Filed under: bagram, Barack Obama, black sites, CIA, Detainees, Guantanamo, human rights, Military, Military Industrial Complex, obama, obama deception, obamas war, Oppression, rendition, Torture, Troops
Report: Afghans in secret jail ‘made to dance’ to use bathroom
Raw Story
April 15, 2010
Bagram prisoners ‘moved around in wheelchairs with goggles and headphones on’
The US military is operating a “secret jail” at an Afghan airbase where prisoners are deprived of sleep and “made to dance” by US troops whenever they want to use the toilet, a BBC report states.
The BBC interviewed nine people who say they were held at the facility, known as the “black hole,” at the site of the Bagram air base. The prison appears to be separate from the main Bagram prison, which the US established after the 2001 invasion and which continues to be the target of human rights complaints.
A man identified only as “Mirwais” who says he spent 24 days at the facility told the BBC that prisoners are routinely subjected to sleep deprivation.
“I could not sleep, nobody could sleep because there was a machine that was making noise,” said Mirwais. “There was a small camera in my cell, and if you were sleeping they’d come in and disturb you.”
“Mirwais said he was made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet,” the BBC reports.
Witnesses said the lights were kept on in their cells at all times; that the Red Cross had no access to the facility; and most had been beaten by US troops before they were brought there. The BBC report does not address under what circumstances the witnesses found themselves there, or whether any of them were insurgents.
This is not the first time that allegations have been made of a secret facility at Bagram. Last November, Raw Story reported on claims of a secret site at Bagram that was still in operation as of late last year, apparently in contravention of President Obama’s order, upon taking office, to shut down the CIA’s “black sites” around the world.
Three people claiming to be former inmates of the facility told the New York Times “of being held for months after the intensive interrogations were over without being told why. One detainee said he remained at the Bagram prison complex for two years and four months; another was held for 10 months total.”
The secret site appears to be separate from the main prison facility at Bagram, which itself has been the target of complaints from human rights activists. Unlike the Guantanamo Bay facility, prisoners at Bagram aren’t given access to lawyers.
“To this date, no prisoner has ever seen a lawyer in Bagram,” lawyer Tina Foster told the BBC.
The news organization was given a rare peek inside the main Bagram prison complex, a new facility that replaced an aging one earlier this year:
- In the new jail, prisoners were being moved around in wheelchairs with goggles and headphones on. The goggles were blacked out, and the purpose of the headphones was to block out all sound. Each prisoner was handcuffed and had their legs shackled.
Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as “cages”. The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid. Guards can see down into the cells above.
The BBC was told by the military to wear protective eye glasses whilst walking past the mesh cells as prisoners sometimes throw excrement or semen at the guards.
Faced with a lawsuit from the ACLU, the US military earlier this year released a long-secret list of prisoners at Bagram. The list showed some 645 prisoners being held at the facility, but the BBC now reports that number to be closer to 800, thanks to an increase in prisoner intake likely linked to the increased military effort in Afghanistan in recent months.
“The US military itself has admitted that about 80% of those at Bagram are probably not hardened terrorists,” the BBC reports.
In March, the Times of London reported that the Bagram facility could be expanded and used as a replacement for the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The idea is “being considered as US officials try to find an alternative to Guantánamo Bay,” the Times said.
Last year, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather said “there is a school of thought” that Bagram is already replacing Guantanamo as the site where terrorist suspects from around the world are to be held.
“Some of the contentions that were made about Guantanamo are starting to be made about Bagram,” Rather told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “The critical thing is, there is no transparency.”
The Guantanamo Guidebook
Filed under: Barack Obama, civilian casualties, Dictatorship, Empire, Guantanamo, Military, military funding, Military Industrial Complex, military spending, nation building, obama, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Saudi Arabia, surge, War On Terror, yemen
U.S. Pumps $70 Million in Security Aid to Yemen
Yemen Post
December 25, 2009
The U.S. pumped about $ 70 million in security aid to Yemen in 2009, with the aim to thwart the expansion of Al-Qaeda in the country amid fears by the west the Yemen may become a safe haven for terrorism, U.S. reports have noted.
The U.S. support to Yemen in the security field did not only focus on giving funds, but also sending military experts to train Yemeni troops how to counter terror as well as taking part in operations against Al-Qaeda targets, they added.
U.S. drones were said to have helped Yemeni security forces to raid Al-Qaeda hideouts and training sites in the south and north at the ends of the past two weeks, killing and arresting scores of terrorist suspects including leaders.
Many civilians were also among the dead in the internationally-hailed but locally-protested raids in Abyan, Sana’a and Shabwa.
The help from U.S. military equipment came to demonstrate an increase in the U.S. support to Yemen financially and logistically and amid reluctance by the U.S. determined to close its jail in Guantanamo, Cuba, where the Yemeni inmates make up half of the jailed there.
