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RIGHTS-US: Hamdan Case to Test Military Tribunals

July 22, 2008

By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Jul 21 (IPS) – As the long-awaited trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan opened this week at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, human rights groups filed suit demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) produce documents related to the U.S. government’s ghost detention, torture, and extraordinary rendition programme.

Attorney-General Michael Mukasey also called on Congress to quickly pass new legislation to guard against judges imposing a patchwork of conflicting rules that could produce confusion, more court challenges and even lengthier delays for prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo for as long as seven years.

Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s alleged former driver, is the first terror suspect to face trial at Guantanamo in seven years and the first test of whether that system can dispense fair and impartial justice. The charges against the Yemeni father of two will proceed before a military commission — the first since the end of World War II — with a jury of uniformed officers and rules that many constitutional authorities believe give great deference to the prosecution.

Evidence obtained from “cruel” and “inhuman” interrogation methods as well as hearsay evidence will be admissible under certain circumstances. Hamdan faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted.

“This was supposed to be the premier system for bringing to justice the masterminds of the worst crime ever committed on U.S. soil,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “The only result in seven years was the conviction of an Australian kangaroo trapper, who is now free.”

Continued . . .

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U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq

July 21, 2008

by Peter Phillips | Dissident Voice, July 19th, 2008

The United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since the invasion five and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, a British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reports that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003…. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000”.

The ORB report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The 2006 study confirms that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces.

The now estimated 1.2 million dead, as of July 2008, includes children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cab drivers, clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers, policemen, poets, healthcare workers, day care providers, construction workers, babysitters, musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many more. All manner of ordinary people in Iraq have died because the United States decided to invade their country. These are deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government.

The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces guarantees a mass death rate in excess of 10,000 people per month with half that number dying at the hands of US forces — a carnage so severe and so concentrated at to equate it with the most heinous mass killings in world history. This act has not gone unnoticed.

Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single impeachment article against George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15, the House forwarded the resolution to the Judiciary Committee with a 238 to 180 vote. That Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s threat to the US is now beyond doubt. Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De La Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her book U.S. v. Bush, and numerous other researchers have verified Bush’s untrue statements.

The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in our name. We have allowed the war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered ourselves little choice within the top two presidential candidates for immediate cessation of the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly accept the deaths of another million Iraqi civilians in order to save face for America, and Obama’s 18-month timetable for withdrawal would likely result in another 250,000 civilian deaths or more.

We owe our children and ourselves a future without the shame of mass murder on our collective conscience. The only resolution of this dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq and the prosecution and imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less creates a permanent original sin on the soul of the nation for that we will forever suffer.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University, and Director of Project Censored, a media research organization. Read other articles by Peter, or visit Peter’s website.

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Israeli Soldier Shoots Handcuffed And Blindfolded Palestinian Prisoner

July 21, 2008

Information Clearing House

2 Minute Video

Raw Footage

Al Jazeera Report

Click on “comments” below to read or post comments

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Nearly Fifty Percent of Americans Think U.S. Should Help Israel Attack Iran

July 21, 2008

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
July 20, 2008

Obama and McCain
It does not matter who ends up in the Oval Office, be it McCain or Obama, because the policy toward Iran will be similar, if not identical.

If we are to believe the results of a Rasmussen poll released on July 20, an astounding number of Americans have no problem helping Israel attack Iran. “Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say that if Israel launches an attack against Iran, the United States should help Israel. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 46% believe the United States should do nothing while just 1% believe the U.S. should help Iran.”

Moreover, once again demonstrating a complete ignorance of history and an absence of rational thinking — predictable, considering most Americans receive their historical and political education from the corporate media — 47% “believe it is at least somewhat likely Iran will try to provoke some form of attack before November in an attempt to influence the U.S. elections.”

In other words, so important is the American election to the Iranians, they will court the sort of chaos and social disintegration currently underway in Iraq to determine the outcome of the American election, an absurdity at best. But then Americans excel at buying into absurdities, the more ludicrous the better.

