals untrustworthy: lies presented in court to pervert law and justice, AP, November 20, 2007
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3) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.
Retroactive War Crime Protection Drafted
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, August 10, 2006
(08-10) 16:16 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) –
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0810-04.htm
The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.
The move by the administration is the latest effort to deal with treatment of those taken into custody in the war on terror.
At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA, and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military.
The Washington Post first reported on the War Crimes Act amendments Wednesday.
One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." A copy of the section of the draft was obtained by The Associated Press.
The White House, without elaboration, said in a statement that the bill "will apply to any conduct by any U.S. personnel, whether committed before or after the law is enacted."
Two attorneys said that the draft is in the revision stage but that the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in Congress after Labor Day. The two attorneys spoke on condition of anonymity because their sources did not authorize them to release the information.
"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Fidell said the initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."
Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration," said a fourth attorney, Scott Horton, who has followed detainee issues closely. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."
The Bush administration contends Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions includes a number of vague terms that are susceptible to different interpretations.
Extreme interrogation practices have been a flash point for criticism of the administration.
When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Congress "is aware of the dilemma we face, how to make sure the CIA and others are not unfairly prosecuted."
He said that at the same time, Congress "will not allow political appointees to waive the law."
Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, said that "President Bush is looking to limit the War Crimes Act through legislation" now that the Supreme Court has embraced Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. In June, the court ruled that Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates Article 3.
What's Really Going on Here??
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
What's really going on here is the ap is incapable of calling torture torture. This is a common practice of our corporate media. It appears the corporate media is intentionally hiding the government's crimes. This avoids the unpleasantness of having to confront our citizens with the fact their government has been committing war crimes for at least the last five years.
Hell, the whole media seems to have forgotten our invasion of iraq is identical to hitler's invasion of poland. Except hitler followed up with the troops necessary to control the nation, unlike herr bush.
It seems like we have evolved a modern american version of the nazi media that hid and justified hitler's crimes.
Bush signs new CIA Torture authorization, LAT, July 21, 2007
Corruption Updates 99, 5th article on the page, Bush Could Bypass new Torture Ban
ABA Clear: Bush Policy allows Torture, AP, 8-10-07
Corruption Updates 101, 10th article on the page, Report: Harsh Methods Used On 9/11 Suspect
Corruption Updates 119, 2nd article on the page, Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations: Bush's Signing Statements on McCain's Anti-Torture Law in 2005 have been know to All
Liars in Congress to ban torture: They already did, and bush ignored them, NYT, December 7, 2007
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Times Reporter Subpoenaed Over Source for Book
By PHILIP SHENON
nyt, February 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/washington/01inquire.html?ref=todayspaper
WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday.
The subpoena was delivered last week to the New York law firm that is representing the reporter, James Risen, and ordered him to appear before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Feb. 7.
Mr. Risen’s lawyer, David N. Kelley, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan early in the Bush administration, said in an interview that the subpoena sought the source of information for a specific chapter of the book “State of War.”
The chapter asserted that the C.I.A. had unsuccessfully tried, beginning in the Clinton administration, to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material in that chapter appeared in The New York Times.
“We intend to fight this subpoena, so we’ll likely be engaging in some sort of litigation,” Mr. Kelley said. “Jim has adhered to the highest traditions of journalism. He is the highest caliber of reporter that you can find, and he will keep his commitment to the confidentiality of his sources.”
Mr. Risen and a colleague at The Times, Eric Lichtblau, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their disclosure of the administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants; Mr. Risen’s book expanded on their reporting about the domestic eavesdropping effort.
Mr. Risen, who is based in Washington and specializes in intelligence issues, is the latest of several reporters to face subpoenas in leak investigations overseen by the Justice Department.
Martha K. Levin, executive vice president and publisher of Free Press, which published Mr. Risen’s book and is a unit of Simon & Schuster Inc., said in a statement that “the American people have been well served by Mr. Risen’s reporting.” Ms. Levin’s statement also said that “the ability to publish confidentially sourced information about our government’s practices and policies is one of the bedrock principles of a free and open society.”
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
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Bush increased use of state secrets privilege
Josh White, Washington Post
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/01/30/MNIOUO84S.DTL&type=printable
(01-30) 04:00 PST Washington - --
The U.S. government has been increasing its use of the state secrets privilege to avoid disclosing classified information in civil lawsuits, prompting legislation in the Senate that would provide more congressional oversight of the practice.