The U.S. support also included providing intelligence information about terrorists in Yemen that help the success of the recent raids.
The reports, citing U.S. official who paid visits to Yemen, also noted that the U.S. existence in the country is in a surge, with some unnamed officials saying all support comes under Yemen’s request.
The officials, however, distanced the U.S. from direct involvement in the war between the army and the Houthi insurgents in the far north.
Filed under: 2-party system, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, Child Abuse, child torture, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, DOJ, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, john yoo, left right paradigm, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, rendition, Torture, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Protecting Bush’s “Testicle Crusher” Attorney
San Francisco Chronicle
December 8, 2009
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,” Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Other sanctions are available for government lawyers who commit misconduct, the department said. It noted that its Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004 and has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution.
The office has not made its conclusions public. However, The Chronicle and other media reported in May that the office will recommend that Yoo be referred to the bar association for possible discipline, but that he not be prosecuted.
Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 mastermind, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, alqaeda, black site, CIA, Detainees, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, human rights, interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, KSM, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Official 9/11 Story, Pentagon, poland, rendition, Torture, torture prison, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House, World Trade Center | Tags: lite, LLC
EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy in Lithuania
ABC
November 19, 2009
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
“The activities in that prison were illegal,” said human rights researcher John Sifton. “They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions.”
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the “black site” in 2004.
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 mastermind, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, alqaeda, black site, Child Abuse, CIA, Detainees, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crime, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, human rights, human rights watch, interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, KSM, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Official 9/11 Story, Pakistan, Pentagon, prison camp, red cross, rendition, Torture, torture prison, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House, World Trade Center | Tags: Ron Suskind
KSM’s children tortured with insects
Raw Story
April 17, 2009
Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.
The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
While an additional memo released Thursday claims that the torture with insects technique was never utilized by the CIA, the allegations regarding the children would have transpired when the method was authorized by the Bush Administration.
At a military tribunal in 2007, the father of a Guantanamo detainee alleged that Pakistani guards had confessed that American interrogators used ants to coerce the children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed into revealing their father’s whereabouts.
The statement was made by Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, who gave a detailed account of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American guards in Pakistan. In his statement, Khan asserted that one of his sons was held at the same place as the young children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” (A pdf transcript is available here)
Khan’s statement is second-hand. But the picture he paints of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American interrogators is strikingly similar to the accounts given by numerous other detainees to the International Red Cross. The timing of the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s son — then aged seven and nine — also meshes with a report by Human Rights Watch, which says that the children were captured in September 2002 and held for four months at the hands of American guards.
“According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts,” the report said.
The use of insects isn’t mentioned in a recently leaked International Red Cross report, in which Red Cross officials questioned detainees about their treatment at the hands of US forces and ultimately judged them to have been tortured. A second memo released Thursday, dated May 10, 2005, says the CIA told the White House insects were never actually used in interrogations.
“We understand that — for reasons unrelated to any concerns that it might violate the [criminal] statute — the CIA never used the technique and has removed it from the list of authorized interrogation techniques,” Steven Bradbury, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a footnote.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Red Cross was denied access to individuals held at CIA black sites. Khan’s son, Majid, was among those President Bush moved from the CIA’s secret prison network to Guantanamo Bay.
The techniques Khan says were employed against his son also match those approved in the Bybee memo.
“What I can tell you is that Majid was kidnapped from my son Mohammed’s [not related Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] house in Karachi, along with Mohammed, his wife, and my infant granddaughter,” Khan said in his military tribunal statement. “They were captured by Pakistani police and soldiers and taken to a detention center fifteen minutes from Mohammed’s house. The center had walls that seemed to be eighty feet high. My sons were hooded, handcuffed, and interrogated. After eight days of interrogation by US and Pakistani agents, including FBI agents, Mohammed was allowed to see Majid.
“Majhid looked terrible and very, very tired,” Khan continued. “According to Mohammed, Majid said that the Americans tortured him for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb. They re-tied him in the chair every hour, tightening the bonds on his hands and feet each time so that it was more painful. He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep. When he was not being interrogated, the Americans put Majid in a small cell that was totally dark and too small for him to lie down in or sit in with his legs stretched out. He had to crouch. The room was also infested with mosquitoes. The torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he was not even allowed to read.”
Later in his statement, Khan alleges that the Pakistani guards revealed other abuses by American agents.
“The Americans also once stripped and beat two Arab boys, ages fourteen and sixteen, who were turned over by the Pakistani guards at the detention center,” he said. “These guards told my son that they were very upset at this and said the boys were thrown like garbage onto a plane to Guantanamo. Women prisoners were also held there, apart from their husbands, and some were pregnant and forced to give birth in their cells. According to Mohammed, one woman also died in her cell because the guards could not get her to a hospital quickly enough. This was most upsetting to the Pakistani guards.”
