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20090121
Barack Obama - Federal - Military - Prison - Terrorism - Law - Politics - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Canada
"Obama Seeks Halt to Legal Proceedings at Guantanamo." ... "In one of its first actions, the [Democratic President] Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday [January 20, 2009] to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing [Republican President] Bush administration." ... "The instruction came in a motion filed with a military court in the case of five defendants accused of organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The motion called for "a continuance of the proceedings" until May 20 so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."" ... "The same motion was filed in another case scheduled to resume Wednesday, involving a Canadian detainee, and will be filed in all other pending matters." ... "Such a request may not be automatically granted by military judges, and not all defense attorneys may agree to such a suspension. But the move is a first step toward closing a detention facility and system of military trials that became a worldwide symbol of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and its unyielding attitude toward foreign and domestic critics." ... "The Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to [Republican President Bush] administration claims, detainees at Guantanamo were entitled to challenge their detentions and that the naval base was not beyond the reach of federal law." ... "Eventually more than 550 detainees were released; only three were ever put on trial and convicted." -By Peter Finn -WashingtonPost

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20090114
Torture - War Crimes - Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Detainees - Medical - Human -Rights - Law - Inpector - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Saudi
"Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official: Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive' Methods Against 9/11 Suspect." ... "The top [Republican President] Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] detainees to trial has concluded that the [United States] U.S. military tortured a Saudi [Arabia] national who allegedly planned to participate in the [September] Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."" ... ""We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution." ... "Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the [Republican President] Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured." ... "Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said." ... ""I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."" ... "Crawford said she believes that coerced testimony should not be allowed. "You don't allow it in a regular court," said Crawford, who served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces from 1991 to 2006." ... "In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."" ... "The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by [Republican President Bush's] then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld." (1, 2, 3) -By Bob Woodward with contributions by Julie Tate and Evelyn Duffy -WashingtonPost

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20081216
Dick Cheney - Torture - War Crimes - Criminal - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - Military - Prison - Law - US - Guantanamo_Bay - Cuba
"Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics: The vice president [Republican Dick Cheney] says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'" ... "[Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely." ... "Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding." ... ""I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News." ... "Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."" ... "His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the [Republican President] Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture." -By Greg Miller -LAtimes

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20081211
Torture - Prisons -War Crimes - Secret - Military - Government - Intelligence - Law - Investigation - Human Rights - Politics - History - McCain - Ariz - Mich - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - Afghanistan - China - Korea
"Bipartisan Report: Rumsfeld Responsible for Detainee Abuse: Senate Committee Finds Officials Made Decisions That Led to Offenses Against Prisoners." ... "A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that [Republican President Bush's] former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba], and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere." ... "In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report, released by Sens. [ Senators] Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.[ Democratic-Michigan]) and John McCain (R-Ariz.[ Republican Arizona]), contends that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military." ... ""The abuse of detainees in U.S. [United States] custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."" ... "The report is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true." ... "The [Republican President Bush's] administration's policies and the resulting controversies, the panel concluded, "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."" ... "A Defense Department spokesman noted that the Pentagon cooperated extensively with the Senate investigation and has taken numerous steps in recent years to ensure the humane treatment of detainees." ... "The panel's investigation focused on the Defense Department's employment of controversial interrogation practices, including forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and the use of dogs. The practices, some of which had already been adopted by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] at its secret prisons, were adapted for interrogations at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later migrated to U.S. detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison." ... "The true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by [Republican] President Bush on [February] Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. As early as that spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion." ... "In July 2002, Rumseld's senior staff began compiling information about techniques used in military survival schools to simulate conditions that U.S. airmen might face if captured by an enemy that did not follow the Geneva conditions. Those techniques -- borrowed from a training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE -- included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and were loosely based on methods adopted by Chinese communists to coerce propaganda confessions from captured U.S. soldiers during the Korean war." ... "The SERE program became the template for interrogation methods that were ultimately approved by Rumsfeld himself, the report says." -By Joby Warrick and Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost

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[PDF] "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment of Detainees In U.S. Custody." ... “What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings” -- General David Petraeus via -WashingtonPost

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20080702
Secret - Torture - War Crimes - Prisons - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Chinese - Korean - History - Medical - Science - Psychological - Military - Intelligence - Politics - Investigators
"China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo." ... "The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay [Cuba] in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”" ... "What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners." ... "The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by [Republican] President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods." ... "Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed." ... "But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity." ... "The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities." ... "Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured." ... "In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." ... "The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”" (1, 2) -By Scott Shane -NYTimes

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PDF Documents via NYTimes:
"Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From the Air Force Prisoners of War (pdf) [September 1957 article by A. D. Biderman, Bull, N.Y. Acad. Med, Vol. 33, No.9, pp 616-625. 10 pages. NB: p. 4 (619), Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance]."
"Documents Released at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on SERE Tactics (pdf)."

