Senator Leahy Just Ripped Alberto Gonzales a new hole over torturing suspected terrorists. Haw haw. Guess Alberto didn't get the memo that it's not Republican Patty-Cake Land up on Capitol Hill any longer...

Thank goodness that we have a guy with a spine like Senator Leahy in that job now. Where's Hilary Clinton's outrage? Or Barack Obama's angry statement about the fact that our President is a willy-nilly torturer?

Another Gitmo Innocent Speaks Out

Go read the story of Gholam Ruhani in the Washington Post. Ruhani is the third Gitmo prisoner whose story has been broken in the papers, and once more, it's particularly compelling because he's been held at the naval station for five years despite the lack of evidence against him, and in spite of the fact that all evidence points at him having simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time... but he is still being held indefinitely. Because he's the "worst of the worst."

The 23-year-old Afghan shopkeeper, who spoke a little English, was seized near his hometown of Ghazni when he agreed to translate for a Taliban government official seeking a meeting with a U.S. soldier.

Ruhani is still at Guantanamo, marking the fifth anniversary of the prison and his own captivity. He remains as stunned about his fate, according to transcripts of his conversations with military officers, as he was when U.S. military police led him inside the razor wire on Jan. 11, 2002, and accused him of being America's enemy.

"I never had a war against the United States, and I am surprised I'm here," Ruhani told his captors during his first chance to hear the military's reasons for holding him, three years after he arrived at Guantanamo. "I tried to cooperate with Americans. I am no enemy of yours."

Now prison and prisoner are forever linked, joined by hasty decisions made in war and trapped by that fateful beginning.

But after five years and more than $600 million, Gitmo has failed to quickly and fairly handle the cases of hundreds of people such as Ruhani, against whom the government has no clear evidence of a role in attacks against the United States, according to current and former government officials and attorneys for detainees.

"We of course had to make snap judgments in the battlefield," said one administration official involved in reviewing Guantanamo cases, who spoke anonymously to avoid angering superiors. "Where we had problems was that once we had individuals in custody, no one along the layers of review wanted to take a risk. So they would take a shred of evidence that a detainee was associated with another bad person and say that's a reason to keep them."

That policy, and persistent reports of detainee abuse inside Guantanamo's walls, have provided rallying points for Islamic radicals, undermined international support for U.S. efforts to track down terrorists and ignited a legal effort that has repeatedly embarrassed the administration.

"Guantanamo took on a life of its own," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former U.S. ambassador at large for war crime issues. "What started as a solution to an immediate problem became both a more permanent place and a cause celebre internationally."

President Bush, relying on advisers' untested legal theories, declared a week after the prison opened that the captives were not entitled to Geneva Conventions protections or prisoner-of-war status and could be held in Cuba, without charges, indefinitely.

Between its opening and Feb. 14, 2002, the number of prisoners at Guantanamo swelled to 300. In late January of that year, Vice President Cheney said the detainees were "the worst of a very bad lot" and added: "They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans."

But of the 773 detainees who have spent time in Guantanamo, the government has released roughly half, most because they had no information and no role in any fighting. The majority were sent home after the evidence against each was formally reviewed at military hearings required in 2004 by the Supreme Court, which rejected the Bush administration's claim that it could detain foreign nationals indefinitely without such sessions.

Of the 393 prisoners who remain today, the military has determined that 85 pose so little threat, they should be transferred to their home countries. Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because some evidence about the prisoners is classified, estimate that about 200 pose a danger to Americans.

One major obstacle for Ruhani and dozens of others still at the prison is nationality. The U.S. government has determined that Afghanistan, and a few other countries, cannot keep track of released detainees who the United States believes are low-risk but need monitoring.

Afghans make up the largest group of current detainees. Yemenis and Saudis, whose countries either cannot handle released detainees or do not want them, also remain in large numbers.

The detainees in that first group of 20 are emblematic of Guantanamo's prisoners. Half have been released. Of the remaining 10, one is David Hicks -- prisoner No. 2 -- an Australian who fought in the Kosovo Liberation Army, then converted to Islam and was captured in Afghanistan. Two are admitted Taliban commanders.

Three others are more like Ruhani, with public files that appear to make them unlikely enemies of the United States.

One is Shakhrukh Hamiduva, an 18-year-old Uzbek refugee who fled his country after the government there killed one of his uncles and jailed other relatives. He tried to cross the border from Afghanistan when U.S. bombs started falling but was captured by a tribal leader and sold to U.S. forces for a bounty. He said soldiers told him he would be released, but instead he ended up in Cuba.

"We went after small fries at every turn," said Neal Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who helped argue the Supreme Court case last June that struck down the government's original plan for military trials. "Gitmo blew our credibility. And it's going to take a long time to get it back."

When is someone in the Bush White House going to realize that Donald Rumsfeld has been fired for a reason, and that ALL of his ideas were stupid, especially the one about opening a prison on foreign soil and holding innocent people there indefinitely? Oh, right, that would require a bit of thinking about the matter, instead of reflexively defending stupid decisions that have already been made.