One blogger notes, “The first indications the children may have been tortured were reported in Ron Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine.”
“When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: ‘do whatever’s necessary,’” Kevin Fenton writes at History Commons. “The interrogators then told KSM ‘his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate. However, his response was, ’so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.’”
Fenton has two questions: “Did the Khans invent the allegations or garble them in some way and then ‘get lucky’ two years later, when it was revealed the CIA was, at least, contemplating the techniques they alleged it used at the time in question?” and “Given that nobody heard of the CIA using insects for another two years, why would they invent these specific allegations, which sounded bizarre when they were made?”
New Gitmo Video: Child Detainee Cries During Interrogation
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Guantanamo, Henry Kissinger, Iran, Iraq, iraq casualties, iraq war, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strikes, nation building, Neolibs, Nuke, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, Pakistan, peace prize, Russia, russia today, Saber Rattling, surge, Tehran, Torture, Troops, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes
War President Obama Wins ‘Peace Prize’
Filed under: 2-party system, Barack Obama, Bryan Whitman, Colonialism, Concentration Camp, corruption, Detainees, Detention Camps, DoD, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, free press, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Gulag, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, occupation, Oppression, Propaganda, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House
Obama making Guantanamo off-limits to press
Press TV
September 29, 2009
The Obama Administration is denying journalist access to the Guantanamo detention facility despite pledging ‘transparency’ about the infamous prison.
The reporters, who were previously allowed to peek into the prison while covering military trials of the detainees there, are no longer given such authorization, FOXNews reported on Monday.
Arguing in favor of the decision, Defense Department Spokesman Bryan Whitman said “Past experience has led me to believe it is best to keep these visits focused on the purpose of the trip, which in this case is military commission motions,” not the detention camps.
“…the decision, according to multiple sources, is coming out of Washington and the Defense Department,” said the network’s Catherine Herridge.
“…it is clearly not consistent with the administration’s stated goal of transparency,” she added.
Under the banner of the war on terror, former president George W. Bush set up the facility in a US naval base in Cuba shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Ever since, the prison has earned notoriety for conducting torture-aided interrogations of alleged ‘terror’ suspects.
The White House has now even adjourned the military trials at the Guantanamo, taking away the only opportunity journalists had to access the prison.
Shortly after his inauguration in January, Obama signed an official order to shut down Guantanamo within a year, describing it as a “sad chapter in the American history.”
Recently, however, the White House reportedly decided against the closure, citing legal and logistical complexities surrounding the detention and prosecution of inmates held without any charges.
The recent news blackout came, according to Herridge, after a May incident in which two Chinese detainees at Guantanamo’s Camp Iguana compound “held up signs questioning whether the president was a communist or a Democrat and they questioned whether Mr. Obama was oppressing them because they had not been released five months after the president promised to close Guantanamo within a year.”
“…multiple sources have told us this incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” asserted Herridge. “It was highly embarrassing for the Defense Department and for the White House and this was, interestingly enough, the last trip for the journalists to the camps to cover the commission hearings.”
Over 220 inmates are currently held at Guantanamo, widely regarded as one of many American torture chambers reserved for Muslims with “suspected” ties to anti-US terrorism. Many inmates remain in prison unaware of any charges against them and with no right to a legal counsel.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainee, Detainees, detention, DOJ, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Marines, Military, military commissions act, Military Industrial Complex, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, soldiers, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
John Byrne
Raw Story
September 24, 2009
President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold “combatants” without habeas corpus — a legal term literally meaning “you shall have the body” — which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect’s detention.
Obama’s decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times’ New York edition on Thursday. It didn’t appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, “Richest Russian’s Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.”)
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions — including the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
“The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” the Times‘ Peter Baker writes. “In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Constitutional scholar and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald discussed the policy in a column in May. He warned that the ability for a president to “preventively” detain suspects could mushroom into broader, potentially abusive activity.
“It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding,” Greenwald wrote. “That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, ‘preventive detention’ allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally ‘dangerous’ by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they ‘expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden’ or ‘otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans’). That’s what ‘preventive’ means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be ‘combatants.’”
“Once known, the details of the proposal could — and likely will — make this even more extreme by extending the ‘preventive detention’ power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a ‘combatant,’” Greenwald continues. “After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based — namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain “dangerous” people even when they can’t prove they violated any laws — there’s no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly ‘dangerous’ combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.”