Though there have been modest increases in the use of the state secrets privilege every decade since the 1960s, some legal scholars and members of Congress contend that the Bush administration has employed it excessively as it intervened in cases that could expose information about sensitive programs. These include the rendition of detainees to foreign countries for interrogation and cases related to the National Security Agency's use of warrantless wiretaps.
The privilege allows the government to argue that lawsuits - and the information potentially revealed by them - could damage national security. It gives judges the power to prevent information from reaching public view or to dismiss cases even if they appear to have merit.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in a speech on the Senate floor last week, said one reason for more congressional oversight is the risk that the privilege will be overused and abused.
He said the Bush administration's use of the privilege since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "has dramatically increased, and the harmful consequences of its irregular application by courts have become painfully clear."
Kennedy cited statistics that show the Bush administration has used the state secrets privilege substantially more than previous administrations to block or dismiss lawsuits.
The cases include El-Masri vs. Tenet, in which Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, sued the U.S. government claiming that he was sent to Afghanistan for interrogation as part of a secret government program. The case was dismissed after government lawyers argued that el-Masri's civil claims could expose state secrets should CIA officials have to admit or deny the existence of the program or its details.
Amanda Frost, an assistant professor at American University's Washington College of Law, contends in a 2007 law review article that Congress should provide more oversight of government use of the privilege because the Bush administration "has raised the privilege with greater frequency than ever before, and has more often sought to remove cases entirely from judicial dockets."
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit legal organization that has fought the Bush administration's secrecy efforts on the NSA surveillance program, said the state secrets privilege is being abused regardless of the number of times it has been invoked.
"The administration is attempting to use the privilege as a back-door immunity to obtain dismissal of any case that attempts to put the NSA wiretapping issue in front of a judge," said Bankston. "It is no secret such a program existed."
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
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White House: 473 days of e-mail missing
Jan. 18 (UPI)
http://www.newsdaily.com/TopNews/UPI-1-20080118-11452500-bc-us-whemail.xml
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- An internal White House study has found hundreds of days worth of e-mail messages were not archived in many government offices.
A summary of the study, disclosed Thursday by a Democratic lawmaker, said no e-mail archives exist for 473 days between 2003 and 2005 in offices including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, The Washington Post reported Friday.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday that "no evidence" exists to support claims that any White House e-mails from that time period are missing.
Fratto's statement "seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us," Waxman said.
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
Washington Post, 4-12-07, White House E-Mail Lost in Private Accounts: White House now "Lost" Emails they Hid in Illegal Hidden Accounts
White House: 473 days of e-mail missing, Jan. 18 (UPI)
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Chinese Activist Charged for Subversion
By AUDRA ANG
Associated Press Writer
Feb 1, 2:48 AM EST
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_ACTIVIST_CHARGED?SITE
=CACHI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese civil rights activist who chronicled the plight of other dissidents before being taken from his home in December has been officially arrested and charged with inciting subversion, his lawyer said Friday.
Hu Jia's family was notified on Wednesday and his father was allowed to see him a day later, said Hu's lawyer, Li Jinsong.
The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, was the first contact Hu has had with his family or friends since he was taken without explanation from his apartment by security agents on Dec. 27.
"Hu Jia's father said his son was in good health and that he had been treated well," Li said. It was also Hu Jia's father's birthday and it was "humane" for authorities to allow the visit, he said.
But Li said they have not given any reason or evidence to back up the charge of "inciting subversion of state power," a nebulous accusation Beijing often uses to imprison dissidents for years.
One possibility may have been his participation via Webcam in a Nov. 26 European Parliament hearing, when he reportedly said it was "ironic that one of the people in charge of organizing the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations."
Beijing police would not confirm Hu's arrest, saying the case was still under investigation.
The latest developments suggest that the Chinese government is determined to clamp down on any potential discord before the Beijing Olympics this summer, even at the risk of international criticism.
The European Parliament passed a resolution demanding Hu's release, and the U.S. has repeatedly raised his case with Chinese officials.
His wife Zeng Jinyan and their two-month-old baby are under surveillance at the couple's apartment. Authorities have cut off telephone and Internet connections and have not allowed visitors or reporters to visit them. His mother says she has been warned against speaking to the media about his case.
Passionate and brash, Hu, 34, started out as a prominent AIDS and environmental activist, but became a one-man human rights organization after numerous clashes with police and state security agents, who put him under surveillance and confined him to his home. When he was detained in December, he had been under house arrest for more than 200 days.