A Voice From Gitmo's Darkness

I'm fond of blogging about Gitmo. Oh, sweet Gitmo, apple of Bush's eye... how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. Gitmo stands as THE premiere example of what's this entire Administration: (1) It's secretive, (2) It's illegal, (3) they know it's illegal, that it breaks multiple laws and treaties and they don't care, (4) They lie about what happens there, (5) Torture happens there, (6) Innocents are imprisoned there and they know it, (7) Children are imprisoned there and they know it, (8) It violates every notion and legal precept that underlies our Constitution; habeus corpus, fast & fair trial, jury of your peees, right to an attorney, protection against self-incrimination, right to a impartial judge, the right not to be tortured and have whatever you blurt out to make the pain stop suddenly held against you in court, the right to face your accuser... the list goes on and on and on about what's wrong with America's Gulag™ at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

I've written about Bush & Cheney's zealous use of waterboarding, dog-baiting (and biting), freezing temperatures, sleep deprivation, stress-positions, loud noises, Koran-defacing (yes, it happened) and more. I've written myself blue in the face. So, let me stop writing for a second and turn this space over to Jumah al-Dossari, a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain in his own words, excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys:

I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.

In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.

At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.

During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.

I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.

But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.

Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.

This is a Gulag of President Bush's making. The Supreme Court ordered him to unmake it and instead he twisted their rebuke into a sign of assent. The man is just this side of a South American dictator, and the crimes that happen at Guantánamo aren't his alone... they belong also to the 52% of Americans who re-elected him, but most especially to the 32% who still inexplicably support his every action. Jummah might say "I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States" but he is WRONG. Those soldiers represent the express desires of a stupid, uncaring population of the priviledged and uninformed. Those soldiers and their tortures represent a White House which redefined torture into a state policy. Those soldiers and their waterboarding represent a brutal thug of a President who refuses to admit the lessons that HUNDREDS of years of police work has proven: that beatings and torture produce false confessions and that personal interaction and produce actionable information. Bush doesn't have these people in Gitmo because he thinks they're truly guilty... the military itself has told him repeatedly that this is NOT true.

No, Bush has those people there because he likes torturing people. His personal relationship with God assuages his guilt... but what assuages OURS? Gitmo has been in existence for five years now, with no end in sight. Call your Senators and Congressperson and tell them enough is enough.

Black Dahlia's Top Ten Most Outrageous Civil Liberties Violations of 2006

Dahlia Lithwick, one of the best writers out there about about legal matters, has a great article today at Slate.com where she lists her "Bill Of Wrongs" for 2006:

10. Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui
9. Guantanamo Bay
8. Slagging the Media
7. Slagging the Courts
6. The State-Secrets Doctrine
5. Government Snooping
4. Extraordinary Rendition
3. Abuse of Jose Padilla
2. The Military Commissions Act of 2006
1. Hubris

Good list. Good writing about each point in the list. Go read the article.

Europeans Helped CIA Kidnap Squad

So much for the "But we had No Idea this was happening to our citizens" defense.

Also, note that these are only the cases which this report could PROVE. There are quite a few more, I would guess, that they know about but can't prove, or sadly, don't even know about.

Once more, WHEN did America become the world's jailer?
---
Testimony Helps Detail CIA's Post-9/11 Reach
By Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post
Saturday 16 December 2006

Europeans told of plans for abductions.

Milan - A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal: Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism suspects and fly them out of the country?

The CIA man did not identify which targets he had in mind but was "expressly referring to the possibility of picking up a suspected terrorist in Italy, bringing him to an airport and sending him from there to a foreign country," Battelli, now retired, recalled in a deposition.

This initial secret contact and others that followed, disclosed in newly released documents, show the speed and breadth with which the CIA applied in post-9/11 Europe a tactic it had long reserved for the Third World - "extraordinary rendition," the extrajudicial abduction of Islamic radicals overseas for interrogation in friendly countries.

A year after the first contact, the CIA officer held another meeting with his Italian counterparts, this time sharing a list of more than 10 "dangerous people" the agency was tracking in Italy, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a deposition from Gen. Gustavo Pignero, another high-ranking Italian military intelligence official. "It was clear that this was an aggressive search project, that their willingness to employ illicit means was clear," Pignero said, adding that the list was later destroyed and he could not recall the names.

U.S. spies drew up suspect lists with the help of European intelligence agencies and chased some of the men around the globe before putting a brake on the operations in early 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, according to documents unearthed in criminal investigations, lawsuits and parliamentary inquiries.

All told, the U.S. agency took part in the seizure of at least 10 European citizens or legal immigrants, some of them from countries not cited in that list of "dangerous people" received by the Italian spies. Four renditions occurred on European soil: in Sweden, Macedonia and Italy. Six operations targeted people who were traveling abroad or who had been captured in Pakistan; European intelligence agencies provided direct assistance to the CIA in at least five of those cases, records show.

Each prisoner was then secretly handed over to intelligence services in the Middle East or Africa with histories of human rights abuses. Some remain imprisoned in those countries; others have been taken to the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One man was later released after being taken from the Balkans to Afghanistan, the victim of an apparent case of mistaken identity.

In the early stages, the CIA had prepared even more ambitious plans, according to the depositions from the Italian intelligence officials, who testified last summer during a criminal investigation into a CIA- sponsored kidnapping of a radical Islamic cleric in Milan.
###
more in linked story...

"Worst Of The Worst" Set Free

Majority of Gitmo Detainees Freed in Other Countries
By Andrew O. Selsky
The Associated Press
Friday 15 December 2006

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former Guantanamo detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.

The United States does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one group is attempting to compile one.

When the Pentagon announces a detainee has been moved from Guantanamo, it gives his nationality but not his name, making it difficult to track the roughly 360 men released since the detention center opened in January 2002. The Pentagon says detainees have been sent to 26 countries.

But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.

Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals - one in Kuwait, one in Spain - initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.

The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.

At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."

Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for "continued detention," while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP's findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term "continued detention" is part of "a politically motivated farce."

"The Bush Administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release ... although there is no evidence against many of them," he said.

When four Britons were sent home from Guantanamo in January 2005, Britain said it would detain and investigate them - then released them after only 18 hours. Five Britons repatriated earlier were also rapidly released with no charges.

Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen, was also quickly freed when he was flown to Germany in August, bound hand and foot, after more than four years at Guantanamo.

U.S. officials maintained he was a member of al-Qaida, based on what they said was secret evidence. But his New Jersey-based lawyer, Baher Azmy, said he was shown the classified evidence and was shocked to find how unpersuasive it was.

"It contains five or six statements exonerating him," Azmy said.

In October German prosecutors said they found no evidence that Kurnaz had links to Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Afghanistan and formally dropped their investigation.

The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn't mean they weren't dangerous.

"They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

"After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo," Colangelo-Bryan said.

Mohammed Aman, a 49-year-old Afghan who describes himself as a former low-level member of the Taliban, said he initially wasn't worried when U.S. troops detained him.

"I was relaxed because I was innocent," he said. "I was sure I would be freed. I was always thinking that today or tomorrow I will be free."

He spent three years at Guantanamo until he was finally put on a plane at the base, blindfolded and with headphones covering his ears. When he made it back to his home in Malaik Khail, Afghanistan, villagers streamed out to greet him, many weeping.

Detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay because a military panel classifies them as an "enemy combatant," which refers not only to armed fighters but to anyone who aids enemy forces. Every year, each gets a hearing to determine whether he remains a security threat to the United States or has intelligence value.

Using those hearings as guidance, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England decides whether to keep the detainee at Guantanamo, release him, or send him to another country for detention.

This year, through Nov. 20, he had ruled on 149 prisoners. He decided that 106 should be held, 43 should be transferred to custody of other countries and none should be released outright.

Azmy, the New Jersey lawyer, said the distinction between release and transfer is largely a fiction because recipient countries are under no obligation to imprison the returnees. The United States doesn't even ask them to.

A senior U.S. State Department official acknowledged that "We do not ask countries to detain them on our behalf, so when a decision is made by a country to move forward with an investigation for prosecution, that is something they have decided to do pursuant to their own domestic law."

Requesting anonymity because she is not authorized to speak on the record, she said about 15 former detainees returned to the battlefield after being freed. The Pentagon was unable to provide details.

"That's the risk that goes along with transferring people out of Guantanamo," she said. "It's not foolproof."

Some former detainees still face the justice systems of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and France.

Six Kuwaitis returned from Guantanamo stood trial on terror-related charges. Five were acquitted, and on Dec. 5 an appeals court overturned the conviction of the sixth, Nasser al-Mutairi.

In France, the trial of six transferred Guantanamo detainees has focused as much on the U.S. prison camp as on their prosecution on charges of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."

Prosecutor Sonya Djemni-Wagner has requested light sentences, saying she took into account the defendants' "arbitrary detention ... at a facility outside all legal frameworks."

She is seeking one year in prison plus suspended sentences for five suspects and no sentence for the sixth, all of whom are currently free.

Their time already served behind bars in France should be counted toward their sentences, she said, meaning that even if convicted, none would be locked up.
###

So... over half of the "worst of the worst" were no so bad that they could be released. Nice! This comes in addition to the news that several dozen of the detainees were under the age of 17 when first captured in 2002, and that many have undergone torture since being imprisoned at Gitmo.

Those of us on the "Commie Traitor Left" said from the beginning that paying cash money for "Al Qaeda" captives would result in nothing more than kidnap for bounty among hostile Afghan tribes. We were jeered at and told that the men in Gitmo had ALL been captured "on the battlefield."

Then we said that using torture as a routine questioning tactic was immoral because several hundred of them HAD to be innocent of all charges. We were sneered at and told that these men were "the worst of the worst" and deserved whatever they got.

Then we said that without trials, these men were being held illegally by a President out of control. We were laughed at and the GOP slammed Bush's "Torture Enabling Act" through a willing Congress.

Now we find out that everything we said was true: torture, underage kids, innocent tribesmen, and much much more. America's reaction? More sneering, jeering & ignoring the fact that their government has set aside all Rule of Law in its pursuit of this Gitmo Gulag.

I'm now of the opinion that the people of the US are a complaisant lot who deserve the Imperium that's coming. One day soon they'll wake up and realize that their country is broke, that their jobs have disappeared, and that they're in a political re-education camp...

and then they'll blame it on the Democrats.

The BTK Presidency - Cheney Confirms Waterboarding

Dick Cheney, the black heart of this presidency, has spoken out forcefully for his right to Bind, Torture and Kill people his boss has unilaterally designated as "enemy combatants."

In an interview with conservative talk show host, Scott Hennen, on Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators subject captured prisoners at America's gulag in Guantánamo Bay to the interrogation technique known as "waterboarding:"

Hennen: "And I've had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. [...] Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"

Cheney: "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President 'for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue the program."

Swell. Our Vice President just admitted to drowning people until they confess to being terrorists... but it's okay, he's assured us, because drowning isn't torture.

Except that it IS torture. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese soldier for war crimes and sentenced him to 15 years hard labor for using the technique on a U.S. prisoner. The US court described the crime as "torture."

The physical effects of waterboarding can be extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation and sometimes broken bones because of the victims struggling against their restraints. The psychological effects of waterboarding can also be longlasting. Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated a number of people who had been subjected to waterboarding. In an interview with The New Yorker, Dr. Keller explained that some victims were still traumatized years later... one patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained.