The Obama Administration appears to have embraced “preventive detention” in part because of problems with how Guantanamo prisoners’ cases — and incarceration — were handled under President Bush. Military prosecutors have said that numerous cases could not be brought successfully in civilian courts because evidence was obtained in ways that wouldn’t be admissible on US soil. The Bush Administration originally sought to try numerous detainees in military tribunals, but the Supreme Court ruled that at least some have the rights to challenge their detention in US courts.
Baker notes that Obama’s decision to hold suspects without charges doesn’t propose as broad an executive authority claimed by President Bush.
“Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress,” Baker writes.
In a statement to Baker, the Justice Department said, “The administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress [and] is not currently seeking additional authorization.”
“The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the statement added.
Roughly 50 detainees of the more than 200 still held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are thought to be affected by the decision.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11 Truth, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, Eugenics, fake alqaeda, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, Genocide, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, infanticide, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, truth movement, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger
NATO Air Strike Kills 150 Afghan Civilians
Rahmatullah, 19, a victim of Friday’ NATO air strike, tries to sit up on his bed in a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009.
Pajwok Afghan News
September 5, 2009
Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday’s air strike by NATO-led forces.
The bombing in Haji Aman village came as insurgents and residents emptied oil into jerry canes from tankers hijacked by Taliban militants from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway.
Inhabitants of the area told Pajhwok Afghan News all those killed in the bombardment were civilians and there were no Taliban at the site at the time the attack took place. Fighters had left the scene after they asked the people to take fuel for free.
An elder from Sarak-i-Bala neighbourhood, Abdul Rahim, said 15 children were among the 50 people of Yaqubi village killed in the bombing raid.
The man, who lost two sons in the incident, argued: “Poverty brought us to this stage.” No guerrillas were among the dead, he said, explaining the fighters well before the deadly assault.
A 50-year-old woman bitterly cried while standing in front of her ruined house. She said her three sons, husband and a grandson perished in the bombardment. Locals showed this reporter as many as 50 graves of civilian victims.
In the Maulvi Naeem village, residents said 20 civilians were killed in the incident. Haji Najmuddin, a tribal elder, lost two nephews. He claimed chemicals bombs were dropped on the villagers. Clothes of his nephews were not damaged but their bodies were badly charred, the man argued.
This reporter saw the graves of those killed in the air strike. Seventy of the fatalities were from Yaqubi and Maulvi Naeem villages and the rest from three other areas.
Meanwhile, Kunduz Governor Eng. Muhammad Omar said a delegation from Kabul had arrived in the district to investigate the incident and determine the exact number of civilian deaths.
Government gives up hope of more European Nato help in Afghanistan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6143065/Government-gives-up-hope-of-more-European-Nato-help-in-Afghanistan.html
Afghan air strike galvanises war protesters
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, milirary, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger | Tags: dead marine photo, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Joshua M. Bernard, Julie Jacobson, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, wounded marine photo
Mass Censorship of Dead Marine Photo
Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com
September 7, 2009
Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.
U.S. War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.
The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as “insensitive.” Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks “judgment and common decency.”
The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated Press for a “stunning lack of compassion and common decency.”
To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped the censor, the war secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically correct jargon: “insensitive,” “offended,” and the “anguish” and “pain and suffering” inflicted upon the Marine’s family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment tort.
Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals – Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the U.S. Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keep campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies.
Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the U.S. government and a significant percentage of the U.S. population believe that the U.S. has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.
For the American war secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.
The exceptional “virtuous nation” does not think it is insensitive for America’s bombs to blow innocent villagers to pieces. On Sept. 4, the day before Gates’ outburst over the “insensitive” photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a U.S./NATO air strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation forces:
“’Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs, and body parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker were badly burnt,’ said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr. Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called in.”
What does the world think of the United States? The American war secretary and a U.S. military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.
The U.S. government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated U.S. law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings, and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the U.S. Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.
The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.
Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that is more liability than benefit should be abolished.
The agency’s program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions and dangers. The hatred created by the U.S. and Israel is independent of any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another. In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts against the U.S. and its allies.
Accusing the truthteller instead of the evildoer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.
This is the way many Americans think. America über alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.
The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” U.S. government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the Whistleblower Protection Act has no support from Sen. Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.
This is where the U.S. government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.
Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.
Filed under: 2-party system, ACLU, Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Canada, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Donald Rumsfeld, egypt, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, federal crimes, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Hillary Clinton, human rights, interrogation, left right paradigm, Nazi, Neolibs, New York, obama, Oppression, rendition, Syria, Torture, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: Maher Arar
Outsourcing Torture To Continue Under Obama
Anthony Gregory
Campaign For Liberty
August 25, 2009
Flashback: Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions
About two years ago, candidate Obama, writing in Foreign Affairs, strongly criticized Bush’s practice of “extraordinary renditioning.” Under this policy, terror suspects were apprehended, transferred, sometimes through secret prisons and black cites, and handed over to foreign regimes like Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes this involved torture. Maher Arar, for example, was a Canadian citizen later determined to be innocent, captured in New York and sent to Syria where he was tortured in brutal ways. See this piece in the New Yorker chroniciling other such horror stories.
