From The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild

Who is Bush to lecture the Chinese—or anyone, for that matter—on human rights?

There he was in Thailand, pressing China to uphold human rights when he has done more than any other President to heap scorn on them.

After 9/11, he said, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.”

And Cheney said, it was time to go over to the “dark side.”

And that’s exactly what Bush and Cheney have done.

They’ve illegally kidnapped hundreds of people and disappeared them into black sites.

They’ve had some of these victims tortured with waterboarding and made many others hang by their arms for hours on end.

They’ve held hundreds of people without charge for years in Guantanamo and at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

And they’ve held thousands of people without charge for years in Iraq, often caging them in brutal containers.

Time and time again, Bush and Cheney and their apologists in the Justice Department have asserted the right to flout international treaties on human rights essentially whenever they feel like it.

They are serial human rights abusers.

Read more Bush

From The Boston Globe
By Josh White

At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to US military documents.

Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.

Military police logs for cell blocks at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show that guards used the program - dubbed the “frequent flyer” program in official documents - on numerous detainees and noted the program in their 2003 and 2004 records. The logs, reviewed by The Washington Post, also indicate that the frequent cell movements took place on the same days a Navy admiral was visiting Guantanamo to assess possible detainee abuses.

Some detainees violently objected to the moves, spitting at guards and resisting handcuffs and shackles after enduring repeated cell transfers, leading to more sanctions. One cell transfer schedule for detainee 519 - Maher Rafat al-Quwari - shows that he was moved six times a day for 12 days in July 2003, with a four-hour interrogation session in the middle.

Defense officials have previously acknowledged the program’s existence, saying it stopped in 2004. They also have said that detainees are treated humanely and that credible allegations of abuse are investigated.

Read more Interrogation

From The Consortium News
By Robert Parry

The U.S. military commission’s split guilty verdict on Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, has drawn praise from the Bush administration and criticism from civil rights groups, but what has been overlooked is the chilling message that “the Hamdan principle” sends about future prosecutions in the “war on terror.”

This new principle holds that anyone – regardless of how tangential a connection to actual acts of terrorism – can be prosecuted through the kangaroo court of the military commissions and be sentenced to a long prison term (or even death). Though Hamdan is a Yemeni, the principle would seem to apply to U.S citizens, too.

In effect, a parallel legal system has been created outside the U.S. Constitution in which the President can order someone locked up indefinitely simply by calling the person an “enemy combatant” and then subjecting the person to what amounts to a “star chamber” proceeding that permits use of secret evidence and coerced testimony.

Though some legal experts insist these special courts don’t apply to U.S. citizens, the language of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and a recent federal court ruling make clear that President George W. Bush’s asserted wartime power to order indefinite detentions covers citizens and non-citizens.

In July, the conservative-dominated U.S. Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, opened the door for Bush or a successor to throw American citizens as well as non-citizens into a legal black hole by designating them “enemy combatants,” even if they have engaged in no violent act and are living on U.S. soil.

Read more Hamdan Principle

From uExpress
By Ted Rall

Both major presidential candidates have promised to roll back the Bush Administration’s torture archipelago. Both say they’ll close Guantánamo, abolish legalized torture, and respect the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. Obama also pledges to eliminate “extraordinary rendition,” in which the CIA kidnaps people and flies them to other countries to be tortured, and says he will investigate Bush Administration officials for possible prosecution for war crimes.

If followed by other meaningful changes in behavior–withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq and foreswearing preemptive warfare–restoring the rule of law and respecting the rights of “enemy combatants” can start America’s long, slow climb back to moral parity in the community of nations. But there are worrisome signs that Barack Obama and John McCain’s commitment to moral renewal is less than rock-solid.

McCain, who claimed to have been tortured as a POW in North Vietnam, says a lot of the right things. “We do not torture people,” he said in a 2007 Republican debate. “It’s not about the terrorists; it’s about us. It’s about what kind of country we are.” He used his Vietnam experience against fellow Republicans, bullying Congress into passing a law banning torture against detainees held by the military.

Bush signed McCain’s bill in late 2005, saying it “is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad.”