This brings up an interesting question: What IS waterboarding, exactly? America's TV News has done a very poor job of explaining the technique to the American people, thus giving the impression that it's acceptable behavior, or that "The Terrorists" are only getting "dunked" in some water. See the attached newspaper illustration, which doesn't nearly get across the methodical, vicious and deliberate nature of modern CIA-improved waterboarding.

There are three historical variations of waterboarding:

(1) The Spanish Inquisition Method: the victim is strapped to a board, their arms and legs immobilized, and they are submerged in water until the prisoner believes he or she is drowning. The Inquisition started without the board, but soon realized that using the board prevented the victim from fighting back. Whenever possible since, the board has been used.

(2) The Vietnam War Method: the victim is strapped to a board with a wet towel placed over their face and water is dripped into their nose until they think they are about to drown.

(3) The CIA's Improvement: this is the system currently used in Guantánamo and in the CIA's secret Eastern European gulags. The victim is strapped to a board, the board is inclined about 20 degrees so that the feet are above the head, saran wrap is wound over the face so that it covers the eyes, nose, and mouth (facial hair is shaved to ensure a tight seal), and then, through a plastic tube, water is poured under the saran wrap covering the face, running down from the chin to the forehead, so that water is forced into the nose. Because of the angle of the victim's body, the water fills up the sinuses, then the throat and the mouth in that order. Unavoidably, the gag reflex immediately kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. Because of the angle of the body, the lungs are NOT filled with water keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the victim's sensation that they are drowning. The saran wrap is there as a bonus multiplier. If the victim coughs to try to blow the water out of their throat or mouth, the plastic catches the water and shoves it back. The saran wrap also acts as a one-way valve, opening to let more air out and then closing again to prevent inhalation. Eventually the victim ends up with collapsed, empty lungs, no ability to inhale more air, a throat, mouth, and nose that's still full of water, and no capacity to get the water out since they've already fully exhaled.

Modern CIA-designed waterboarding isn't about asphyxiation (like, say, the Nazi method of merely shoving a prisoner's head into a tub filled with water)... it's much more diabolical. Waterboarding is about the uncontrollable physical response to forced sustained water inhalation. If you've ever accidentally inhaled water you know that even the smallest amount of liquid in the larynx and trachea is an immediate, hardwired hotline directly to the panic portion of the brain that death is imminent. The terror of imminent drowning is the key element of the technique. According to ABC News, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

The White House has redefined "torture" thusly: ""must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." That pretzled, logic was designed explicitly by the president's staff to exclude waterboarding. While Bush and his torture-happy staff might not think waterboarding is torture, experts such as John Sifton of Human Rights Watch disagree: "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law." And it's not just gay liberal terrorist enablers like Human Rights Watch, either... The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts worldwide and many experts on the laws of war also consider waterboarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture.

Most dishearteningly, not only is waterboarding clearly torture, but it's also pointless as an intelligence gathering tactic. Sure, victims confess... but many experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators argue waterboarding often provides false or misleading information because the victim gets so desperate that he begins telling interrogators what they want to hear in order to make the waterboarding stop. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.

The CIA's escalating interrogation method is reported this:
(1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him,
2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear,
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury like a punch would,
4. Stress Positions: Among the most effective techniques. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions,
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. and finally,
6. Waterboarding

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi finally broke after being waterboarded and then placed in a stress position and forced to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons, which was touted as another rationale for the Iraq War. It was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment. Al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, but rather to please his torturers... but the result is the same: more false "intelligence" which is used as "proof" that the waterboarding was necessary in the first place, thus leading to more waterboarding being used to obtain more "intelligence" which justifies more waterboarding and so on and so on.

Confessions obtained this way are an unreliable tool. There is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention." Former CIA office Bob Baer says that waterboard is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough." Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

It's important for Americans to recognize that noted characteristic... waterboarding is the tool of the Spanish Inquisition, of the Nazis, of the KGB, of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, of the South American Dictatorship... it's not a technique to gain intelligence, it is a technique designed and used exclusively in the past to gain forced confessions by despotic regimes when knew that the confessions were coerced but didn't care. But now the BTK administration has made waterboarding a key element of their intelligence services, which can ONLY lead to more false confessions and incorrect assesments of the real-world threats facing us. Torture and false confession are now the official voted-on policy of the United States of America and its Bind, Torture, Kill President.





Incidentally, it's also important to note that the individuals who George B.T.K. Bush is torturing have not been convicted of anything. Guantanamo Bay currently holds over 500 prisoners. The Bush administration has repeatedly described these men as "the worst of the worst." Ten have been formally charged with crimes and will someday face military tribunals. The rest wait to learn what they have done wrong. Instead they have been denied the right to a fair trial free of evidence coerced through torture, non-rebuttabal hearsay evidence, and "classified" evidence that the defendant is not able to dispute. They have been denied the right to counsel, they are denied the most basic human rights, and now the BTK Congress has signed off on laws allowing them to be tortured and eventually murdered by their Republican BTK President.