It does not matter who ends up in the Oval Office, be it McCain or Obama, because the policy toward Iran will be similar, if not identical. If this poll demonstrates anything, it is that the average voter of the sort polled by Rasmussen is effectively brainwashed and believes there is actually some sort of difference between Democrats and Republicans. Apparently, the Rasmussen voter also thinks the United States is at the center of the universe and all other nations pay close attention to our every political move before putting on their shoes in the morning. In fact, this sort of mindless “American exceptionalism” is resented and held in contempt by millions of people around the world.

In a normal, objective, historically accurate, and non-Bushzarro world, the Rasmussen voter would take into consideration the fact the British and the CIA worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq and installed the brutal dictator Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his SAVAK torturers.

Continued . . .

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The US will not prosecute Bush

July 21, 2008

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will never be tried for war crimes in the US because the country lacks a consensus on torture

The evidence is mounting that top US officials – including President George Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld – committed war crimes by authorising the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – ie torture. The war crimes drumbeat has accelerated with the recent release of two books: New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side and Philippe Sands’s Torture Team, which document the executive decision-making that led the US to set aside not just the Geneva Conventions, but a tradition of respect for the human rights of enemy prisoners that dates to back to George Washington’s prohibition on harming POWs.

Current and former Bush officials are now scrambling to avoid the opprobrium – not to mention the risk of prison time – that would result from criminal prosecution. This week, Capitol Hill was treated to the spectacle of Sands and Douglas Feith, a former Rumsfeld protege who was an architect of the Iraq invasion, testifying side by side before a House subcommittee. In an earlier interview with Sands, Feith claimed to be “really a player” in the engineering of legal workarounds to the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo. Before the committee, Feith declared his unerring support for Geneva.

The stream of commentary on this topic is waxing as we near the end of the Bush presidency. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof went his fellow pundits one better, suggesting that what the US needs is a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to sort through not just the legal transgressions of the past eight years, but the political manipulations as well.

Hang on a moment. There is no way that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or the second- and third-tier enablers of torture – the Feiths and John Yoos – will be prosecuted for war crimes in the United States.

The obstacle to prosecutions is the absence of a national consensus on the specific issue of torture, or, more generally, the Bush administration’s actions on terror. Certainly there is a consensus that the Bush administration has been a disaster and that the Iraq war was a mistake. But this doesn’t apply to specific terrorism policies, on which the White House still has more or less a political blank check to do as it pleases. (Whether a majority of the public supports those policies is debatable, but Republicans still back Bush, and Democrats are still cowed by the risk of appearing soft on the issue.) See Kevin Drum on why this is not Watergate: a well of political support remains for Bush’s terror policies, “enhanced interrogation” among them.

The matter of criminal culpability lies several steps further on. Even if they concede that torture is a war crime and buy the practical arguments against it – that it generates false information, endangers US soldiers should they be taken prisoner and is disastrous for America’s image and diplomatic efforts – many Americans would still resist prosecuting officials whose motive was averting terror attacks.

This also goes deeper than politics. I hate to sound cynical, but Americans don’t have much interest in accountability, truth or reconciliation. Our national motto is “move on”. The buzzword of the decade is Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”. Trials or commissions on war crimes would force a reckoning that many Americans don’t think is necessary and/or would simply rather not have.

However, those still hoping to see Bush and his associates in the dock might see promise in another feature of American culture: its disposability. What seems set in stone today, an immutable law of politics, almost certainly won’t be tomorrow. What once seemed an issue of high principle to many conservatives – embracing torture and defending Bush & Co – may quickly become passé once Bush leaves office and other issues come to dominate. The ideal condition for a successful prosecution is not a rising tide of outrage at Bush that would stoke the divisions in US society, but indifference.

Still, the most likely scenario for a torture prosecution is something like what happened to ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. His own country wouldn’t touch him, but an industrious Spanish prosecutor – aided by the work of human rights activists and backed by international opinion – indicted him for torture and war crimes and nearly snared him. If Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld faced a similar indictment from abroad, Americans would be outraged – but not really. The US government would try to head it off, but wouldn’t be able to do much. No one would actually go on trial, but the indictees would see their travel options humiliatingly curtailed and go to their graves knowing the phrase “charged with war crimes” will be next to their names in the history books.