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20080618
War Crimes - Criminal - Politicians - US - Iraq - Afghanistan - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - Prison - Torture - Human - Human Rights - Law - Medical - Psychological - Science
"General who probed Abu Ghraib says [Republican President] Bush officials committed war crimes." ... "The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the [Republican President] Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account." ... "The remarks by [Major General] Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that [United States] U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices." ... ""After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."" ... "Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote." ... "The group Physicians for Human Rights, which compiled the new report, described it as the most in-depth medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date." ... "Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq." -By Warren P. Strobel -McClatchyDC.com

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Special Report - Noteworthy - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - Torture - War Crimes - Prison - Investigation - Legal - Rights - Religious - Terrorism - School - Politics
"Guantanamo Bay detainees investigation." ... "An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the [September] Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the [United States] U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad."
• "We got the wrong guys."
• "'I guess you can call it torture'."
• "A school for Jihad."
• "'Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo'."
• "'You are the king of this prison'."
• +"Archive of investigation documents."
" -McClatchyDC.com

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Torture- Crimes - Unlawful - US - Iraq - Afghanistan - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - Prison - Terrorism - War Crimes - Politics - Human - Rights - Medical -Psychological - Science
"Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US." ... "About: Broken Laws, Broken Lives shows the human consequences of harsh and unlawful US interrogation practices. This landmark report reveals the excruciating pain and continued suffering of men who, never charged with any crime, endured torture at US detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay [Cuba]. Based on internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims, the report documents practices used to bring about long-lasting pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end." -Physicians for Human Rights -BrokenLives.info

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20080527
• Barack Obama - History - Author - Foreign - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - US - 2008 Election - "Fukuyama backs Obama for US presidency." ... "He is one of America's most famous neo-conservatives and his ideas on the spread of democracy have informed the [Republican President] Bush administration's foreign policy." ... "But Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, is now a sharp critic of US President George W Bush and has even come out as a supporter of [2008 Election] Democrat frontrunner Barack Obama for president." ... "ELEANOR HALL: So what advice do you have for the next president of the United States on foreign policy?" ... "FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I think that the US as a result of Iraq has really alienated itself from a good deal of the global public. Not just people in the Middle East where anti-Americanism is at an all-time high but from its European allies, from a lot of publics in places where there ought to be a lot of sympathy." ... "So I think the United States needs to reconnect with the world. It needs to do some symbolic things like, we shouldn't torture people, so as a first symbolic gesture I think the new president ought to close Guantanamo [Cuba] and I think in general what you need is a shift." ... "There needs to be great downplaying of the whole war on terrorism. To call it a war I think has over-militarised our objectives and the means that we have used to prosecute it, and I think there has to be a greater shift to the use of soft power in projecting American influence and then there are large areas of the world where we have kind of neglected thinking about things like east Asia where you have obviously got some very big changes going off. " -By Eleanor Hall -Yahoo 

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20080520
• US - Chinese - Torture- Intelligence - Politics - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Government - Prison - Investigation - Law - "Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators: Alleges Guantanamo Personnel Softened Up Detainees at Request of Chinese Intelligence." ... "U.S. [United States] military personnel at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report." ... "Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there." ... "According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators." ... "Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar." ... "U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said." ... ""Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that." " (1, 2) -By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com

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20080519
• Barack Obama - John McCain - 2008 Election - Montana - Illinois - US - Russia - Cuba - Iran - Military- Nuclear - History - "Obama Responds To McCain: "Strong" Presidents Aren't Afraid To Meet With Enemies." ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Barack Obama, in Montana, responded moments ago to [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain's  ridicule of the Illinois Senator for saying that Iran is a minuscule threat compared to the former Soviet Union [now Russia]." ... "McCain said this revealed Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment." Here's the key part of Obama's reply..."
""Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.""
"Obama also said: "What are [Republicans] George Bush and John McCain afraid of"?" -By Greg Sargent -TPMElectionCentral.TalkingPointsMemo

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WATCH: "John McCain and Barack Obama Trade Blows on Foreign Policy."

