The Supreme Court, with a 5-4 vote, along the anticipated lines, ruled that Guantanamo detainees have a right to contest their detention in court.
I don’t know whether to be elated at the decision, or scared that it was so close.
Category: Terrorism
USAF Bombs Pakistani Soldiers, and it Pisses Them Off
Go figure. A trigger happy, “shoot first and ask questions later”, doctrine, and when we kill their soldiers, it pisses off our nominal ally Pakistan.
They called it a “cowardly act”.
Actions like this put all aid from Pakistan at risk.
New Gitmo Revalation: Pentagon Directed Destruction of Evidence
The operation manual that the Pentagon gave interrogators directed them to, “destroy their written notes in case of being summoned to testify regarding alleged ill-treatment of detainees”, seehere, here, and here.
In an affidavit signed by [Omar Khadr Defense Attorney] Kuebler, the manual is quoted as saying, “The mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify, keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues.”
This flies in the face of every tenet of modern law and jurisprudence.
Ignoring the fact that Khadr was a 15 year old child at the time of the event, and should therefore be treated for trauma as a child soldier, the idea that the operations manual calls for destruction of evidence on the theory that it might prove inconvenient is outrageous.
The person who wrote this manual should be jailed, not just fired.
Dang, No Lawsuit Against MediaDefender
You may recall that I wrote about MediaDefender’s terrorist DDOS attack on internet TV station Revision3 last Friday.
As promised, I sent Revision3 an email saying that if they wanted to sue, and set up a legal fund, I’d throw in a few bucks.
Well they got back to me, and they are not suing, at least not now.
reprinted with permission
Jim Louderback <@@@@@@@@> Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 3:24 PM
To: @@@@@@@@@Ha, that’s a good idea. Probably won’t do it, but I appreciate the thoughts!
jim
–snipped forward form support email—
—– Forwarded Message —–
From: “Matthew Saroff” <@@@@@@@@>
To: @@@@@@@@
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 12:10:55 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: The MediaDefender DDOS Attack, Will You Set Up a Legal Fund?Have you considered putting up a link for a legal fund to sue those folks?
If you did, I’d throw in a few bucks.
—
Matthew Saroff
Standard Disclaimer Applies
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, I Gotta Blog
http://40yrs.blogspot.com
And in the Other War that Bush is Losing
The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, just held a news conference to show that he was in charge:
The impunity of Mehsud’s behavior has outraged the administration of George W. Bush, which is pressing the Pakistani government to arrest and prosecute him.
But the Pakistani government, which at times has considered Mehsud an ally and is now fearful of his power, appears reluctant to hunt him down. Days before his news conference, Pakistani forces pulled back from his realm in South Waziristan as part of the peace deals.
Yes, Bush and His Evil Minions™ are losing two wars simultaneously, not just one, as evidenced by the press conference of the man who likely whacked Benazir Bhutto.
RIAA Employed Terrorist Takes Down Web TV Network
MediaDefender, a criminal software firm employed by media companies to engage in illegal attacks on sites that they deem infringing, just took down the completely legal web broadcasting firm Revision3, which is, conveniently enough, a direct competitor to MediaDefender’s parent company.
It Revision3 uses BitTorrent to distribute its programming, but only its own stuff, but MediaDefender hacked in using a back door to place their own material on the server, and when this back door was shut down after it was discovered, a massive (8000/second) DDOS attack occurred.
At this point they say that they lack the resources to sue, but I’ve sent them an email saying that I would throw in a few bucks for a legal fund.
Refuting George Washington, Bush and His Evil Minions™ say, “Let There Be Kings”
That’s what they are asking for in the Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident of the United States who was arrested on US soil.
They are claiming that the President can wave a wand, and call anyone an enemy combatant, and detain them without trial or access to counsel forever.
If the president has this right, than we have no rights.
They claim that he’s a major terrorist, but they are unwilling to try him.
It’s clear that the political fallout of a successful prosecution would be positive Bush and the Republicans, which implies very strongly that they have no case whatsoever.
