This Week in Gitmo & Torture

Oh, shed a tear for Robert Gates who woefully laments that the Bush administration just can't shut down Gitmo. It's "stuck", you see, because some countries either refuse to repatriate their prisoners or are willing to but might set them free. The fact that Bushco created a hellish legal limbo by asserting that the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War does not apply to the so-called Gitmo "unlawful enemy combatants" has brought the Pentagon to where it is now which is, as one of my favourite bloggers Marisacat would put it: is one huge "congealing fuckball".

Come to think of it, has anyone asked Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton how they will go about fulfilling their promises to close Gitmo considering these prisoners are basically men without a country now?

Meanwhile, a defiant Afghan prisoner became the 6th to boycott the sham military tribunal system this week:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — An Afghan detainee was dragged from his cell to his first pretrial hearing at Guantanamo on Wednesday, then refused to participate, telling the judge he felt "helpless."

Mohammed Kamin joined a growing detainee boycott of the war-crimes trials at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in southeast Cuba. The military judge, Air Force Col. W. Thomas Cumbie, said Kamin tried to bite and spit on a guard on the way to the courtroom.

Wouldn't you? The fact is that Kamin is helpless. These are nothing but show trials.

And, shouldn't this fact be a matter of huge concern to the American public?

The U.S. military says it plans to prosecute roughly 80 of the 270 men imprisoned at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to terrorism, the Taliban or al-Qaida.

What of the rest of them? Detained indefinitely without charge? Is there anyone, besides the staunchest, delusional, neocon bedwetters out there who still thinks what's going on in Gitmo is anything near humane?

I'm sorry. I forgot that the US public is too wrapped up in election fever right now while it tries to survive the war-created recession and ridiculous gas prices to pay attention to a little thing like the human rights of people its government has shipped off to some prison in Cuba to rot forever. And protesting and impeachment are just so passé. The Dems are so busy, after all. (Apparently, it's taking years for them to actually find their collective spine. Don't hold your breath. It's probably somewhere underneath that table that Pelosi took impeachment off of before the last election.)

And yet there are still those who believe the Democrats will actually do something quickly about what's happening there (just wait until they win the White House back...next year...maybe...they say) and are quite happy to natter on about superdelegates and Michigan and Florida - as if that's all going to mean anything in the scheme of things considering the torture, death, and destruction this administration has brought to the world. All of the candidates crow "the US does not torture" as if it's true and these people are America's next best hope? And their supporters actually let them get away with saying that without challenging it?

Just how many Americans even heard about this testimony this week?

Bremen, Germany - In a landmark congression-al hearing Tuesday, former Guantánamo detainee Murat Kurnaz described abuses he said he endured while in US custody – among them electric shock, simulated drowning, and days spent chained by his arms to the ceiling of an airplane hangar.

Lawmakers were also provided with recently declassified reports, which show that US and German intelligence agencies had determined as early as 2002 that Mr. Kurnaz had no known links to terrorism. Still, he was held for four more years.

And the Pentagon's reaction to the torture allegations:

Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to comment on his treatment, but said in a written statement, "The abuses Mr. Kurnaz alleges are not only unsubstantiated and implausible, they are simply outlandish."

Implausible? Outlandish? They were policy at the time, sir. Your president has even admitted that. There are memos that prove it. Maybe you should talk to the FBI:

Does this sound familiar? Muslim men are stripped in front of female guards and sexually humiliated. A prisoner is made to wear a dog’s collar and leash, another is hooded with women’s underwear. Others are shackled in stress positions for hours, held in isolation for months, and threatened with attack dogs.

You might think we are talking about that one cell block in Abu Ghraib, where President Bush wants the world to believe a few rogue soldiers dreamed up a sadistic nightmare. These atrocities were committed in the interrogation centers in American military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And they were not revealed by Red Cross officials, human rights activists, Democrats in Congress or others the administration writes off as soft-on-terror.

They were described in a painful report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, based on the accounts of hundreds of F.B.I. agents who saw American interrogators repeatedly mistreat prisoners in ways that the agents considered violations of American law and the Geneva Conventions. According to the report, some of the agents began keeping a “war crimes file” — until they were ordered to stop.

These were not random acts. It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials.

[and on the article goes...]

And what did the White House do about those warnings from the FBI? It ignored them, as expected. And we're not talking about low-level staffers here. We're talking about officials like John Ashcroft and Condoleezza Rice. They knew what was happening and did nothing. So, excuse me for wanting to scream when I see some Pentagon hack feign outrage about a man's torture allegations by sticking his head up his ass while mumbling "the US does not torture". Only an inhumane fool in the deepest denial believes that. Apparently, there are still far too many people in the United States who also fit into that category or who simply don't care anymore as they wait, wait, wait for the next presidential daddy (or mommy) to fix everything. Guess who else is waiting? All of those unseen prisoners who don't have a voice. Just how much longer should they be expected to wait?
 