*** a reader wrote in to inform me that one of the key purposes of drenching people with water and making them stand in cold rooms afterwards is to induce a state of Hyperalgesia, which is an extreme sensitivity to pain, which in one form is caused by damage to nociceptors in the body's soft tissues. Hyperalgesia can be experienced in focal, discrete areas (commonly associated with wounds), or as a more diffuse, body-wide form (like that intended at Guantánamo. Conditioning studies have established that it is possible to experience a learned hyperalgesia of the latter, diffuse form... meaning that after doing this to a victim a number of times, the torture victim can LITERALLY feel the all-over-body pain without even being subjected to the cold or water. Neato! Pavlov would be proud. Or sickened. The idea that military doctors are cooperating with this torture bullshit is beyond the pale. First do no harm, scumbags.

The Democrats had better rescind all of this shit, should they take over the House & Senate.

President Bush Signs Torture Enabling Act of 2006

President George W. Bush signs into law S. 3930, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006," during a ceremony Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, in the East Room of the White House. Joining him on stage, from left are: Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer, Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are in the background.

Now... look closer...
Closer... closer... closer on the photo...YES! Your president is SMILING while he signs into "law" a bill which allows him to torture anyone he wants, then use their testimony gained under torture as "evidence" in kangaroo court "trials" and execute these "enemy combatants" at his whim, all without Supreme Court interference, which the lickspittle Republican Congress cut out of the picture by stripping the combatants of their rights to Habeus Corpus.

Why are Republicans so THRILLED to reverse 791 years of Ango-American jurisprudence? One can only suppose that it's because they know the TRUE identity of George Bush:

Senate Passes Bush's Torture Enabling Act of 2006

Americans of the future won't remember the Democrats' pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They'll only know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts or the interment of Americans of Japanese descent.

House Passes Bush's Torture Enabling Act of 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Sexual Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
###

SIlly Islamo-Fascist New York Times... don't you know that we're at WAR?!

President Bravely Slashes NASA Waste

The President has once again shown that he won't allow Big Government growth in frivolous programs which waste tax dollars in return for nothing which will make us safer from Terrorists:

WASHINGTON — A series of steep cuts in aeronautics research at NASA threaten to undermine the nation's aviation industry and delay a new air traffic system needed to prevent gridlock in the skies, according to members of Congress, industry officials and scientific leaders. Groups of lawmakers from both parties, academics and aerospace leaders say the reductions are hampering NASA's ability to develop new aviation technology.

NASA has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in aviation funding over the past decade and is struggling to pay for repairing the space shuttle and for President Bush's plan to send people to the moon and Mars. Next year, the agency faces a proposed 20% cut in aviation research. That means that, after adjusting for inflation, it could lose nearly two-thirds of that research funding since it peaked in 1994 at the equivalent of nearly $2 billion.

The agency is planning to cut $54 million — or 31% — from its effort to study emerging technologies required for a new national air traffic system. NASA is the primary agency researching the Next Generation Air Traffic System, an ambitious program to replace radars with satellite-based technology. Without increased capacity from the new system, airlines can expect increasing flight delays, according to government estimates.

Current NASA funding falls as much as $200 million to $300 million a year short of what is actually needed, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. Retired Air Force major general William Hoover, who co-chaired a government study on aeronautics research needs, told the House subcommittee on space Tuesday that NASA must boost work on the air traffic system now or face problems in the future.
###

NASA is a Democrat program. We hate Democrat programs. Do the math. If you don't like it, maybe next time YOU should rig the election machines in your favor. But you won't, cuz you don't have the will to power.

Bush Slips In Surprise For Senators

The Bush administration, supported by House allies, has slipped a small but important change into last week's "compromise" bill on terror suspects. The earlier bill, worked out in negotiations with restive Senate Republicans, defined enemy combatants as those who have "engaged in hostilities," but the latest draft legislation expands the definition to include those who have "supported hostilities." The new language could boost the administration's contention that it can designate virtually anyone an enemy combatant. The Washington Post notes it "does not rule out the possibility" that the designation could be applied to a U.S. citizen.

Wheeeee! Now the President can kidnap and torture and kill American citizens!

Unfortunately, the Mainstream Corporate News Media seems to have awakened far too late to the most controversial aspect of the bill: If passed, the legislation would strip detainees of the right to challenge their imprisonment in court. The Senate judiciary committee took up the issue today, and among those invited to testify was Thomas Sullivan, a lawyer for several Guantanamo detainees. Describing existing Guantanamo hearings to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former judge who supports stripping habeas rights, Sullivan channeled Joseph Welch:

There was no lawyer given to the defendants. They didn't speak English, most of them. They were young men who had no training in law. There were no rules of evidence applicable… Now, [do] you call that due process, Your Honor? Do you? … This is a historic moment in our time. To suspend the writ of habeas corpus without hearings, rushing it through just before elections, where people are afraid to vote against this bill because somebody on the other side is going to hold up a TV commercial and criticize them for it, is phony.

What an Islamofascist Traitor this guy is, with his quaint belief in the rule of law and the Constitution and the idea that America might be making some kind of mistake.

Islamofascist Drink-Lovers 1, Homeland Security 0

ARLINGTON, Va. — Passengers will be allowed to carry liquids on airplanes under new security rules prompted by FBI tests that show it's highly unlikely that terrorists could bring down a jet with a bomb made from small amounts of fluids, the nation's airport security chief said Monday.

Travelers may bring liquids and everyday items such as shampoo, toothpaste and makeup through security, provided they're stored in 3-ounce containers that fit in a 1-quart clear bag, Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said Monday. Passengers also can carry on liquids and gels in any quantity that they buy in airport shops after passing through security, including at duty-free shops. Drinks and other items are screened before being sold in secure airport areas.