Well, This Just Makes You Proud to be an American
Now we are using guards to drag physically drag detainees into court.
While some of these cases might be tough, it is clear that many are not, but they are still irrevocably tainted by the vile, and quite frankly un-American techniques endorsed and encouraged by the torture fetish crowd in the Bush White House.
5 Gitmo detainees to face 9/11 capital case – 05/12/2008 – MiamiHerald.com
In what is rather politically convenient timing, the Guantanamo kangaroo court has formally decided to charge Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ammar al Baluchi; Ramzi bin al Shibh, a Yemeni who allegedly organized the Sept. 11 suicide squads; and alleged co-conspirators Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi with capital offenses relating to the 911 attacks.
If the Bush administration gets its way, they’ll try to have the trial in process in September and October, though I think that the defense might throw a monkey wrench into the works.
The potential 6th defendant, Mohammad al-Qahtani, had all charges dropped, probably because all of the evidence against him was as a result of torture, though Paul Keil of TPM has an alternate hypothesis:
The Convening Authority Susan Crawford had planned to include charges against Mohammed al Qahtani, the supposed 20th hijacker, along with the other five, but Qahtani has been struck from the charging sheet. Now, Qahtani’s lawyer has immediately jumped to the conclusion that Crawford’s decision to dismiss the charges affirms “that everything he said at Guantánamo was extracted through torture — or the threat of torture,” and that his treatment was “so well documented and unconscionable that he is unprosecutable.” But I gotta figure that this crew is sharper than that. Crawford can bring those chargers against Qahtani at any time. The 20th hijacker deserves his own unique launch, to be sure. Maybe in October?
Me, I’m a cynic, so I’m inclined to go with Mr. Keil.
Sami al Hajj Released from Guantanamo
He’s a cameraman for al Jazeera, and he was held for 5 years without charge.
The government claimed, “a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of Sami al Hajj by U.S. forces.”
If that were true, why would he be released now.
Disgraceful.
Liberty City 7 6 To Be Tried For Third Time – Miami News Story – WPLG Miami
This is getting ridiculous. A bunch of sad sacks wanted some uniforms so that they could play soldier, the were contacted by a paid informant, and while they though that they were scamming him, he was scamming them, and the FBI, to get an al Queida payoff, but they will try these bozos again.
They are trying to get a conviction based on the fact that these guys are black and scary, which might work if they weren’t utterly pathetic instead of scary.
We Live in “The Onion” World
According to the BBC, Al Queida is upset, because Iran is accusing Israel of committing 911 to get the Americans to invade Iraq and other places.
They did it, and they want credit for it.
The Onion, March 31:
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9/11 Conspiracy Theories ‘Ridiculous,’ Al Qaeda Says
You gotta be $#@$$ing me…Nostradamus had nothing on these guys.
Anti Terror Clown Show: Liberty City Seven
After another few hundred thousand dollars of tax payer money, we have another mistrial.
It’s clear what happened here, a bunch of losers were contacted by an FBI informant, and they thought that he was al Queida, and that they could scam him out of money, uniforms, and maybe some assault rifles.
Fundamentally the real problem is that the material support statutes are so vague and so broad that the judge can’t throw this out of court with a big “BS” scrawled on the indictment.
Iraq Update
First, we are seeing
another surge in bombings across Iraq, which should make one doubt about the claims of success with the US military surge.
Part of the problem, of course, is that Maliki is fundamentally disinterested in anything other his own very sort term sectarian power needs. First, he actively participated in ethnic cleansing, and now the only groups providing any meaningful aid to the million or so internally displaced Iraqis are the militias.
As to the conflict with Sadr, which is all about Maliki trying to gain an electoral advantage, not Iran or “lawlessness”, Major General Jeffery Hammond has announced that the US military has no intention of moving any further into Sadr city, which sounds an awful lot like the start of a “Fallujah moment”, when the generals declare victory and pull out.
That being said, the Iraqi troops are not waiting for a declaration of victory, they are leaving now.
The episode began when Major Sattar, the leader of an Iraqi company that had taken up positions 700 yards in front of the Americans, suddenly appeared at Company B’s field headquarters in the southern part of Sadr City.