Obama’s criticism of renditioning, along with his general criticism of the Bush administration’s violations of habeas corpus, was one of his most serious indictments of the war on terrorism as managed by the Republicans.
Now the New York Times reports that “[t]he Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured.”
How will they monitor such treatment? The administration “would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.” This is the State Department headed by Hillary Clinton — the same politician whom Ann Coulter had said she’d vote for over John McCain because Clinton was more pro-torture!
The Times goes on to report:
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh of the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.
She cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, which offered assurances against torture but beat Mr. Arar with electrical cable anyway.a new administrative interrogation unit, to be housed within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which will oversee the interrogations of top terror suspects using largely non-coercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.”
Filed under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, abraham lincoln, big government, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, constitution, Detainee, Dictatorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, enemy combatant, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI, fearmongering, free speech, George Bush, government bureaucrat, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, House, john ashcroft, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Judge Napolitano, knock and talk, london, neocons, oligarchy, Oppression, Patriot Act, Police State, search warrant, Senate, slavery, supreme court, thomas jefferson, Torture, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search
Judge Napolitano on the Patriot Act
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11 Truth, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, black operations, blackops, central america, Chile, CIA, cocaine, Colin Powell, colombia, Colonialism, Communism, Congress, corporatism, Costa Rica, Coup, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, El Salvador, Empire, eric holder, Fascism, George Bush, global police force, Guantanamo, haiti, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Honduras, Hugo Chavez, imf, Iran Contra, John Bolton, John Negroponte, kidnapping, left right paradigm, lobbyists, manuel zelaya, Military, military base, Nazi, Nicaragua, obama, PNAC, privatization, project for the new american century, roman empire, slavery, socialism, sovereignty, staged coup, Torture, Troops, truth movement, u.s air base, u.s. military, UN, war on drugs, War On Terror, war on terrorism, world police force | Tags: corporatocracy, Council for National Policy, honduran coup, Jacobo Arbenz, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Lanny Davis
Chavez Says The U.S. Toppled The Honduran President, Taking Him To A U.S. Air Base
Hugo Chavez
aangrifan
August 20, 2009
It looks like it was the CIA that toppled Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, on 28 June 2009.
Diana Barahona, at Global Research, 18 August 2009, tells us that Zelaya was taken to a U.S. air base during the kidnapping.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has revealed that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya told him that the military who kidnapped him transferred him by plane to a U.S. military base, in Honduran territory.
According to Chavez: “They put Zelaya in the plane and landed at Palmerola with the president a prisoner and the Yankee officials appeared and knew that the president was there, they had a discussion with the Honduran officials.
“Then the Yankee military took the decision there to send him to Costa Rica.
“That is a very serious matter, the the president of Honduras was in a Yankee military base…
“The Yankees overthrew Zelaya…
“From the Yankee base, which is at a place called Palmerola, they carried out all of the operations and the dirty war and the terrorism against Sandinista Nicaragua, against El Salvador.
“It wasn’t long ago that the Yankees turned Honduras into a platform to attack its neighbors.”
“What we are asking is that he (Obama) withdraw the Palmerola base, that he withdraw the Guantanamo base where they torture…”
Chavez also said that Venezuela rejects Obama’s policy of setting up U.S. military bases in Colombia.
Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?
John Perkins
Information Clearing House
I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.
Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.
Democracy Now! covers the Honduran coup.
Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.
I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”
It did not take much imagination to envision the turmoil sweeping through every Latin American capital. There had been a collective sign of relief at Barack Obama’s election in the U.S., a sense of hope that the empire in the North would finally exhibit compassion toward its southern neighbors, that the unfair trade agreements, privatizations, draconian IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and threats of military intervention would slow down and perhaps even fade away. Now, that optimism was turning sour.
The cozy relationship between Honduras’s military coup leaders and the corporatocracy were confirmed a couple of days after my arrival in Panama. England’s The Guardian ran an article announcing that “two of the Honduran coup government’s top advisers have close ties to the US secretary of state. One is Lanny Davis, an influential lobbyist who was a personal lawyer for President Bill Clinton and also campaigned for Hillary. . . The other hired gun for the coup government that has deep Clinton ties is (lobbyist) Bennett Ratcliff.” (1)
DemocracyNow! broke the news that Chiquita was represented by a powerful Washington law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and its consultant, McLarty Associates (2). President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had been a Covington partner and a defender of Chiquita when the company was accused of hiring “assassination squads” in Colombia (Chiquita was found guilty, admitting that it had paid organizations listed by the US government as terrorist groups “for protection” and agreeing in 2004 to a $25 million fine). (3) George W. Bush’s UN Ambassador, John Bolton, a former Covington lawyer, had fiercely opposed Latin American leaders who fought for their peoples’ rights to larger shares of the profits derived from their resources; after leaving the government in 2006, Bolton became involved with the Project for the New American Century, the Council for National Policy, and a number of other programs that promote corporate hegemony in Honduras and elsewhere.