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20080420
• Corporate - Government - Psychological - Military - Intelligence - Television - Radio - Media - Politics - Classified - US - History - Guantánamo - Prison - Cuba - Human Rights - Justice -  - Iraq - Terrorism - Cheney - Gonzales - "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand." ... "In the summer of 2005, the [Republican President] Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay [US military prison in Cuba]. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure." ... "The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo." ... "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-[September]Sept. 11 world." ... "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found." ... "The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." ... "Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized." ... "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." ... "Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley." ... "In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access." ... "A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis." ... "Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war." ... "This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam." ... "“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, DOCUMENTS) -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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  WATCH - "How the Pentagon Spread Its Message." ... "David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals." -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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20080410
• Investigation - Classified - Military - Intelligence - Torture - Prisons - US - Afghanistan - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - International - "Exclusive: Pentagon delays report on FBI role in detainee abuse." ... "The release of a report on the FBI's [Federal Bureau of Investigation] role in the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] and Iraq has been delayed for months because the Pentagon is reviewing how much of it should remain classified, according to the Justice Department's watchdog." ... "Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, told McClatchy that his office has pressed the Defense Department to finish its review, but officials there haven't completed the process "in a timely fashion."" ... "Fine is investigating whether FBI employees participated in detainee abuse, whether they witnessed or reported incidents of abuse, and how such reports were handled by the bureau." ... "Fine launched his investigation into the FBI's role in the interrogations in early 2005 amid disclosures that FBI agents had witnessed and complained about harsh interrogation practices of detainees, including seeing Guantanamo Bay detainees who had defecated and urinated on themselves and who had been chained on the floor for more than 24 hours without food or water in more than 100 degree temperatures." ... "The delays come as the [Republican President] Bush administration is under fire for its legal justifications of harsh interrogation practices, which critics say equated to an endorsement of torture prohibited by U.S. [United States] and international laws." -By Marisa Taylor -McClatchyDC.com

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20080402
• John Yoo - Gonzales - Cheney - Addington - War Crimes - Criminal - Torture - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Political - Law - Secret - Government - History - Civil Liberties - California - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - Prisons - "John Yoo's war crimes." ... "As the result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] lawsuit the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the [Republican President] Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-pagememorandum (.pdf) issued in 2003 by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (currently a Berkeley [California] Law Professor) which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture:"
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
"As Jane Mayer reported two years ago in The New Yorker -- in which she quoted former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora as saying that "the memo espoused an extreme and virtually unlimited theory of the extent of the President's Commander-in-Chief authority" -- it was precisely Yoo's torture-justifying theories, ultimately endorsed by Donald Rumsfeld, that were communicated to [General] Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of both Guantanamo [Cuba] and Abu Ghraib [Iraq] at the time of the most severe detainee abuses (the ones that are known)." ... "John Yoo's Memorandum, as intended, directly led to -- caused -- a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ [Department Of Justice] official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: [Republican President] George Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and [Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney's counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes."

[ Listen to John Yoo interview: "Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" ... "Yoo: No treaty." ... "Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo..." ... "Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."]

""It depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that." Yoo wasn't just a law professor theorizing about the legalization of torture. He was a government official who, in concert with other government officials, set out to enable a brutal and systematic torture regime, and did so." ... "Since the Nuremberg Trials, "war criminals" include not only those who directly apply the criminal violence and other forms of brutality, but also government officials who authorized it and military officials who oversaw it. Ironically, the Bush administration itself argued in the 2006 case of Hamdan -- when they sought to prosecute as a "war criminal" a Guantanamo detainee whom they allege was a driver for Osama bin Laden -- that one is guilty of war crimes not merely by directly violating the laws of war, but also by participating in a conspiracy to do so." ... "That legal question was unresolved in that case, but Justices Thomas and Scalia both sided with the administration and Thomas wrote (emphasis added):"

""[T]he experience of our wars," Winthrop 839, is rife with evidence that establishes beyond any doubt that conspiracy to violate the laws of war is itself an offense cognizable before a law-of-war military commission. . . . . In [World War II], the orders establishing the jurisdiction of military commissions in various theaters of operation provided that conspiracy to violate the laws of war was a cognizable offense. See Letter, General Headquarters, United States Army Forces, Pacific (Sept. 24, 1945), Record in Yamashita v. Styer, O. T. 1945, No. 672, pp. 14, 16 (Exh. F) (Order respecting the "Regulations Governing the Trial of War Criminals" provided that "participation in a common plan or conspiracy to accomplish" various offenses against the law of war was cognizable before military commissions)."