From his apartment, he blogged almost daily and sent out e-mails and text messages detailing the arrests, harassment and detention of other activists to a network of dissidents, reporters and diplomats in China.
He lobbied for the release of Chen Guangcheng, a blind self-taught lawyer who was imprisoned after he documented forced abortions and other abuses.
In 2006, he was held for 41 days and questioned about a nationwide hunger strike he helped organize with another outspoken activist, Gao Zhisheng, to protest violence against dissidents.
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
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New charges against Islamic charity allege money-laundering link to a former congressman
By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star, Jan. 16, 2008
http://www.kansascity.com/105/v-print/story/448158.html
A federal grand jury has re-indicted a defunct Columbia, Mo., charity, accusing it of sending money to benefit an Afghan terrorist who has attacked U.S. forces there.
The indictment also accuses former U.S. Congressman Mark Deli Siljander of money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Grand jurors added the new charges to an existing indictment that accused the Islamic American Relief Agency and five of its officers and associates of sending money to Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s reign in violation of U.S. sanctions.
According to the new charges, the charity sent about $130,000 in 2003 and 2004 to bank accounts in Pakistan, allegedly for an orphanage housed in buildings owned by Glubuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan mujahedeen leader.
The U.S. government designated Hekmatyar as a global terrorist in February 2003 because of his links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The charges also accuse Siljander, a Republican who represented Michigan in Congress from 1981 to 1987, of receiving almost $50,000 from the charity in 2004. Siljander, who operates a Washington public relations firm, was hired to lobby Congress to remove the charity from a U.S. Senate Finance Committee list of nonprofit organizations suspected of being involved in supporting international terrorism.
Siljander did not return messages to his office seeking comment about the charges.
That orphanage in the Shamshatu refugee camp has been under scrutiny for some time. In 2005, federal prosecutors filed declassified documents in a civil lawsuit in Washington that alleged IARA had been supporting the children of Afghan “martyrs” at the orphanage.
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
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Padilla Sentenced to More Than 17 Years in Prison
By KIRK SEMPLE
nyt, January 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/22cnd-padilla.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
MIAMI — Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who was once accused by the government of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb” in the United States, was sentenced on Tuesday to 17 years and four months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to help Islamic jihadist fighters abroad.
The sentence was more lenient than the federal sentencing guidelines recommended and was a blow to the government, which had requested the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for Mr. Padilla, 37.
In explaining her decision, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court in Miami acknowledged the gravity of the crimes Mr. Padilla had committed. But she questioned the range and impact of the conspiracy, saying that there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere or that their actions had resulted in death or injury to anyone.
She also noted that defendants in other well-known American terrorism cases had received life sentences for more heinous crimes, including Zacharias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Terry L. Nichols, who was convicted of murder in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Over the objections of prosecutors, Judge Cooke gave Mr. Padilla credit for time served during his 3 1/2-year detention in a South Carolina military brig following his arrest in 2002 on suspicions that he had been involved in the “dirty bomb” plot, allegations the government eventually discarded.
During that detention, Mr. Padilla was subjected to prolonged isolation and intensive interrogations in conditions that the judge called “harsh.” The conditions, she said, “warrant consideration in the sentencing.”
The sentences, following a three-month trial and a seven-day sentencing hearing, brought to a close the latest chapter in Mr. Padilla’s extraordinary legal odyssey, which began with his arrest in May 2002 at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
John Ashcroft, who was then the attorney general, announced Mr. Padilla’s capture, saying that Mr. Padilla was part of an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive “dirty bomb” intended to cause “mass death and injury.”
“It’s definitely a defeat for the government,” said Jeanne Baker, a lawyer for Mr. Hassoun.
William Swor, a lawyer for Mr. Jayyousi, criticized the length of his client’s sentence. “The government has not made America safer nor promoted the rule of law,” he said. “The government has just made America less free.”
But Mr. Padilla’s mothers, Estela Lebron, said in comments to the media outside the courthouse that the Bush administration had waged a misguided prosecution against her son, calling it “insane.”
“He’s a human being and an American citizen,” she told reporters. “he’s not a terrorist.” She added: “This is the way they’re spending our money? ‘Hello?’ ”
Mr. Padilla’s detention became the centerpiece of a heated debate about the Bush administration’s approach to prosecuting terrorism.