McLarty Vice Chairman John Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations; he played a major role in the U.S.-backed Contra’s secret war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and has consistently opposed the policies of the democratically-elected pro-reform Latin American presidents. (4) These three men symbolize the insidious power of the corporatocracy, its bipartisan composition, and the fact that the Obama Administration has been sucked in.
The Los Angeles Times went to the heart of this matter when it concluded:
What happened in Honduras is a classic Latin American coup in another sense: Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who led it, is an alumnus of the United States’ School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The school is best known for producing Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including military coups. (5)
All of this leads us once again to the inevitable conclusion: you and I must change the system. The president – whether Democrat or Republican – needs us to speak out.
Chiquita, Dole and all your representatives need to hear from you. Zelaya must be reinstated.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, airstrikes, al-qaeda, Athar Abbas, Barack Obama, bilderberg, bin laden, catastrophic event, CIA, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, George Bush, Guantanamo, Iraq, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, Musharraf, nation building, national guard, Nazi, Neolibs, New World Order, obama, occupation, Pakistan, Police State, robert gibbs, Ron Paul, Saber Rattling, socialism, sovereignty, Taliban, Torture, Troops, uav, us military, War On Terror, White House, WW3, ww4 | Tags: national service, obama youth, selective service, soldiers, u.s. soldiers, universal civil defense training, universal service
Here we go.. Obama continues Bush’s policy on military force in Pakistan
Obama bombs Pakistan
NY Daily News
January 23, 2009
U.S. Predator drones hit two suspected AlQaeda dens in Pakistan with Hellfire missiles Friday – the first cross-border strikes from Afghanistan on President Obama’s watch.
Pakistani officials said at least 15 people were killed, including three children and four civilians. The attacks signaled Obama had given the green light to the CIA and the military to continue former President Bush’s policy of targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan.
New White House press secretary Robert Gibbs repeatedly declined to say whether Obama had personally signed off on the missile attacks that hit two villages in Pakistan’s lawless northwest frontier zone. “I’m not going to speak about these matters,” Gibbs said.
But U.S. intelligence sources told the Daily News neither the military nor the CIA was authorized to carry out such attacks without presidential approval.
In one of the strikes, “A militant den was successfully destroyed. At least five foreign Al Qaeda militants were killed,” a Pakistani official told Agence France-Presse.
During the campaign, Obama warned that he would authorize cross-border operations to go after Osama Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with or without the approval of Pakistan, which complained about the missile strikes.
“It helps us in no way conducting our operations” against Islamic militants, Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told CNN.
“We face much more difficulty as a result of drone strikes, and we have conveyed our position on that” to the U.S., Abbas said.
Pakistan routinely protests the air strikes as violations of sovereignty, but U.S. sources have suggested that Pakistan secretly supports the tactic to hit militants that also threaten the central government.
The U.S. has carried out more than 30 air strikes on targets in Pakistan since last July, killing more than 260 people.
Among those killed were top operatives planning attacks against the West, sources told The News. The list included:
- Khalid Habib, a veteran combat leader and operations chief involved in plots to attack the West. He was deputy to AlQaeda No. 3, Shaikh Sa’id al-Masri.
- Rashid Rauf, the mastermind of the 2006 British airliner plot.
- Abu Khabab al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s most seasoned explosives expert and trainer, who headed its chemical and biological weapons efforts.
- Abdallah Azzam, also a top aide to Shaikh Sa’id al-Masri.