"It isn't pleasant to think about high government officials in one's own country as war criminals -- that's something that only bad, evil dictatorships have -- but, pleasant or not, it rather indisputably happens to be what we have." ... "Yoo wasn't acting as a lawyer in order legally to analyze questions surrounding interrogation powers. He was acting with the intent to enable illegal torture and used the law as his instrument to authorize criminality." -By Glenn Greenwald -Salon

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• John Yoo - Gonzales - Haynes - Addington - Criminal - Torture - Lawyers - Military - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - History - Book - US - International - Guantánamo - Cuba - Iraq - "The Green Light." ... "Yesterday the public finally got to see the full text of an infamous Department of Justice memorandum from March 2003 designed to authorize torture. I will have some more comments on this odious document authored by John Yoo, a man who (amazingly) teaches at a prominent law school. But this disclosure serves as a fitting introduction for the publication today of Philippe Sands’s article “The Green Light” in Vanity Fair. The article is a teaser for Sands’s forthcoming book, set for release later this month, The Torture Team." ... "We’ve all heard ad nauseam the [Republican President Bush] Administration’s official torture narrative. This is a different kind of war, they argue. Each invocation of “different” is to a clear point: the [Republican President Bush] Administration wishes to pursue its war unfettered by the laws of war. Unfettered, indeed, by any form or notion of law. But Sands’s work is important because he has looked carefully at the chronology: what came first, the decision to use torture techniques, or the legal rationale for them?"
"[Alberto] Gonzales and [William] Haynes laid out their case with considerable care. The only flaw was that every element of the argument contained untruths. The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall. The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld’s office. The Yoo-[Jay]Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guantánamo [Cuba] led to abuses at Abu Ghraib [Iraq]." ... "The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. [David] Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse."
"Sands notes the focal role that the torture lawyers saw for the Attorney General’s opinion power. It was, as Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith suggested in a recent book, a device that could be used to give a sort of pardon in advance for persons undertaking criminal acts." "And of course, the torture lawyers fully appreciated from the outset that torture was a criminal act. Most of the legal memoranda they crafted, including the March 2003 Yoo memorandum released today, consist largely of precisely the sorts of arguments that criminal defense attorneys make–they weave and bob through the law finding exceptions and qualifications to the application of the criminal law. But there are some major differences: these memoranda have been crafted not as an after-the-fact defense to criminal charges, but rather as a roadmap to committing crimes and getting away with it. They are the sort of handiwork we associate with the consigliere, or mob lawyer. But these consiglieri are government attorneys who have sworn an oath, which they are violating, to uphold the law." ... "They have dragged the Department of Justice, as an institution, straight into the gutter. " -By Scott Horton -Harpers.org

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See Also: [United States v. Altstoetter] via: [Google Search]

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20080328
Gordon England - Secret - Military - Law - Terrorism - Politics - 2008 Election - 2006 Election - Osama bin Laden - War Crimes - US - Guantánamo - Cuba - Intelligence - Torture - Prison - Michael V Hayden
"Navy Lawyer: Gitmo trials pegged to political campaign." ... "The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo [Guantánamo Bay, Cuba] military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 [Election] campaign." ... "The brief filed Thursday by Navy [Lieutenant Commander] Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer directly challenged the integrity of [Republican] President Bush's war court." ... "Notably, it describes a [September] Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran [Republican President Bush] White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign [2006 Election ]." ... "''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying." ... "The brief quotes England as a stipulation of fact and cites other examples of alleged political interference, which Mizer argues makes it impossible for Salim Hamdan, 37, to have a fair trial." ... "It asks the judge, Navy [Captain] Capt. Keith Allred, to dismiss the case against Hamdan as an alleged 9/11 co-conspirator on the grounds that Bush administration leadership exercises ``unlawful command influence.''" ... "As described the Hamdan brief, the England meeting came three weeks after President Bush disclosed in a live address that he had ordered the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to transfer ''high-value detainees'' from years of secret custody to Guantánamo for trial." ... "Bush also disclosed that the CIA used ''an alternative set of procedures'' to interrogate the men into confessing -- since revealed by the CIA director, Air Force [General] Gen. Michael V. Hayden, to include waterboarding." -By Carol Rosenberg -MiamiHerald