Administration officials had long maintained that some terrorism suspects could be properly handled only with military detention and trials by military commissions, not in the civilian justice system. But the verdict against Mr. Padilla seemed to undercut the administration’s insistence and, in the eyes of critics of the administration’s approach, proved that the criminal justice system should have handled the case in the first place.
Padilla case a crime from start to finish
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
This is a tragedy from the criminal beginning. The gist of this tragedy is that, under the shield of "national security," the bush administration tortured padilla into insanity.
As I said above, the bush administration has seized powers prohibited by law and decency, and is not just using these powers against foreigners in secret, as is customary, but has brought these criminal tools of tyrants and dictators to their modern homeland.
We have a long and nasty history of using dictators, death squads, torture and disappearances to assert our political will around the world. It should surprise no one that that we would eventually use these powers upon ourselves.
Torture
article: Bush can Torture anyone he wants
article: ABA Condemns Bush for Torture
essay: Our Rights, not their's
check 99 l5
article: Red Cross Condemns Bush Torture
essay: Press hides Torture
article: gonzales calls geneva conventions quaint
essay: torture begins with chaining to floor, slapping and freezing, and ends with waterboarding
links: Torture Tapes? really! Destruction Links
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10) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.
Two Huge US Intelligence Centers Go up in Iraq
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 113
June 25, 2003, 1:07 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://debka.com/article.php?aid=512
This exclusive report appeared for the first time in DEBKAfile’s intelligence weekly published on June 20.
The Americans are secretly building two giant intelligence facilities in Iraq at a cost of some half a billion dollars, according to an exclusive report received from DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources. US engineering and construction units are setting up what amounts to an “intelligence city” on a site north of the oil city of Mosul in Kurdistan and a second facility in Baghdad’s Saadun district on the east bank of the Tigris. Our military experts infer from the vast dimensions of the two projects and their colossal expense that it is Washington’s intention to retain a large US military presence in Iraq in the long term, for a decade at least.
The new installations will greatly enhance America’s military, intelligence and electronic command and control over Iraq and its neighbors, notably Iran and Syria. The Mosul facility will guard northern Iraq’s oilfields and the pipelines carrying Iraqi gas and oil to Mediterranean terminals. Its instruments will reach into every corner of Iran and Syria, replacing America’s electronic eyes and ears in southern Turkey. This facility will be activated a section at a time according to need. Upon completion at the end of 2005, it will employ an operating staff of around 4,000 American intelligence personnel and electronic engineers.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East sources report that the intelligence center going up near Mosul is causing much nervousness in Damascus and Tehran. Both governments understand that when the first sections are activated in three months time, not a single military or intelligence move of theirs will go unseen by America’s electronic spies – and that goes for terrorist activity as well.
The functions assigned the Baghdad station are different. While the Mosul center will provide early warning against external threats to the US military presence in Iraq, the Baghdad station will stand guard over America’s political and military control of the capital and its satellite towns, including the Sunni enclave cities of Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit.
To clear a site for the giant facility, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report the Americans expropriated the luxury Baghdad Hotel complex that straddles Saadun Street to the east and Abu Nuw’as Street, which is a section of the Corniche along the Tigris, as well as the surrounding blocks between Firodos Square and the city’s main bus terminal to the north at Naser Square.
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., February, 2008
I printed this article from 2003 to supplement gate's announcement that we were in for quite a long stay in iraq.
The political and military infrastructure necessary for an extended stay are in place. Plans for an iranian war are on the table, and god knows what will happen if they pour any more gasoline on pakistan.
note that we just fired yet another assassination missile into the pakistani mountain country. The deaths will no doubt create yet another martyr, and possibly add to the forces of internal breakdown in pakistan.
the situation in iraq: continued deception by administration, committee, 1-30-08
Iraqi quagmire
We're never leaving iraq, mcclatchy, 1-17-08
US Planning to Stay until 2018, nyt, 1-15-08
endless war
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war
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1] chief lawman of us finds no crime in torture
2] American Gitmo victim lawyers claim extensive torture
3] Reprise 2006: Bush seeks retroactive war crime protection
4] Reporter persecuted for exposing bush's illegal search programs
5] State Secrets: it's not the number, it's the crimes it hides
6] White house destroyed 473 days of incriminating emails
7] Chinese police state seizes another person brave enough to expose their abuses
8] Freedom of association curbed for muslims
9] Padilla sentenced: the real criminals are in the white house
10] reprise, 2003: huge intelligence gathering bases established in iraq