Testing by the FBI and at government labs showed that small containers of liquids "don't pose a real threat," Hawley said.
###

Why... it's almost as if the threat was never real to begin with, and the government was only trying to scare us into voting correctly, this dire threat being announced as it was, the day after Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman. But naaah, the government probably had a good reason to do this in the first place, right?

Jim Kapin, head of health and safety for the American Chemical Society, said small quantities of liquids could not seriously damage an airplane. Even if several terrorists smuggled liquid explosives on board, it is "practically speaking, impossible" to make a bomb on an airplane because of the equipment and expertise required, Kapin said.

Errrr..... uhm, okay, maybe we didn't have a point, but at least things are back to normal now, right?

A.J. Castilla, a screener at Boston's Logan International Airport and spokesman for a screeners union, said the new policy "is more confusing and certainly will add to the lines during the holidays." "We're just adding another level of screening to a screening process that was simple," Castilla said.

Travelers must remove the bags that hold liquids from their carry-ons so they can go through X-ray machines separately and be inspected by screeners. Each traveler may carry only one bag, which can hold several 3-ounce containers.

Okay, so I guess we're NOT back to where we were. Instead, we have to put all our liquids in a tiny bag, zip open our MAIN bag, get out the tiny bag, put that through the screener, zip open our computer laptop bags, put the laptops through, take off our shoes, put our shoes through, take any metal out of our pockets, put that through... and then rush back to the counter and buy a new ticket because we've all missed our fucking flights BECAUSE OF ALL THIS STUPID TERROR-MONGERING BULLSHIT.

I'M FUCKING SICK OF IT ALL. I'm now willing to sacrifice ONE PLANE PER YEAR so we can go back to pre-9/11 security. The airlines pay for the screeners, I go through a metal detector, put my bag through an x-ray machine and BLAM. Done. Guess what? Those screening measures would have stopped the 9/11 terrorists if only some twat in Washington hadn't decided that no one could kill anyone with a 3-inch knife or a boxcutter or a Leatherman tool.

What should have happened on 9/12 was those things and anything shaped like a nail file over 3" long should have become illegal, all luggage should have been mandatorily x-rayed, and that's it. Read that again: ALL FUCKING LUGGAGE SHOULD HAVE BEEN X-RAYED. It's not. Yup, 5 years after 9/11, not all bags are x-rayed. Wait, it gets even stupider: if I don't get on with my bags, then my bags are quite sensibly removed the aircraft, right? I mean, I could be a terrorist. Oh, but if I go to the airport 15 minutes before a flight, I can put an Air Cargo box onto the plane for $50 and I don't have to get on board with my box, nor does my fucking box get X-Rayed.

Yes, for $50 each, Al Qaeda could put bombs on every outgoing flight in America. Figure, they get 100 guys to do this all over the nation on the same day... ohmigod, for $5,000, Al Qaeda just blew all of Bush's expensive BULLSHIT SECURITY right out of the water. Billions on making American Citizens' lives harder, all ruined by $5000 and 100 Al Qaeda guys.

It's almost as if the Government's ENTIRE "airline security" measures are designed solely to make you FEEL like they're doing something when they're really not. Oh, and to make you constantly afraid and filled with the dread of ever-present Terrorism.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on machines that don't work and fucking up air travel for millions of voters, if we wanted to go overboard on security, then we could have set up a system of screeners like El Al airlines has where agents trained in micro-expression reading to roam among the passengers asking them questions and gauging their reactions. That's what the Israelis do. You know, the people who haven't had a single airline hijacking or terrorism incident in over 30 years?

But no, that's not what Bush-era security is all about. Our security is all about transferring taxpayer dollars to large corporations in return for political donations.

For Bush, War Anguish Expressed Privately

For Bush, War Anguish Expressed Privately
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006;

FALMOUTH, Maine -- They sat on two frayed chairs in a teacher's lounge, the president and the widow, just the two of them so close that their knees were almost touching. She was talking about her husband, the soldier who died in a far-off war zone. Tears rolled down her face as she mentioned two children left fatherless. His eyes welled up, too. He hugged her, held her face, kissed her cheek. "I am so sorry for your loss," he kept repeating. She told him she considers him responsible for her husband's death and begged him to bring home the troops. "It's time to put our pride behind us and stop the bleeding, for all of us," she recalled saying. The president demurred, unwilling to debate a mourning woman. "We see things differently," he said.

The two sides of Bush as commander in chief can be hard to reconcile. His public persona gives little sense that he dwells on the costs of war. He does not seem to agonize as Johnson did, or even as his father, George H.W. Bush, did before the Persian Gulf War. While he pays tribute to those who have fallen, the president strives to show resolve and avoid displays that might be seen as weak or doubting. His refusal to attend military funerals, while taking long Texas vacations and extended bicycle rides, strikes some critics as callous indifference.

Yet the private Bush comes across differently in the accounts of aides, friends, relatives and military family members who have met with him. The first question Bush usually asks national security briefers in the Oval Office each morning is about overnight casualties, aides say, and those who show up for the next round of meetings often find him still stewing about bad news from Iraq.