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20080315
• Secret - Prisoner - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Legislation - Politics - US - Guantánamo Bay - Cuba - "C.I.A. Secretly Held Qaeda Suspect, Officials Say." ... "The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by [Republican] President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday." ... "The suspect, Muhammad Rahim, is the first Qaeda prisoner in nearly a year who intelligence officials have acknowledged has been in C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] detention. The C.I.A. emptied its secret prisons in the fall of 2006, when it moved 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but made clear that the facilities could be used in the future to house high-level terrorism suspects." ... "Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he signed an executive order that formally reiterated the C.I.A.’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon." ... "Mr. Bush used his veto power last weekend to block legislation that would have prohibited the agency from using the techniques, and this week the House of Representatives failed to override the veto." ... "Military and intelligence officials said that Mr. Rahim was transferred earlier this week to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay." -By Mark Mazzetti with contributions by Scott Shane -NYTimes 

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20080219
• Cuba - Military - People - History - "Castro resigns as president, state-run paper reports." ... "Fidel Castro announced his resignation as president of Cuba and commander in chief of Cuba's military Tuesday, according to a letter published in the state-run newspaper, Granma." ... "The resignation ends nearly a half-century of iron-fisted rule that inspired revolutionaries but frustrated 10 U.S. presidents." ... "Castro revealed his plans without notice by publishing a letter in the middle of the night in state-run newspaper Granma." ... ""I will not aspire to, nor will I accept the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief," Castro wrote. "I wish only to fight as a soldier of ideas. ... Perhaps my voice will be heard."" ... "[Republican] President Bush said Castro's decision ought to spark "a democratic transition" for Cuba." ... "Cuba's leaders plan to elect a president within days. Castro's brother, Raúl, the country's defense minister, has been named publicly as his successor." ... "Castro, 81, captured the world's attention at the age of 32, when he led a band of guerrillas who overthrew a corrupt dictatorship in 1959. He went on to become a thorn in Washington's side by embracing communism and cozying up to the Soviet Union." -Contributed to by Morgan Neill -CNN

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20080213
• Antonin Scalia - Dick Cheney - Torture - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - History - Guantanamo - Cuba - US - Military - Prisoners - Human Rights - Switzerland - "Scalia Weighs in Again on Controversy." ... "[Republican President Ronald Reagan appointed Supreme Court] Justice Antonin Scalia's statement that inflicting pain on a terrorism suspect to elicit critical information could be constitutional was not the first - or second or even third - time he has commented on a legal controversy that ultimately could be settled by the Supreme Court." ... "If past practice is any guide, Scalia won't let his remarks or his critics' complaints stop him from taking part in the court's work." ... "In 2006, a few weeks before the court heard arguments over the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Scalia told an audience in Switzerland that the Constitution doesn't protect foreigners who are held there." ... ""War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts. Give me a break," Scalia said." ... "He ignored a request from five retired generals to withdraw from the case and dissented from a ruling in favor of the detainees. Two years earlier, Scalia also dissented in the court's first decision extending some legal rights to the Guantanamo prisoners." ... "Scalia, 71, rebuffed calls in 2004 to step aside from a dispute involving [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney when it was disclosed Scalia accompanied Cheney on a hunting trip while the court was considering the case." -By Mark Sherman -AssociatedPress 

