| Al Jazeera, Nov 19, 2008 |
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At least four people have been killed after a suspected US missile attack struck the North West Frontier province of Pakistan, near the Afghan border, security officials said. A senior security official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that “the strike overnight destroyed the house of a tribesman Sakhi Mohammad in the Bannu district”. “At least two foreigners were among five killed,” the official said. Pakistani security forces often use the term “foreigners” to refer to suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters. Pakistani officials said the missiles were launched from Afghanistan, where at least 32,000 US troops are fighting the Taliban and other fighters. Officials also said that several other people were wounded in the attack in Jani Khel, a city in the northwestern district of Bannu just outside the tribal areas where al-Qada and Taliban fighters have found refuge in recent years. Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder in Islamabad said that locals believe that the US was involved in the attack, which comes at a time when “…the Pakistani military chief was visiting Brussels to brief Nato commanders on his country’s apprehensions regarding drone attacks that are shifting public opinion against the US and Pakistani government”. “There was a report recently in the Washington Post that the Americans had a tacit agreement that they would be able to use Pakistani airspace wherever they thought there were targets,” Hyder reported. “While the government has been denying that there has been any secret agreement with the Americans, they have not been able to come out with a formula to stop such attacks, and that is likely to cause considerable anger within Pakistan because its own military forces are not in a position to defend its citizens within its territory.” US ‘blamed’ The US has been blamed for at least 20 missile attacks and a ground assault in northwest Pakistan since mid-August. Meanwhile, all the attacks since August have been in villages in north and south Waziristan, two semiautonomous tribal regions where the government has a very limited presence. Islamabad has protested over the raids, saying they are a violation of the country’s sovereignty. US officers in Afghanistan have stressed improved Pakistani co-operation in squeezing fighters nested along the border. Colonel John Spiszer, the US commander in northeast Afghanistan, said that pressure on Aghanistan and Pakistan will eventually mean that fighters will be “running out of options on places to go”. But Pakistani officials said the US missile strikes are counterproductive because they often kill civilians and deepen anti-American and anti-government sentiment. However, General David Petraeus, the US chief commander, defended them, saying at least three senior fighters, whom he did not identify, have been killed in recent months in the attacks. |
Senior intelligence officers are lobbying the outgoing president to look after the men and women who could face charges for following his orders in the war on terrorism.
Many fear that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and put an end to the policy of extraordinary rendition, could launch a legal witch hunt against those who oversaw the policies after he is sworn in on Jan 20.
Most vulnerable are US intelligence officers who took part in intensive interrogations against terrorist suspects, using techniques including water boarding, which many believe crossed the line into torture.
A former CIA officer familiar with the backstage lobbying for pardons, said: “These are the people President Bush asked to fight the war on terror for him. He gave them the green light to fight tough. The view of many in the intelligence community is that he should not leave them vulnerable to legal censure when he leaves.
“An effort is under way to get pre-emptive pardons. The White House has indicated that the matter is under consideration.”
In addition to frontline CIA and military officers, others at risk could include David Addington, Dick Cheney’s former counsel, and William Haynes, the former Pentagon general counsel who helped draw up the regulations governing enhanced interrogations.
Many in the Democratic party and human rights groups are calling on President-Elect Obama to tear up Mr Bush’s executive orders licensing intensive interrogations on his first day in the Oval Office. They also want an immediate end to rendition, whereby suspects are flown to countries that practise torture.
But some in the intelligence community fear that an overhaul of the justice department could embolden those who would like a full-blown investigation of what went on at Guantanamo Bay, with charges to follow for those involved.
Presidents can issue pardons at their discretion and those granted the immunity of a pardon do not need to have been previously charged with a crime.
Granting pardons to spies who allegedly used torture would complicate the politics surrounding Mr Obama’s moves to end aspects of the war on terror that are blamed for tarnishing America’s international reputation.
In meetings over the last two weeks, Mr Obama has been briefed by US intelligence chiefs on the extreme danger posed by some terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay camp. His advisers last week floated the idea that, while some will be released and some put on trial in normal courts, a third category of legal status may have to be created for the most dangerous – a move that met with howls of protest from civil liberties groups.
There are just 255 prisoners still held at the base on the island of Cuba, but they include the so-called “Dirty 30”, bodyguards to Osama bin Laden captured during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.
The ex-CIA official said: “The Bush people are trying to be helpful but this is the one thing that they are pushing hard on. They’re saying, ‘Don’t rush into anything.’ It’s easy to say close the place, but what do you do with the detainees? There are some serious head cases in there.”
Some conservatives argue that if Mr Bush were to issue pardons to protect those who took part in his administration’s security regime, it would make it easier for the incoming administration to find out exactly what went on, the goal of many who want to prevent repetition of what they view as abuses.