If he does not show that publicly, it's in keeping with a White House practice of not drawing attention to the mounting costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have killed more than 3,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of civilians. Advisers worry that sending the wrong signal would further sap public will and embolden the enemy and Bush's critics. Aides say that Bush does not attend military funerals because the presidential entourage would disrupt solemn events and that, out of respect, the media have been banned from photographing coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base. But they also know it would focus a spotlight on the price of the president's policies.
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Oh, if it weren't for those meddlesome advisers and aides! Their constant meddling means the President can never break down and cry in public about the deaths he's caused! And Bush's daily question about how Iraq is going doesn't indicate a man concerned that his party is going to get its ass kicked in November, but the deep musings of a

President Bush hugs Anita Kukkola after presenting her son, Pfc. Jason Kukkola of Fountain Hills, Ariz., with a Purple Heart at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In both the preceeding story and in this photo, all Real Americans will note exactly how privately the President is expressing his war anguish. No one was present except the soldier, his mother, the President and the photographer and the press corps and maybe a few major campaign contributors and possibly a couple of energy corporation CEOs eager for face time with The Decider.

The United States of Torture

I, for one, am glad our President can now torture and murder prisoners at his own discretion. It makes me feel safer. At this point only a few more domestic terrorism scares and the death of 86-year-old Pro-Terrorist Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, stand between American criminals and torture! Who wouldn't want to see John Mark Karr tortured and murdered for whatever it was he claimed he did but didn't really do this week? It's the catharsis that counts, dammit! He's a creep and I want to see him fry! If we'd only allow secret evidence in American trials, we would have our disgusting revolving-door-prison-industrial-complex system! Yes, I can't wait until they televise the first electrocutions from Guantánamo Bay! President Bush is right: those silly Geneva Conventions are quaint and outdated, as is the even older and more outdated Bill of Rights. Those passé rules put the rights of terrorists and other accused criminals above OUR right to live free of crime, and it's time we put a stop to it!

President Gets Big Win In Quest For Torture Powers

A tentative deal between the White House and dissident Senate Republicans on the interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists has been announced. The compromise legislation clarifies acceptable interrogation techniques and outlines military commission procedures. It will likely pass both the Republican-controlled House and Senate just in time to drive home the "Republicans = Strong On Terror" theme so vital to our electoral system.

With a major GOP rift apparently closed, the Corporate Media spent all day playing up the unity-and-goodwill theme. This quote from Sen. John McCain is typical: "We're all winners because we've been able to come to an agreement through a process of negotiations and consensus." You're all winners? Really? Because the details—not to mention the crowing from the White House—indicate that Bush has scored a major victory while the Senate cravenly slinks away, barely able to save face. By focusing solely on the provisions over which the two sides disagreed, the Corporate Media overlooks sickening areas of GOP agreement.

The New York Times explains the compromise: the Bush administration agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, an international treaty. In return, the senators agreed that the War Crimes Act, a domestic law, will be rewritten to define what constitutes "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. As for less serious violations of the conventions ("those lying between cruelty and minor abuse"), the senators agreed Bush will be given the authority to judge the "meaning and application" of the Geneva Conventions.

Yeah, that's a good idea... because Bush has certainly shown such a clear record of restraint in these matters thus far.

In short, the deal seems to grant Bush the exact same "I want to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions" powers that he initially asserted, only now the Senate has simply changed the name. The Washington Post indicates that this wording change may have been all that McCain wanted from the beginning: the "biggest hurdle" in negotiations "was convincing administration officials that lawmakers would never accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions."

Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett certainly views this "compromise" as nothing of the sort: "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there."

Ahh, the scenic route to torture. It's almost Wadsworth! Yes, poetic turns of phrase like this inspire the human spirit, right? Methinks it's time for a senatorial torture haiku:

President Bush pleads:
"I lust to waterboard them!"
We smile and cave in...

As for the other main point of contention between the White House and the Senate "rebels" —that the accused should have access to secret evidence against them— the Corporate Media is pretending that the senators made more headway. Evidently defendants will be allowed to see secret evidence in "summary or redacted form." Of course, the extent of the summary and redaction goes unspecified, just like everything else in this "deal," which is rather unconscionable to anyone with respect for the rule of law. Most people would clearly recognize that: "America hereby sentences you to death because we have evidence that shows you ██████ on ████ with ██████" is pretty disgusting and fundamentally unAmerican. Evidently Senators McCain, Graham and Warner (and their acquiescent fellow Republicans who didn't even pretend to put up a fight) don't know unAmerican fascism when they sign off on it.

Rather typically, President Bush is already trying to wiggle out of even this minor concession by claiming that OTHER Republicans in the House of Representatives want to deny Bush's prisoners access to the secret evidence against them. How can President Bush possibly say no to the House's demands, regardless of the deal he just signed with the Senate to do exactly that?

Brilliantly played, sir.

Unfortunately the Corporate Media doesn't even bother to mention one of the biggest problems with this already gutted "compromise" legislation: even before negotiations began, both the administration and its Senate opponents had provisions in their respective bills to strip detainees of their right to file an application for a writ of habeas corpus. Apparently the goal of EVERYONE involved is to turn the prison at Guantánamo Bay back into a legal black hole that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over.

This entire rebellion was purportedly about President Bush's power to rewrite international human rights treaties that the United States is legally bound to obey. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner cast themselves as Republican moderates who opposed this blatantly illegal move by the White House. Now we see that they are nothing of the sort, and that this entire "principled struggle" has been an elaborate Three Card Monte game designed to make the Republican Party seem principled, fair, and rational when it's nothing of the sort. The losers of this shell game are the accused terrorists, the American constitution, the American people, the rule of law, and every citizen of the world.

In essence, this deal merely codifies the current, sickening, and illegal status quo: that President Bush can illegally kidnap, imprison, torture and kill any citizen of any country, for any reason he likes, and that his decisions are final and cannot be reviewed by the Federal Courts. The only difference is that now President Bush has Congress's tacit approval for his worldwide reign of terror.