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US torture claims are unreliable: British lawmakers

July 20, 2008

Khaleej Times, July 19, 2008

(AFP)

LONDON – The British government should no longer accept US assurances that it does not use torture, a parliamentary oversight committee said on Sunday in a wide-ranging report looking at London’s human rights policy.

Ministers have previously taken at face value statements from their US counterparts, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, that Washington does not resort to such practices.

But the cross-party foreign affairs committee said that stance should be abandoned given admissions from the US director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, that “water-boarding” had been used on terror suspects.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told parliament on two occasions this year that the practice, which simulates drowning during interrogation, amounts to torture.

Miliband’s position has “serious implications” for government policy, the committee said in its 214-page Human Rights Annual Report 2007-8.

“We conclude that, given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,” it added.

Britain is a signatory to a United Nations convention that prevents the extradition of suspects to countries where torture is used. If adopted, a change in approach could affect such transfers.

The committee also called for Britain to carry out an “exhaustive analysis” of US government interrogation techniques and seek guarantees about whether US flights carrying terror suspects used British airspace or airports.

Earlier this year, the United States admitted that two “rendition” flights landed on Diego Garcia, a British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean where there is a US air base.

Britain, whose policy is not to allow such transfers where there is a risk of torture, had earlier accepted assurances that its territory had not been used for the extra-judicial transfer of suspected extremists.

Such flights should not use British territory or airspace, even if no detainees were on board, the committee said.

Elsewhere, the committee urged an investigation into claims that six British nationals were detained and tortured by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and interrogated by British security agents.

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Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep: Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore Address the Netroots Nation Conference

July 20, 2008
Published on Saturday, July 19, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
by Ronnie Cummins

Saturday morning, July 19. Sitting here at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas with several thousand other online activists. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party Speaker of the House, the third most powerful politician in the United States, is up on the podium, doing her best to damp down the mounting criticism of the Democratic Party’s shameful collaboration in funding the war and aiding and abetting the Bush administration’s shredding of the Constitution. Before Pelosi speaks, an announcement is made from the podium that disruptions will not be tolerated–if any of us express our frustrations too passionately with Pelosi and the sell-out Democratic Party leadership we will be arrested.

The first question the Netroots moderator poses to Pelosi is about impeachment. This generates considerable applause and cheers from the crowd. Pelosi, notorious for proclaiming that “impeachment is off the table,” artfully dodges the question and evasively talks about censuring the Bush administration and getting tough on Karl Rove. This generates polite clapping from the front of the room, where all the tables have apparently been “reserved” for Pelosi fans. In contrast I can see groans, grimaces, and shaking of heads from many of us, the netroots rabble, sitting at the back of the hall.

I resist a strong urge to get up and leave. How long will the centrist bureaucrats of Netroots Nation and groups like MoveOn roll-over for lowest common denominator Democrats and Barack Obama? After an hour of rather boring rhetoric by Pelosi, Al Gore makes a surprise appearance on the stage, letting Nancy off the hook.

After a standing ovation, Gore reminds us that the polar icecaps are melting even faster than scientists had expected. The global climate crisis, he goes on, is about to turn into a climate catastrophe. Gore then points out that global warming is of course connected to the energy crisis, reliance on foreign oil, and the economic crisis, as well as the lack of political leadership in the country. Finally, to cheers from the crowd, Gore calls on the assembled netroots to educate the public and get behind his campaign to generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources of energy within 10 years.

Pelosi once again joins Gore on the stage and rather unconvincingly tries to present herself and the Democratic majority in the Congress as “revolutionary” on energy matters. This is too much for a number of us in the audience, and finally a man yells out at the top of his lungs, “What about the goddamn impeachment resolution?” The security guards at side of the hall look nervously around, but no one makes a move to arrest the man.