FBI: Blackwater Killed 14 Iraqis 'Without Cause'

Via The NYT:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Huge news, right? Blackwater's going to get what's coming to it, you say?

Read the fine print:

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.

And what kind of bullshit is this? The State Department covering up the crimes of Blackwater?

In addition, investigators did not have access to statements taken from Blackwater employees, who had given statements to State Department investigators on the condition that their statements would not be used in any criminal investigation like the one being conducted by the F.B.I.

As the article states, this will be the first big case that newly confirmed Michael (who wouldn't say that waterboarding is torture) Mukasey will have to deal with. I guess Blackwater's Eric Prince should be sending a gold-plated thank you card to J Paul Bremer for ensuring that US contractors can't be prosecuted under Iraqi law. And, considering how this misadministration operates, he'll have another one to send out once Mukasey comes up with some obscure Bushco-style reasoning that will let these murderers get away with their crimes in the US too.

Like Smedley Butler said: "War is a racket". And with the Bush administration, that racket resembles organized crime to an amazing degree. It's all about who you know - not what you do.
 

Some Censored Portions of the Arar Report Released

Newly released portions of the Arar Inquiry report which had previously been censored - apparently to protect CSIS, the CIA, the FBI and the RCMP - show that Canadian security officials knew that information they relied on that damned Arar to a one year stay via "extraordinary rendition" in a Syrian jail had been obtained through the use of torture and that he most likely would be tortured as well.

The Globe and Mail offers the following summary but you can read the documents here (.pdf file - the previously censored material is highlighted by bold text).

Newly declassified findings of Judge O'Connor's report indicate a host of foreign agencies shoulder the blame for what happened:

• Investigating Mounties had no experience in dealing with the CIA before 2001, but a relationship began to develop after the Sept. 11 attacks that year.

• As anticipated, information from abroad – likely the statements by Mr. El Maati* – found its way into Canadian searches and interviews conducted in January, 2002. "When applying for search warrants, Project A-O Canada relied on information obtained from a country with a poor human rights record." The report adds that "no assessment was made of the reliability of that information."

• In the fall of 2002, the information was still being treated as credible. "In September 2002, the RCMP filed an application for a telephone warrant … [it] referred to [Ahmed Abou El Maati's] confession to the Syrians that he undertook pilot training at the request of his brother and that he accepted a mission to be a suicide bomber by exploding a truck bomb on Parliament hill."

• Even though the RCMP was made aware that the confession was extracted by "extreme coercion," they insisted that it was "still accurate and continues to be true." In this period, RCMP investigators had heard of Mr. El Maati's complaints of torture but dismissed them as "damage control" and asserted the confession corroborated their earlier investigation of him.

• It was the CIA that sent questions to Canada about Mr. Arar when U.S. border guards arrested him in October, 2002. The CIA, which sent him to the Middle East in shackles aboard a leased Gulfstream jet, appears to have been driving the process to send Mr. Arar to Syria.

• Canadian officials were knowledgeable about the U.S. practice of "rendering" suspects to harsh interrogations third-countries. "I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him," one CSIS official wrote in an email on October 10, 2002 – two days after Mr. Arar was quietly sent to that country, and on to Syria, for questioning.

• CSIS visited Syria once Mr. Arar was in custody and came back with the impression that officials there "looked upon the matter as more of a nuisance than anything." He remained jailed there for nearly a year.

(* Truck driver Ahmad Abou El Maati, just two months after 9/11, “confessed” in Syria to plotting a truck bomb attack in Canada at the behest of his brother, who is still considered a fugitive al-Qaeda suspect.

The truck driver has since returned to Canada, uncharged, and recanted his statements as purely the product of torture. He has also expressed regret that he was forced into naming Canadian associates of his, including Maher Arar, including saying that he saw the telecommunications engineer in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Canadian intelligence agencies knew about the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" practices since that program was authorized by Clinton in 1995. But, for the RCMP to expect that a warning it sent out with the supposed intel it had on Arar would cause the CIA not to act without its permission shows how incredibly naive Canadian officials chose to be in this case.

Again, members of Project A-O Canada had little experience or training to
assist them in handling the information-sharing challenges confronting them. This was a new environment for them. For example, they had never dealt with the CIA. As observed by the Assistant Criminal Operations (CROPS) officer, with “A” Division, Inspector Garry Clement, the CIA had a lot more latitude than law enforcement agencies when it came to the war on terror. Project A-O Canada was dealing with American agencies that were more sophisticated in matters of national security and might not always play by the rules Project members would expect.

Considering the CIA's shady reputation and history of illegal, covert activities - including projects like MKULTRA in Canada - one would think the average Canadian intelligence official would know better than to trust the CIA to do everything above board.