That's some compromise, guys. Have fun explaining that one to your grandchildren when they asked what you did to prevent the destruction of Democracy in America.

This abdication of responsibility by the Senate means that 2 of the 3 branches of American Government have signed off on abduction, torture and murder as routine anti-terrorism tools. The last objecting branch, the Supreme Court, is now the last bulwark against an Imperial Presidency with these powers. Justices Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, Stevens, and Kennedy ruled on June 23rd, 2006 that the President did NOT have these powers. Alito, Scalia, and Thomas voted to let the President torture, try and execute these prisoners according to his own whims. John Roberts sat out the vote because he had previously been part of a federal appeals court that had ruled earlier in the case that Bush could do anything he wanted to. So, in essence that vote was truly 5-4.

The only thing that stands between us and the Dictatorship of an admitted Torturer now is the health of 86-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, a man already 9 years beyond the 77-year average life expectancy of a wealthy white male in the United States. If Justice Stevens dies between now and January 20, 2009, expect President Bush to pack another right-wing religious zealot onto the court to replace him. Then Emperor Bush will have all three branches of government fully behind him and his disturbing need to torture.

I sure hope you people are voting Democrat this November.
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UPDATE - Someone wrote to say I'm overstating the case. His contention is that Bush doesn't claim this power over any citizen in the world, only over terrorists actively involved in attacks on the United States. That's what the Corporate Media wants us to believe, but it's not true. Bush has unilaterally redefined his own rules to include not only accused terrorists, but also anyone suspected of funding or even merely "supporting" terrorism. Because he's the only person who has the power to decide what "supporting" means, this is, in essence, self-granted Carte Blanche to abduct anyone, anywhere.

Bush is currently holding 14,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of whom the military freely admits are innocent of any crime. Bush has admitted that the CIA is operating several illegal prisons throughout the world. The European Union estimates that at least 100 citizens have been kidnapped off the streets of Europe since 9/11/2001 by the CIA. Several of these kidnapped people were innocent (if not the majority of them), and a small trickle of them have been released from Bush's Torture Chambers after several weeks, months and even years of pointless torture.

Anyone, anywhere is a target at any time, should Bush or his countless underlings decide that they might be involved in Terrorism. That's all it takes: an inkling.

The writer's second contention was that Bush isn't trying to kill the Guantánamo Bay prisoners, but merely to sentence them to long terms in prison. I'm sorry, old son, execution is EXACTLY what Bush's Justice Department argued Bush had the right to carry out in Gherebi v. Bush, before the 9th Circuit Court. To quote the presiding judge: "Indeed, at oral argument, the government advised us that its position [that the Guantánamo detainees had no access to the federal courts or writs of Habeus Corpus] would be the same even if the claims were that it was engaging in acts of torture or that it was summarily executing the detainees."

Summarily executing the detainees. Read that sentence again. Who was the last American President to advocate summary executions of prisoners based on secret evidence? Oh, right, there wasn't one. Ever. Perhaps the President is confusing The Constitution with The Night and Fog Decrees?

Bush Administration Appointees Perform Jobs Correctly, Protect Oil Companies

Once again, we see that the business of Government is business. Why can't Democrats understand that the Republicans won the elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 & 2006 (thanks, Diebold!) and that therefore we get to say or do anything we want with the country?

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.

The accusations, many of them in four lawsuits that were unsealed last week by federal judges in Oklahoma, represent a rare rebellion by government investigators against their own agency. The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers,” said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico auditing. “These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways.”

The new accusations surfaced just one week after the Interior Department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, told a House subcommittee that “short of crime, anything goes” at the top levels of the Interior Department.

In two of the lawsuits, two senior auditors with the Minerals Management Service in Oklahoma City said they were ordered to drop their claim that Shell Oil had fraudulently shortchanged taxpayers out of $18 million. A third auditor, also in Oklahoma City, charged that senior officials in Denver ordered him to drop his demand that two dozen companies pay $1 million in back interest. And in a suit that was filed in 2004, Mr. Maxwell charged that senior officials in Washington ordered him not to press claims that the Kerr-McGee Corporation had cheated the government out of $12 million in royalties.

These "auditors," are, of course, traitors to the Administration and should be purged. And we now what's REALLY behind their claims of fraud:

On Wednesday, Interior officials denied that the agency had suppressed any valid claims and implied that the auditors simply wanted a share of any money recovered through their lawsuits.

“If these auditors believed there were fraud and or false claims on the part of the companies they were auditing, they should have followed the proper procedures,” the Interior Department said in a written statement. “Instead, they opted to pursue private lawsuits under which, if they prevail, they could receive up to 30 percent of the monies recovered from the companies.”

In defying their own agency, the Interior Department’s auditors sued the oil companies under a federal law, called the False Claims Act, that was created to allow individuals to expose fraud against the government. People who successfully recover money for the government in such cases are entitled to a portion. A losing company is required to pay triple the amount of recovered money as well as back interest — potentially more than $120 million in the cases brought by the auditors.

You see? They just want the money. Not to punish these companies for cheating the country, but to enrich themselves. Crazy lawsuits like these are why we so desperately need Tort Reform in this country. So a few oil companies forgot to pay a few paltry million dollars in owed fees, and so a few Republican appointees covered up for them... why should Kerr-McGee have to pay triple damages now? I mean, they advertise on Fox News, for goodness' sake! How is the brave mouthpiece of America's President supposed to stay in business if the government keeps suing their advertisers? Only a trial lawyer could love laws like these.