After claiming that she is trying to be “bi-partisan” today, and dodging a question about whether or not she will get behind Gore’s campaign for 100% renewable electricity by 2018, Pelosi rather anti-climatically reminds us that nothing will change unless we “get out there and elect Obama and a Democratic majority in November…”

Whether or not you decide to vote for Democrat Barack Obama, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, or Independent Ralph Nader in November, please go to http://www.GrassrootsNetroots.org and join a growing radical populist army who believe we need an alternative to MoveOn and Democratic Party centrists. The doomsday clock is ticking. Let’s fight like hell to make sure that 2008 is not the year where we tried to change drivers, but still went over the cliff.

Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Grassroots Netroots Alliance.

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Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t

July 17, 2008

By Paul Craig Roberts | “ICH”, July 16, 2008

National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial as well. The entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other than bullets.

Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war criminals? Why al-Bashir?

Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?

Bush and Blair’s crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf, at least in the number of deaths and displaced persons, the terrible situation in Darfur. The highest estimate of Darfur casualties is 400,000, one-third the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s invasion. Moreover, the conflict in the Sudan is an internal one, whereas Bush illegally invaded two foreign countries, war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard. Bush’s war crimes were enabled by the political leaders of the UK, Spain, Canada, and Australia. The leaders of every member of the “coalition of the willing to commit war crimes” are candidates for the dock.

But of course the Great Moral West does not commit war crimes. War crimes are charges fobbed off on people demonized by the Western media, such as the Serbian Milosovic and the Sudanese al-Bashir.

Every week the Israeli government evicts Palestinians from their homes, steals their land, and kills Palestinian women and children. These crimes against humanity have been going on for decades. Except for a few Israeli human rights organizations, no one complains about it. Palestinians are defined as “terrorists,” and “terrorists” can be treated inhumanely without complaint.

Iraqis and Afghans suffer the same fate. Iraqis who resist US occupation of their country are “terrorists.” Taliban is a demonized name. Every Afghan killed–even those attending wedding parties–is claimed to be Taliban by the US military. Iraqis and Afghans can be murdered at will by American and NATO troops without anyone raising human rights issues.

The International Criminal Court is a bureaucracy. It has a budget, and it needs to do something to justify its budget. Lacking teeth and courage, it goes after the petty war criminals and leaves the big ones alone.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m for holding all governments accountable for their criminal actions. It is the hypocrisy to which I object. The West gives itself and Israel a pass while damning everyone else. Even human rights groups fall into the trap. Rights activists don’t see the buffoonery in their complaint that President Bush, who has violated more human rights than any person alive, is letting China off the hook for human rights abuses by attending the Olympics hosted by China.

President Bush claims that the enormous destruction and death he has brought to Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary in order for Americans to be safe. If we are accepting excuses this feeble, Milosovic passed muster with his excuse that as the head of state he was obliged to try to preserve the state’s territorial integrity. Is al-Bashir supposed to accept secession in the Sudan, something that Lincoln would not accept from the Confederacy? How long would al-Bashir last if he partitioned Sudan?

Last October the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a photo on its front page above the fold of an elderly man with mikes shoved in his face. Paul Henss, 85 years old, is being deported from the US, where he has lived for 53 years, because Eli Rosenbaum, director the the US State Department’s Nazi-hunting bureaucracy, declared him a war criminal for training guard dogs used at German concentration camps. Henss was 22 years old when World War II ended.

A kid who trained guard dogs is being deported as a war criminal, but the head of state who launched two wars of naked aggression, resulting in the deaths of more than 1.2 million people, and who has the entire world on edge awaiting his third war of aggression, this time against Iran, is received respectfully by foreign governments. Corporations and trade associations will pay him $100,000 per speech when he leaves office. He will make millions of dollars more from memoirs written by a ghostwriter.

Does no one see the paradox of deporting Henss while leaving the war criminal in the White House?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan Administration, is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

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Congressional Panel To Review Kucinich’s Call to Impeach Bush

July 17, 2008
Published on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 by Associated Press

But the House committee won’t actually consider removing the president from office.

by Laurie Kellman

WASHINGTON – Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s single impeachment article will get a committee hearing – but not on removing President Bush from office.0716 01 1 2 3

The House on Tuesday voted 238-180 to send his article of impeachment – for Bush’s reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq – to the Judiciary Committee, which buried Kucinich’s previous effort.