Read more Torture

From Salon
By Stacy Sullivan

When the verdict in the first U.S. military commission trial since World War II came down Wednesday, no one who had been following the proceedings was surprised to hear that Osama bin Laden’s former driver and bodyguard was found guilty. The six-person jury of military officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines convicted Salim Ahmed Hamdan of providing material support for terrorism, but acquitted him of charges of conspiracy to support terrorism. They will determine his sentence in separate proceedings later this week.

Their decision came after two weeks of proceedings, at times bizarre, in which they listened stonefaced to testimony from several FBI agents, an investigator from the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, experts on war crimes law, a university professor specializing in central Asian history, military officers who served in Afghanistan, and even testimony from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 (who submitted written answers to questions).

The prosecution tried to portray Hamdan as a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle who knew full-well al-Qaida’s intentions and helped make the 9/11 terrorist attacks possible by serving as his loyal driver and bodyguard. They said he was a committed ideologue who pledged “bayat” — a solemn oath — to bin Laden and that he was charged with driving the getaway vehicle should bin Laden’s convoy ever come under attack.

“Salim Hamdan was al-Qaida’s last line of defense,” said John Murphy, one of several government prosecutors. “He was a bayat-pledged al-Qaida warrior who was captured on the battlefield bringing weapons to the front.”

Read more Guantanamo

From The Egypt Daily News
By Naomi Wolf

Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing, and alerting the nation to the Bush administration’s criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law — a story often marginalized at home. I was certain that when Americans knew what was being done in their name, they would react with horror and outrage.

Three months ago, the Bush administration still clung to its devil’s sound bite, “We don’t torture.” Now, Doctors Without Borders has issued its report documenting American-held detainees’ traumas, and even lie detector tests confirm they have been tortured. The Red Cross report has leaked: torture and war crimes. Jane Mayer’s impeccably researched exposé “The Dark Side” just hit the stores: torture, crafted and directed from the top.
The Washington Post gave readers actual video footage of the abusive interrogation of a Canadian minor, Omar Khadr, who was seen showing his still-bleeding abdominal wounds, weeping and pleading with his captors.
So the truth is out and freely available. And America is still napping, worrying about its weight, and hanging out at the mall.

I had thought that after so much exposure, thousands of Americans would be holding vigils on Capitol Hill, that religious leaders would be asking God’s forgiveness, and that a popular groundswell of revulsion, similar to the nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement, would emerge. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

And yet no such thing has occurred. There is no crisis in America’s churches and synagogues, no Christian and Jewish leaders crying out for justice in the name of Jesus, a tortured political prisoner, or of Yahweh, who demands righteousness. I asked a contact in the interfaith world why. He replied, “The mainstream churches don’t care, because they are Republican. And the synagogues don’t care, because the prisoners are Arabs.”
It was then that I realized that I could not be in love with my country right now. How can I care about the fate of people like that? If this is what Americans are feeling, if that is who we are, we don’t deserve our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Read more Dear World

From The Guardian UK
By Andy Worthington

The ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” These words are particularly apt in relation to the British Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia, leased to the United States in 1971, where the truth – that a secret “War on Terror” prison existed from 2002 until as recently as 2006 – has been persistently denied by both the British and American governments.

Yesterday, Time magazine reported that a “senior American official” (now retired), who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, stated that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” in 2002, and possibly 2003. This is the highest-level admission to date that a secret prison existed on Diego Garcia, but it is by no means the first time that the prison’s existence has been revealed.

In 2003, Time reported that Hambali, an Indonesian “high-value detainee”, who was transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, was being held on Diego Garcia, and in May this year, El Pais [in Spanish] reported that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a joint Syrian-Spanish national who was seized in Pakistan in October 2005, was held on the island in the months after his capture. Unlike Hambali, Nasar’s current whereabouts are completely unknown; he is, in effect, one of “America’s disappeared.”

The reality of Diego Garcia’s secret prison has also been confirmed by retired US general Barry McCaffrey in 2004 and 2006, in a report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty for the Council of Europe and in a statement made to the Observer in March this year by Manfred Novak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture. In contrast, the position taken by both the British and American governments occupies a parallel universe, in which the timeless resonance of Aeschylus’ words is confirmed.