The ex-CIA official said: “If you want people to tell the truth, the best way would be to give them legal guarantees. A pardon is not the only way you can do that, but if Bush does it, it will save Obama the political problem he would have if he offered people immunity later.”
But critics say such a move would be a disgrace. James Ross, legal and policy director for Human Rights Watch, said: “It would be the first pre-emptive pardon in US history for war crimes. Such a pardon might seek to protect low-level government officials who relied on legally dubious Justice Department memos on interrogations.
“But it would also provide blanket immunity to senior administration officials who bear criminal responsibility for their role in drafting, orchestrating and implementing a US government torture programme.”
Mr Bush has received around 3,000 requests for pardons and conservatives would like him to help Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice for his role in leaking the name of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame. Mr Bush has already commuted Mr Libby’s sentence.
Presidential pardons are always controversial, though Mr Bush has granted fewer than 200 so far, less than half of those handed out by Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day in office alone. When Gerald Ford took over from Richard Nixon, he pardoned his predecessor, forgiving all federal crimes he may have committed during the Watergate scandal.
Andrew Johnson pardoned the soldiers of the Confederacy and Jimmy Carter did the same for Vietnam War draft dodgers.
Peace and Justice Post 
Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice Is No Virtue
November 20, 2008Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers, Nov 18, 2008
With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they have no intention of investigating anyone in the Bush administration for possible war crimes.
What we’re talking about here is the torture of detained terrorist suspects in American custody in a grotesque violation of both our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and our historic principles as a democratic nation.
By their own machinations and attempts to redefine and pervert both treaties and our own laws, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington and any number of lesser suspects sought to shield themselves from, or put themselves above, justice.
They did so knowing full well that what they were doing — clearing the way for interrogators at Guantanamo and in the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret dungeons around the world to do anything it took, short of murder, to extract information from terror suspects.
The “harsh interrogation methods” included water-boarding, stripping and humiliating prisoners, subjecting them to extremes of temperature, putting them into stressful physical positions for hours, the use of psychotropic drugs and doubtless other equally uncivilized practices.
Water boarding has always been treated as a criminal act in this country. Military officers were court-martialed at the turn of the last century for water boarding Filipino guerrillas. More recently, an East Texas sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for water boarding a suspect and extracting a confession from him.
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, and its no way to begin an administration that was elected on promises of change. What it says is that if you’re one of the elite and powerful, your violations of the law will be overlooked, no matter how much damage you did to our country’s standing in the world.
What signal does it send to Mr. Bush’s gang of unindicted co-conspirators, who’ve unwrapped a Pandora’s boxful of other offenses — from perverting the administration of justice, to illegally eavesdropping on the phone conversations and e-mails of ordinary Americans, to salting the stream of intelligence with bogus material, to inviting their cronies to loot the Treasury with no-bid military contracts, to lying under oath to congressional oversight committees, to applying political litmus tests to the hiring of civil service employees to the wholesale destruction of White House e-mails and records? Etcetera. Etcetera.
This nation was founded on the principle of equal justice under the law. No one — no one — ought to be able to skate or hold a get-out-of-jail-free card by virtue of having been the most powerful felon in the land, or of working for him.
This signal on torture investigations says that Sen. Obama wants to start his administration as a uniter, not a divider, trying to untangle the unholy mess that the Decider and Co. are leaving behind them in the economy, in our military, in virtually every walk of our national life. It speaks to his desire to reach across the aisle to the defeated Republicans and try to bring them back into the fold as Americans.
That’s all well and good, but not if it comes at the cost of lifting the blindfold off Justice’s eyes and letting her pick and choose who’ll pay for criminal acts and who won’t. That’s no way to begin, and no way to continue.
Out in West Texas, crusty old ranchers plagued by coyotes killing their calves and baby sheep shoot the offending beasts and hang their carcasses on the nearest barbed wire fence as an object lesson to the rest of the pack.
Unless the newly empowered Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill hang a few coyotes on some fences in Washington, D.C., they’re making a huge mistake that will come back to haunt them, and all the rest of us, too.
Unless the truth, the whole truth, is unearthed, justice is done and the Republican closet is emptied of festering transgressions, the next pack will do it again, secure in the knowledge that their positions will protect them from the penalties that more ordinary citizens must pay for the same crimes.
The people of this nation have spoken loudly. They voted to throw the rascals out. They voted for a different way of governing, a different way of law making. They voted for equal rights under the law.
If their desires aren’t satisfied — if the new broom sweeps no cleaner than the old one — the next time around they may move things up a notch and throw all the bastards out — and they’d be fully justified in doing so.
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Tags:American violations of international law and the Genev, Bush administration, President-elect Obama, torture, War Criminals, waterboarding
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