This time, the panel will open hearings. But House Democratic leaders emphatically said the proceedings will not be about Bush’s impeachment, a first step in the Constitution’s process of a removing a president from office.

Instead, the panel will conduct an election-year review – possibly televised – of anything Democrats consider to be Bush’s abuse of power. Kucinich, D-Ohio, is likely to testify. But so will several scholars and administration critics, Democrats said.

The hearing is a modest gesture by House Democratic leaders to members like Kucinich who insist that Bush’s reasons for going to war meet the standard for impeachment. Kucinich had said that if his impeachment article is tabled he would just propose another one.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear since she ascended to that post that there would be no impeachment proceedings. But that didn’t stop Kucinich from introducing 35 articles of impeachment, spending four hours in June reading them on the House floor and demanding hearings. The House summarily dispatched them for burial to the Judiciary Committee.

Kucinich came back with a single article, which was read into the record Tuesday. As it did with the others, the House referred it to the panel, chaired by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

But this time, Pelosi said with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm, that it would see some committee action.

Democratic aides said the hearing could take place as soon as next week.

The impeachment resolution alleges that Bush misled the public into thinking that he had no choice but to wage war on Iraq and implied that Iraq had helped al-Qaida with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Democratic aides have widely suggested those gauging the bill’s prospects look to a precedent: the impeachment articles against Vice President Dick Cheney, which were sent to Conyers’ committee in November. There’s no evidence they will be considered before the Bush administration leaves office in January.

Those were Kucinich’s, too. Republicans, seeing a chance to force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle the bill from the floor.

© 2008 The Associated Press

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First al-Bashir, next … Bush?

July 17, 2008

Al-Jazeera, July 16, 2008

By Mark Levine, Middle East historian
Mark Levine says Bush is as responsible for the disaster in Iraq as Bashir is for the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur [GALLO/GETTY]

While there is little chance Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, will ever be brought to trial following his indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the charges brought against him nevertheless offer hope for anyone concerned about human rights around the world.For Americans, however, the ICC indictment should offer a moment of sombre reflection not merely for our relative inaction with regard to years of mass murder in Sudan.

It is equally disturbing that much of the al-Bashir indictment could just as easily be applied to George Bush, the US president.

Here is part of what the indictment says:

“Bashir was directly responsible [for the activities of the militias]. He is the president. He is the commander-in-chief. Those are not just formal words. He used the whole state apparatus. He used the army; he enrolled the militia/Janjaweed. They all report to him. They all obey him. His control is absolute.”

In such context, Bush is also directly responsible for the horrific disaster in Iraq.

Bush’s imperial presidency, with its “Unitary Executive” and arrogation of the right to declare war from the constitutionally-appointed Congress, has similarly “used the whole state apparatus” to wage the Iraq war. He “enrolled” our soldiers and his military commanders who “all report to him”.

For Bush, like al-Bashir, “they all obey him. His control is absolute”.

Iraq’s chaos

When I was in Iraq in the late winter and early spring of 2004 I saw this clearly, and saw the already huge scale of the war crimes being committed systematically by US forces across the country.

It was clear to most Iraqis that the chaos being reaped by the US in their country was in fact deliberately sown by the US in order to create a situation that would make any US withdrawal almost impossible to pull off.

While the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – for which Bush, and along with him, the American people who twice elected him, are responsible – is tragic, it should not be understated that the invasion itself was a crime against humanity.

The war and invasion were in clear breach of the UN charter, which prohibits invading other countries except when an attack on one’s sovereign territory is about to occur or has just occurred.

Add to that US torturing of prisoners, illegal secret renditions, and a host of other human rights abuses, and you have a long list of actions that are prohibited and outlawed by US federal law.

Ideal America

In an America that still lived up to its founding ideals Bush and his henchmen and women would not be worrying about an ICC indictment because they would be too busy already defending themselves against a US federal indictment for war crimes and other violations of US law.

At least in this imperfect world, Bush and the architects and executioners of the Iraq war can join al-Bashir in suffering the ignominy of being at-large international criminals.

Mark Levine is a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine and is the author of the newly released Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

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