- Abu al-Hassan al-Rimi, who led cross-border operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
-
Abu Jihad al-Masri, an operation planner and propagandist
Robert Gibbs Refuses to Discuss Pakistan Bombing
http://rawstory.com/..raeus_over_missil_01202009.html
Obama ready to deploy 20,000 troops to Afghanistan
http://rawstory..ady_to_deploy_up_to_20_01232009.html
Ron Paul: Obama Will Massively Increase The Government
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ron-..vernment.html
Barack Obama: it is no longer essential to kill Osama bin Laden
http://www.times..s_and_americas/article5520116.ece
Obama’s orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact
http:/..obamas-orders-leave-torture-indefinite.html” target=”_self
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, federal crime, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, nation building, Nazi, occupation, Oppression, rendition, Torture, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror
U.S. Interrogator: “You have 3 minutes to live”
Filed under: 1st amendment, 2008 Election, Abu Ghraib, Anti-War, brazil, Britain, civil liberties, civil rights, demonstration, Detainee, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Europe, european union, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, free press, free speech, Guantanamo, human rights, london, Minneapolis, Nazi, Oppression, pain compliance, police brutality, rendition, RNC, Taser Guns, Toll Roads, Torture, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror | Tags: Delaware, Elliot Hughes, minneapolis police department, peter willimae, queensland, queensland police department, Ramsey County, ramsey county jail, Rio de Janeiro, st. paul police, st. paul police department
RNC police brutality and torture victims speak out
Queensland Police Brutality
Aiken County Sheriff stops group for saggy pants
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080916/twl-rio-cops-kill-three-people-a-day-3fd0ae9.html
Cop who arrested TV cameraman has been fired
http://kob.com/article/stories/S578979.shtml?cat=500
Delaware Bridge cops want toll cheats’ money, or their cars
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/186/story/260008.html
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, Abu Ghraib, Anti-War, civil liberties, civil rights, demonstration, Detainee, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, free speech, Guantanamo, Homeland Security, human rights, Minneapolis, Nazi, Oppression, pain compliance, police brutality, Police State, Protest, rendition, RNC, stasi, stasi tactics, Taser Guns, Torture, US Constitution, War On Terror | Tags: Elliot Hughes, minneapolis police department, Ramsey County, ramsey county jail, st. paul police, st. paul police department
RNC Protester Tortured in Ramsey County Jail
Elliot Hughes recounts allegations of torture while being detained in Ramsey County Jail. Hughes was detained during an RNC08 protest after reportedly colliding with a police bicycle on accident. …
Filed under: 4th amendment, al-qaeda, Congress, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI, George Bush, Guantanamo, House, Iraq, John McCain, Military, nation building, Nazi, neocons, NSA, occupation, Oppression, Posse Comitatus, rendition, Senate, telecoms, Torture, US Constitution, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: Jose Padilla
Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war
Raw Story
August 30, 2008
As the nation focuses on Sen. John McCain’s choice of running mate, President Bush has quietly moved to expand the reach of presidential power by ensuring that America remains in a state of permanent war.
Buried in a recent proposal by the Administration is a sentence that has received scant attention — and was buried itself in the very newspaper that exposed it Saturday. It is an affirmation that the United States remains at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated organizations.”
Part of a proposal for Guantanamo Bay legal detainees, the provision before Congress seeks to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”
The New York Times’ page 8 placement of the article in its Saturday edition seems to downplay its importance. Such a re-affirmation of war carries broad legal implications that could imperil Americans’ civil liberties and the rights of foreign nationals for decades to come.
It was under the guise of war that President Bush claimed a legal mandate for his warrantless wiretapping program, giving the National Security Agency power to intercept calls Americans made abroad. More of this program has emerged in recent years, and it includes the surveillance of Americans’ information and exchanges online.
“War powers” have also given President Bush cover to hold Americans without habeas corpus — detainment without explanation or charge. Jose Padilla, a Chicago resident arrested in 2002, was held without trial for five years before being convicted of conspiring to kill individuals abroad and provide support for terrorism.
But his arrest was made with proclamations that Padilla had plans to build a “dirty bomb.” He was never convicted of this charge. Padilla’s legal team also claimed that during his time in military custody — the four years he was held without charge — he was tortured with sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, forced stress positions and injected with drugs.
Times reporter Eric Lichtblau notes that the measure is the latest step that the Administration has taken to “make permanent” key aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. Congress recently passed a much-maligned bill giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for their participation in what constitutional experts see as an illegal or borderline-illegal surveillance program, and is considering efforts to give the FBI more power in their investigative techniques.
“It is uncertain whether Congress will take the administration up on its request,” Lichtblau writes. “Some Republicans have already embraced the idea, with Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration’s proposal. ’Since 9/11,’ Mr. Smith said, ’we have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.’”
If enough Republicans come aboard, Democrats may struggle to defeat the provision. Despite holding majorities in the House and Senate, they have failed to beat back some of President Bush’s purported “security” measures, such as the telecom immunity bill.
Bush’s open-ended permanent war language worries his critics. They say it could provide indefinite, if hazy, legal justification for any number of activities — including detention of terrorists suspects at bases like Guantanamo Bay (where for years the Administration would not even release the names of those being held), and the NSA’s warantless wiretapping program.
Lichtblau co-wrote the Times article revealing the Administration’s eavesdropping program along with fellow reporter James Risen.
He notes that Bush’s language “recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001… [which] authorized the president to ’use all necessary and appropriate force’ against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden.”
“But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration’s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress,” he adds.