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20080211
• Secret - Torture - Prisons - US - Guantanamo_Bay - Cuba - Military - Government - Terrorism - Psychology - Intelligence - Law - Enforcement - Politics - "FBI ‘Clean Team’ re-interrogated 9/11 suspects: Agency tried non-coercive techniques to protect case against six detainees." ... "The [Republican President] Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics." ... "The admissions made by the men -- who were given food whenever they were hungry as well as Starbucks coffee at the Defense Department's Guantanamo Bay prison [Guantanamo Bay, Cuba] -- played a key role in the government's decision to proceed with the prosecutions, military and law enforcement officials said." ... "FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team," and set as their goal collecting of virtually the same information the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons." ... "To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects' trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said." ... "The men were read rights similar to a standard U.S. [United States] Miranda warning, and officials designed the program to get to the information the CIA already had gleaned by waterboarding and other techniques such as sleep deprivation, forced standing and temperature extremes." ... "Robert M. Chesney, a Wake Forest University law professor who closely follows the tribunals process, said it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to use much of the information derived from CIA interrogations in military trials, in part because the Military Commissions Act of 2006 forbids evidence obtained through torture." ... "[John D. Hutson:] "There's something in American jurisprudence called 'fruit of the poisonous tree': You can clean up the tree a little but it's hard to do," said John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. "Once you torture someone, it is hard to un-torture them. The general public is going to be concerned about the validity of the testimony."" (1, 2) -By Josh White, Dan Eggen, and Joby Warrick with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost via -MSNBC 

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20080204
• Child - Soldier - War Criminal - Canadian - Afghanistan - Cuba - Guantanamo - Prison - US - Criminal - Justice - Politics - "U.S. says no one too young for Guantanamo court." ... "A Canadian accused of killing a U.S. [United States] soldier in Afghanistan should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday." ... "Navy [Lieutenant] Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges against Canadian defendant Omar Khadr, who was shot and captured at age 15 in a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002." ... ""He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda," Kuebler said." ... "But a U.S. Department of Justice attorney [under Republican President Bush], arguing for the prosecution, said that if Congress intended to exclude juveniles from the Guantanamo war court [in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], it would have explicitly written that, because lawmakers knew Khadr could face charges. Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term "person," which legally refers to "anyone born alive," Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said." (1, 2) -By Jane Sutton with contributions by Tom Brown and Alan Elsner -Reuters 

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20071222
• Mitt Romney - Political - Corporation - Marketing - History - Gay-Rights - Pro-Choice - Stem Cell - Science - Health - Law - Religious - Salt Lake City - Utah - Massachusetts - New Hampshire - US - Torture - Prison - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - 2008 Election - "Romney should not be the next president." ... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt] Romney's main business experience is as a management consultant, a field in which smart, fast-moving specialists often advise corporations on how to reinvent themselves. His memoir is called Turnaround - the story of his successful rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City [Utah] - but the most stunning turnaround he has engineered is his own political career." ... "If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you'd swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core." ... "As a candidate for the U.S. [United States] Senate in 1994, he boasted that he would be a stronger advocate of gay rights than his opponent, [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Ted Kennedy. These days, he makes a point of his opposition to gay marriage and adoption." ... "There was a time that he said he wanted to make contraception more available - and a time that he vetoed a bill to sell it over-the-counter." ... "The old Romney assured voters he was pro-choice on abortion. "You will not see me wavering on that," he said in 1994, and he cited the tragedy of a relative's botched illegal abortion as the reason to keep abortions safe and legal. These days, he describes himself as pro-life." ... "There was a time that he supported stem-cell research and cited his own wife's multiple sclerosis in explaining his thinking; such research, he reasoned, could help families like his. These days, he largely opposes it. As a candidate for governor, Romney dismissed an anti-tax pledge as a gimmick. In this race, he was the first to sign." ... "In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America's moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he'd like to "double" the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba], where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture - unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it." ... "When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it." ... "Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no." -ConcordMonitor.com 

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20071221
• Mike Huckabee - Prisoners - Guantanamo - Cuba - US - Military - Law - Arkansas - 2008 Election - "Huckabee: Gitmo Is "Too Nice"." ... "Asked about Guantanamo [American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Mike Huckabee said he had visited the facility and said it was “disappointing” that military personnel were eating meals that averaged $1.60 while the detainees were eating Halal meals that cost over $4 each." ... "“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo. If anything, it’s too nice.”" ... "Huckabee has said Guantanamo is more a “symbolic issue” than anything else since the detainees are treated better than prisoners in the US. Today Huckabee said, “Where they are detained is of less importance to me than that they are detained…until we know they are of no threat to us.”" -By Joy Lin and Mary Hood -CBSNews 