The major’s company had replaced a more battle-hardened Iraqi unit just two days earlier, and he had been unhappy to find that he would be occupying a position to the front of the better trained and equipped Americans.
I’d be unhappy if I were told that my job was to be a speed bump too.
US Air Power as a Force for Terror, as Opposed to a Weapon Against Terror
Tom Engelhardt makes a very convincing case that US air power is making terrorism worse, not better.
His thesis is that, “U.S. air power has, in the last six and a half years, been an effective force in a war for terror, not against it.”
When one considers the nature of the United States’ use of air power, particularly on a strategic level, it has largely proved a failure.
In WWII, when the entire 8th air force was focused on bombing the German aircraft industry during the “big week”, aircraft production increased.
In Viet Nam, bombing increased the support of the Viet Cong in the south, and of the general citizenry in the north, as the North Vietnamese civil defense authorities have attested to repeatedly.
While strategic bombing is more often a failure than not, and is currently failing in both Iraq and Afghanistan because it is the strongest recruiting tool of Jihadists, but the military, including the Army and, to a lesser extent, the Marines, continue to call air strikes in rather than clearing buildings.
It is a fundamental error in doctrine that permeates the US military establishment.
Ashcroft Did Not Sign off on Yoo “No 4th Amendment” Memo
This is an very interesting development. It appears to me that this renders the legal authority of Yoo memorandum to a level akin to graffiti on a bathroom wall:
Neither the attorney general at the time, John D. Ashcroft, nor his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were aware of the 81-page memo when it was written and sent to the Pentagon in March 2003, according to several former senior department officials. The Pentagon was told in December 2003 to disregard the legal advice in the memo after Justice Department lawyers raised objections.
The sequence of events is now that someone demanded this memo, got a copy, and sent it out for implementation without any sort of legal review. This memo said that “military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures”.
For anyone who wishes to assert that DoJ opinions indemnify law breakers (Mukasey), it becomes increasingly clear that the political appointees of the DoJ created a clown show, and that John Ashcroft was one of those showing the greatest integrity.*
*He doesn’t have much, he just had the most integrity. Still, that is something I never expected to write.
No, This Is Not The Onion
You just have to love this.
The Badr Brigades are militia of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, the artist formerly known as SCIRI).
In addition ISCI and Maliki are doing their level best to ensure that they occupy as many positions in the security services, police and military, as possible.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the Badr Brigades fought for the Iranians. They were a part of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which the State Department has declared a terrorist organization.
As a result, these folks are literally collecting a pension from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
So, the dog that we choose to hunt with in Iraq is literally pulling a pension from the Ayatollahs.
And in the World of the Blatantly Obvious
Treasury undersecretary Stuart A. Levey told Congress that, “Saudi Arabia remains the world’s leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow“.
Well duh.
DoD Confirms: No Ties Between Saddam and Al Queida
Gee, a lot of people were saying that before the ill conceived, ill planned and disastrous invasion.
Of course, Doug Feith, the stupidest f&^%ing man in the world, thinks that it’s all the CIA’s fault.
Climb Down on Latin American Tensions
Venezuela has reopened its embassy in Columbia
This is another example how Bush and His Evil Minions™ have poisoned counterterrorism operations. Before Bush and his attempts to overthrow and murder Chavez and his invasion of Iraq, this would have been a major diplomatic incident, bit you would not have seen a mobilization on the borders.
There are legitimate “hot pursuit” situations, though this increasingly appears not to have been one, and I’m expecting a Sy Hersh article in the next week or so casting doubt on the provenance of the laptops “captured” in the operation.
Some facts are clear though.
- The FARC is a terrorist organization that is not much more than organized crime with a veneer of politics.
- Chavez is a pompous jerk and a lousy leader.
- As bad as Chavez is, the political classes of Venezuela are all considerably worse.
- Mending the relationship with Chavez may be one of the bigger challenges facing Bush’s successor, unless it’s McCain, in which case, he’ll invade.