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, ACLU, Anti-War, Big Brother, civil liberties, civil rights, colorado, Control Grid, Denver, Detainee, Dictatorship, DNC, Empire, Fascism, fingerprints, free speech, free speech zone, Guantanamo, human rights, Martial Law, Nazi, New York, Oppression, orwell, Police State, prison camp, Protest, secret service, stasi, stasi tactics, US Constitution, War On Terror | Tags: democratic national convention, gitmo, gitmo on the pl, Gitmo On The Platte, warehouse
Video: Tour of Gitmo on the Platte
DNC Police Bulletin: People With City Maps Could Be Planning Violence
http://www.infowars.net/articles/august2008/210808.htm
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2008 Election, 9/11 Truth, ACLU, Anti-War, Big Brother, boston, civil liberties, civil rights, codepink, Concentration Camp, Control Grid, denver colorado, Detainee, Dictatorship, DNC, Empire, Fascism, free speech, free speech zone, George Bush, Guantanamo, human rights, Martial Law, Minneapolis, Nazi, neocons, New York, Oppression, orwell, police brutality, Police State, prison camp, Protest, RNC, secret service, Taser Guns, US Constitution, War On Terror, We Are Change | Tags: Detention Camps, gitmo, Gitmo On The Platte, Hudson Pier Depot, little gitmo, little guantanamo, protest pens, rick sallinger, warehouse
Concentration Camp Set Up For DNC Protesters
Cells topped with barbed wire to be used to hold protesters rounded up in mass arrests
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
August 15, 2008
A CBS news crew has uncovered a huge warehouse holding facility in Denver, consisting of steel cages topped with barbed wire, ready to receive thousands of protesters at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
“This is a building filled with metal holding cells,” described CBS reporter Rick Sallinger. “We showed up at the facility unannounced today, the doors were wide open, and we managed to shoot for several minutes until a Denver sheriff’s captain asked us to leave.”
The warehouse is located on the north-east side of Denver and is owned by the city. It appears that officials wanted to keep it a secret until the convention began. The police captain captured on film warned that if made public, the facility could be compromised “by people who are potentially trying to be disruptive.”
The CBS footage shows a huge area of metal chain-link cells that measure 5 yards by 5 yards, topped with rolls of barbed wire. Each pen is adorned with an identifying letter.
Signs on the walls of the warehouse read “Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.”
On seeing the footage one local political organizer told the crew it resembled a “concentration camp”, while another described it as a “meat processing plant”. The facility has already been dubbed “Gitmo On The Platte”.
Watch the video:
Such “prison camps” were also used in 2004 during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The areas close to the DNC in Boston consisted of concrete walls, barriers and metal cages with barbed wire.
The areas were invisible to the Fleet Center where the convention was held and were referred to as “Boston’s Camp X-Ray”.
At the 2004 RNC in New York holding pens were also employed as protestors and innocent people were swept up in mass arrests and transferred to then-recently closed Hudson Pier Depot at Pier 57 on the Hudson River in Manhattan.
The facility was quickly dubbed “Little Gitmo” as thousands were bound and paraded into a large warehouse area behind steel caging.
This was taken from inside a portable bathroom at Pier 57. You can see people being lined up to get inside the huge pen. Throughout this 30 second clip, a chant of “Let Us Go!” starts in one part of the complex and quickly spreads to every corner. Learn more about the photographer’s experience here:
More recntly, such holding areas have been employed in conjunction with the Orwellian concept of “free speech zones”.
The Secret Service has been granted the power to declare “first amendment areas”. They scout locations where the president is scheduled to speak, or pass through, target those who carry anti-Bush signs and escort them to the protest pens prior to and during the event.
Inevitably the pens are far away from the event location and well away from any media spotlight.
Holding pens will also be employed at the RNC later this year with local law enforcement working with the secret service to designate the areas in Minneapolis.
We Are Change Colorado Check Out DNC Detention Camps and Break Exclusive Footage
http://www.thememoryhole.com/policestate/pier57/
Bush protesters get $50,000 settlement for unlawful strip-search at RNC 2004
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-bushprotesters,0,2510112.story
City Defends ‘Secret Jail’ Built For DNC
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=97741&catid=188
Huge protests expected at political conventions
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1250765520080815
DNC Protesters Outraged Over Makeshift Razor-Wire Jail in Denver Warehouse
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=154223
News Crew Crashes DNC Concentration Camp
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/News_..s_DNC_massdetention_0815.html
Filed under: Baghdad, Child Abuse, civil liberties, civil rights, Concentration Camp, Detainee, Dictatorship, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, federal crime, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, Iraq, Military, nation building, Nazi, occupation, Oppression, prison camp, rape, rendition, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: iraqi civilians, soldiers, u.s. soldiers
Video: 9 year old in U.S. prison camp
noworldsystem.com 