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20071211
• Mike Huckabee - Fred Thompson - Mitt Romney - Employed - Illegal - Immigrants - Enforcement - Tennessee - Massachusetts - Iowa - 2008 Election - Ad - US - Cuba - Money - "Huckabee rivals go on the attack." ... "Former Tennessee [Senator and 2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Sen. Fred Thompson’s campaign kept up a steady stream of attack, criticizing [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate Mike] Huckabee for everything from past support for ending the Cuban embargo to allegedly allowing state hard drives and servers to be destroyed while he was governor." ... "And CNN’s John King reports that former Massachusetts [Governor and 2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign announced that it plans to run a television ad in Iowa that targets Huckabee’s record on illegal immigration. The spot, which attacks him by name, hits the airwaves Tuesday." ... "Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said the ad was intended to highlight the difference between the former Massachusetts governor’s “pro-enforcement record” – under assault after recent revelations that he employed illegal immigrants on his property – and Huckabee’s somewhat softer stance in the past." -By John King, Alexander Mooney and Rebecca Sinderbrand -CNN 

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20071021
• US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Political - Military - Prisoner - Terrorism - Secret - Law - 2008 Election - "Pressure Alleged in Detainees' Hearings: Ex-Prosecutor Says Pentagon Pushing 'Sexy' Cases in '08." ... "Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month." ... "Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go." ... "Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel's command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest." ... ""There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up," Davis said. "People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness."" -By Josh White -WashingtonPost 

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20070809
• US - Yemen - Guantánamo - Cuba - Secret - Censored - Military - Prison - Terrorism - Politics - "14 detainees upheld as `enemy combatants'." ... "As a first step to possible military trial, the Pentagon said Thursday that review panels have upheld President Bush's designation of ''enemy combatant'' for 14 so-called ''high value detainees'' at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who were held and interrogated for years at CIA black sites." ... "They include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 mastermind who, according to a censored Pentagon transcript of his secret hearing in March, confessed to a broad list of global terror plots -- most unrealized." ... "They also include men who allegedly planned the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen, and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." ... "The Pentagon's statement Thursday made no mention of an ongoing controversy over whether the hearings should have been determining whether Guantánamo captives are ''unlawful enemy combatants'' versus run-of-the-mill ``enemy combatants.''" -By Carol Rosenberg-Miami/Herald 

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20070721
• US - Guantánamo - Cuba - Government - Military - Terrorism - Detainees - Politics - "Court Tells U.S. to Reveal Data on Detainees at Guantánamo." ... "A federal appeals court ordered the government yesterday to turn over virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the [Republican President Bush led] Justice Department to limit disclosures and setting the stage for new legal battles over the government’s reasons for holding the men indefinitely." ... "The ruling, which came in one of the main court cases dealing with the fate of the detainees, effectively set the ground rules for scores of cases by detainees challenging the actions of Pentagon tribunals that decide whether terror suspects should be held as enemy combatants." ... "It was the latest of a series of stinging legal challenges to the administration’s detention policies that have amplified pressure on the Bush administration to find some alternative to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where about 360 men are now being held at the United States naval base." ... "A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and lawyers for the detainees." ... "The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”" -By William Glaberson -NYTimes 

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20070630
• Fred Thompson - US - Cuban - Immigrant - Terrorism - Florida - New York - Tennessee - 2008 Election - "Clinton attacks Thompson's Cuba remark." ... "Taking a swipe at a potential Republican presidential rival, [2008 election Presidential candidate and New York Senator] Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday criticized [Republican] Fred Thompson for suggesting Cuban immigrants pose a terrorist threat." ... ""I was appalled when one of the people running for or about to run for the Republican nomination talked about Cuban refugees as potential terrorists," Clinton told Hispanic elected officials. "Apparently he doesn't have a lot of experience in Florida or anywhere else, and doesn't know a lot of Cuban-Americans."" ... "The actor and former Tennessee senator was criticizing an immigration bill in the Senate, contending it would make the country more vulnerable to terrorism." -AP via -USATODAY