To suddenly feign surprise, after providing information on Mr Arar that was false and that was known to have been coerced via the torture of El Maati (a fact which, as the newly revealed portions reveal, was not presented to the judge who handled the telephone warrant in this case) truly rings hollow.

There is definitely enough blame to go around and while Bush repeated again during a press conference today that that the US does not torture, anyone with any knowledge of the CIA's history should have known better than to believe that Mr Arar - or anyone in CIA custody - would be safe.

The judge who ordered the release of these censored passages should be applauded for shedding ever more light on exactly how these ugly covert actions operate because, as much as the Bush administration bloviates about its so-called respect for human rights, the reality is painfully obvious: they'll do anything if they think it will advance the "war on terror", even if that means siding with people and other governments who use torture.

And the Democrats certainly don't get a free pass on this issue either, some of whom helped pass the Military Commissions Act - enabling prosecutorial immunity for CIA torturers - and further eroding legal rights by enabling the passage of the FISA bill last week. The heavy-handedness of the US government is institutional.

This isn't over yet. US officials must be held accountable.

Update: See my related post - Video: The Abuse of Secrecy in the Arar Affair
 

Valerie Plame Testifies; FBI Issues Terrorism Alert

Nightly news anchor: Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame testified today that her cover was carelessly and recklessly revealed by the White House ...oh ...wait just a minute here ...we've just received a bulletin from the FBI that, and I quote, "suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police".

Oh my! Well, it seems they've also concluded that "parents and children have nothing to fear" and "there are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety", according to the news release.

You know, two of my little darlings ride what my daughter likes to call the "cheesewagons" every single day. I guess we all need to be just a bit more careful these days when it comes to taking a second look at who's driving our children to school and back just in case there might be any "suspicious activity" going on.

My, that's frightening!

Coming up, as soon as we return from our short commercial break, we'll let you know what to expect for your weekend weather.

Flashback to 2005:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

(That confession just never gets old...)
 

The FBI is Breaking the Rules, Again

You know, it's sad these days that the Bush administration and the powers that be have so trampled on people's rights that the public outrage meter is actually broken from extreme overuse.

Take the latest revelation about the FBI's abuse of those dreaded national security letters.

...[Justice Department Inspector General] Fine found that FBI agents used national security letters without citing an authorized investigation, claimed "exigent" circumstances that did not exist in demanding information and did not have adequate documentation to justify the issuance of letters.

In at least two cases, the officials said, Fine found that the FBI obtained full credit reports using a national security letter that could lawfully be employed to obtain only summary information. In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released. The FBI "sequestered" that information, a law enforcement official said last night, but did not destroy it.

You can only bang your head against the wall so many times before you end up with brain damage over it all.

9/11 changed everything alright. It opened the door to the most corrupt, secretive, intrusive, destructive and downright fascist forms or powermongering that ordinary citizens just don't have much of a defence against anymore. Your mail is read. Your phones are tapped. Your phone records are seized. You're on camera whenever you step outside.

Those things have already been going on for a long time as everybody knows, but when government sanctions even more invasive methods of picking through every single detail of your mundane life, what do you have left? And beyond that, when agencies like the FBI already have far more legal powers than they ought to in what's supposed to be a free and democratic society and they take it upon themselves to go even further by trying to stetch the law when it's convenient for them, then what?

Oh, the Democrats will try to fix things that are so obviously wrong with the Patriot Act but, as with everything they'll try to reform or change, Bush will pull out his handy veto pen and basically flip them the bird with it. The courts aren't of much help either. Any controversial rulings that actually threaten Bush's unitary executive (kingly) power will be appealed by government attorneys and will eventually, way down the road, be taken up by the Supreme Court - a long and tedious process.

In the meantime, life ticks on and more people will have their rights and privacy violated while good old smirking attorney general Alberto Gonzales stares into the cameras and tells people not to worry - he's on top of things. And Bush will give even more speeches about the war on terror to scare people into compliance while their brains turn to nodding bubbles of mush. So it will go.

After all, if you're not one of the bad guys, why worry? Right? Now there's an attitude that's killing everything America is supposedly supposed to stand for, although it really hasn't stood for those ideals for a very, very long time if, in fact, those ideals were ever more than just comforting illusions that people had about their great country whose history of corruption goes back centuries to its very founding.

It's no wonder then that the energy to keep fighting those in the no longer hallowed halls of the White House is so hard to come by these days. So few take up the cause on behalf of so many and citizens hope that's enough. It isn't, of course, especially when that fight consists of continual below the belt punches from the opposing side. They don't play by the rules and that's how they win, something that those who want to set things right seem to have to do in order to get anywhere, but won't. It's a a painfully uneven match.

Maybe when those who get tired of watching it from the sidelines decide to join in with a willingness to start a massive proverbial rumble, things will change. Then again, the government will probably just send in the riot squads like they always do. But if no one takes that chance, how we will they ever know?