Read more Diego Garcia

From The Boston Globe
By John Shattuck

One of the biggest challenges facing the next president is how to restore US credibility in the world. Despite military assets unparalleled in history, US global standing has hit rock bottom.

The United States government is widely perceived today to be a violator of human rights. A poll conducted by the British Broadcasting Corp. last year in 18 countries on all continents revealed that 67 percent disapproved of US detention and interrogation practices in Guantanamo. Another poll in Germany, Great Britain, Poland, and India found that majorities or pluralities condemned the United States for torture and other violations of international law. A third poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that majorities in 13 countries, including traditional allies, believe “the US cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the world.”

The gap between America’s values and its actions has severely eroded US global influence. How does it get it back?

First, by obeying the law. The United States was founded on the rule of law. Human rights are defined and protected by the Constitution and international treaties ratified and incorporated into domestic law. By flouting basic rules - such as habeas corpus, the Convention Against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions - the US government has created a series of “law-free zones.” In these zones detainees have been abused, thousands held indefinitely without charges, and human rights trampled on.

Second, by practicing what we preach. The United States loses credibility when it charges others with human rights violations that it is also committing. The State Department routinely criticizes other countries for engaging in torture, detention without trial, and warrantless electronic surveillance, despite its own recent abysmal record in these areas.

Read more Groove Back

From Information Clearing House
By Andrew Greeley

T.S. Elliot summarized the issue, “When good does evil in its struggle against evil, it becomes indistinguishable from its enemy.”

A current example is the sick morality that sees America’s program of torture during the war that “they” had done it to us and would do so again. Therefore we were not evil. The Sept. 11 attack persuaded the leaders of the country that murder, kidnapping and torture were appropriate in the war on terror. June Mayer’s carefully documented book The Dark Side demonstrates beyond doubt that the president, the vice president, the director of the CIA and their closest aides are war criminals. They violated international law, they violated American law, and they violated natural law.

Their excuse was that the president has the power to dispense from all laws in virtue of his role as commander in chief when the country is in grave danger. They have argued in their defense that the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners has saved American lives. But they refuse to cite any cases or brutal, presidential-approved torture that saved anyone’s lives.

The president, someone argues in The Dark Side, had the right, on the grounds of national security, to order the assassination of anyone who might seem to be a terrorist in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

Many Americans — solid, patriotic Americans — seem to enjoy the prospect of treating prisoners the way the Nazis did just to show how tough we can be when we have to be tough. In fact, it shows how stupid we are. All the research on the subject shows that torture does not in fact work and that the enemy understands that our “tough” interrogators will believe any wild story that prisoners will tell to protect themselves and deceive the dumb “cowboys.”

Read more Commandments

From The Seattle PI
By Kevin Cullen

If you’re looking for a good summer read, might I suggest something just published by the Justice Department’s inspector general that has a very boring title but should be called “We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us”?

It’s a 140-page thigh-slappin’ laugh riot. It reads like the best of George Orwell: funny and scary at the same time. It describes how the Bush administration gave a 30-something true believer named Monica Goodling the power to hire federal prosecutors and immigration judges only if they espoused hard-line conservative and Christian views.

It appears that Sister Goodling, who bears a striking resemblance to Stacy, Wayne Campbell’s psycho former girl- friend in “Wayne’s World,” was part of a far-right cabal that turned the Justice Department into the Just Us Department, the Us being Bible-thumpin’, abortion-opposin’, gay-marriage-hatin’ Super Christians.

We’re in the middle of a war against religious extremism, and it turns out the Justice Department was being run by … religious extremists!

This may explain why, despite the urging of that great federal jurist Reginald Lindsay, the Justice Department refuses to do right by the Massachusetts families whose loved ones were murdered by the fugitive FBI subcontractor known as James “Whitey” Bulger.

Now, some of you nonbelievers might say the Justice Department has been heartlessly slow in settling these cases, despite overwhelming evidence that the FBI enabled their rat, Bulger, to murder dozens of people who were impediments to his criminal enterprise. The cynics among you may point out that these government lawyers keep taking the shuttle up to Boston and staying at four-star hotels at taxpayer expense while needlessly dragging these cases out.

Read more Extreme Justice