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20070520
• Australia - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Secrecy - Politics - War Crimes - History - "Australian Guantánamo detainee back home." ... "The first Guantánamo Bay inmate convicted of supporting terrorism by a US military court returned to Australia on Sunday under a veil of secrecy, but “elated” to serve out his remaining sentence at home." ... "A government-chartered executive jet bringing David Hicks from the US enclave prison in Cuba landed at an Australian military base in Adelaide, where a convoy of elite police whisked him to jail in a blacked-out police van." ... "Mr Hicks’s return was cloaked in secrecy on government orders after an intense public campaign that damaged prime minister John Howard’s standing ahead of an election due later this year." ... "Polls have showed slipping support for Mr Howard, who has been accused of indifference over Mr Hicks’s case, despite a five-year struggle by family, friends and the public to bring him home." ... "Under a deal with US prosecutors, most of his sentence was suspended and he will be free on December 29, 2007." ... "Mr Hicks was the first person convicted by a US war crimes tribunal since World War Two and the first of hundreds of foreign captives held at the Guantánamo Bay to face a military trial." -Reuters via -FT.com 

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20070518
• US - International - Government - Military - Terrorism - Prison - Torture - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Human - Rights - War Crimes - Law - Politics - "'Moral decision' jeopardizes Navy lawyer's career: Officer says he leaked list of terror suspects in the name of justice; now convicted, he could face prison term." [Watch Video interview of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz]

TV: [Watch Video interview of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz] "Matt Diaz was a Navy lawyer with 18 years of military experience when duty called at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Six months there broke him." ... "Now, in a case that reflects the fierce dissent within the U.S. government over the war on terrorism, the lieutenant commander faces a court-martial that could send him to prison for at least 14 years. A jury convicted him late Thursday, and the sentencing phase of the case is set to begin Friday." ... "Cmdr. Diaz is on trial because of actions he took after concluding – as many of higher rank have – that the [Republican President] Bush administration's offshore detention camp for terrorism suspects was making a mockery of American justice." ... ""My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States," Cmdr. Diaz told The Dallas Morning News in his first public comments on the case. "I'm not a criminal."" ... "In early 2005, as he was concluding a six-month tour of duty as a Guantánamo legal adviser, Cmdr. Diaz sent an anonymous note to a New York civil liberties group containing the names of the detainees." ... "The Center for Constitutional Rights earlier had won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that terrorism suspects had the right to challenge their detention. But the Pentagon was refusing to identify the men, hampering the group's effort to represent them." ... "What is illegal, he [Cmdr. Diaz] said, is the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror. He accused officials of violating international law, such as the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of war prisoners, and the Constitution's guarantee of due process." ... ""I made a stupid decision, I know, but I felt it was the right decision, the moral decision, the decision that was required by international law," Cmdr. Diaz said. "No matter how the conflict was identified, we were to treat them in accordance with Geneva, and it just wasn't being done."" ... "In his interview with The News, he recalled two prosecutors who "objected to the way the system was set up to guarantee a conviction. I don't believe they lasted long ... they didn't make it to the first hearings."" ... "Bush administration officials have characterized the Guantánamo population overall as "the worst of the worst."" ... "That is one of "two misstatements, or false statements, that occurred about Guantánamo," Cmdr. Diaz said. "The other statement was 'We do not torture.' "" ... "One of his jobs at Guantánamo, he said, was to track and investigate allegations of abuse." ... ""I think a good case could be made for allegations of war crimes, policies that were war crimes," he said. "There was a way to do this properly, and we're not doing it properly." " -By Brooks Egerton -DallasNews.com

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20070325
• US- Florida - Cuba - Venezuela - 2008 Election - Languages - "Romney Finds Peril in Checklist for '08." ... "As [Republican] Mitt Romney transitions from one-term governor to presidential candidate [2008 election], he has been ticking through a presidential checklist, sometimes with perilous results." ... "But this month, Romney scratched when he tried to wade through the cauldron of Cuban-American politics during a speech to South Florida Republicans." ... ""Hugo Chavez has tried to steal an inspiring phrase - 'Patria o muerte, venceremos.'" Romney said, referring to the Venezuelan president and persistent U.S. critic. "It does not belong to him. It belongs to a free Cuba."" ... "In truth, the phrase does not belong to free Cubans. It has been the trademark speechmaking sign-off of their most despised opponent, Fidel Castro. And unlike Romney, Castro would switch to English to declare, "Fatherland or death, we shall overcome."" -By Glen Johnson -AP 

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