Thursday, June 25, 2009, has been designated Torture Accountability Action Day by a large coalition of human rights groups planning rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.'s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed.
http://accountability4torture.com
Events are planned in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online:
http://tortureaccountability.w...
The evidence for the necessity to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the use of torture continues to grow. Light is being shed, not only on the acts of torture, but also on the indiscriminate and wantonly careless manner in which detainees were designated as such "high value" that they should be considered appropriate subjects for torture interrogation techniques.
On Tuesday, June 16th, the Washington Post reported (CIA Mistaken on 'High-Value' Detainee, Document Shows) that CIA documents confirm the Bush administration was mistaken about Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah being a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda.
The Post report confirmed what Brent Mickum, one of Abu Zubaydah's lawyers, told a torture accountability forum on May 30th, that "Abu Zubaydah was never even a member of al-Qaeda much less a high-level member." Nevertheless, Zubaydah, a Palestinian, was held at a secret CIA facility after his capture in Pakistan in March 2002 and was subjected 83 times to waterboarding.
Mickum on his client Abu Zubaydah at torture accountability forum May 30th:
Mickum wrote about these mistakes by the Bush administration in a March 30th article "The Truth About Abu Zubaydah" published in the British newspaper Guardian.
The facts surrounding the handling and treatment of Abu Zubaydah that have so far come to light raise enormous doubts about Dick Cheney's assertions that the techniques he authorized were used sparingly, only on "high-value" suspects and yielded positive results. Closer to the truth is that the use of these torture techniques was reckless, in most cases based on implausible and mistaken information, and may involve a cover-up by the OLC.
This week Random Lenghts News published a story I wrote on the emerging evidence about the role of torture in producing phony evidence for the Iraq War, and reality of how deeply entwined we are in the modern practice of torture. I've covered some of this on Open Left before, but I felt this telling of the story was well worth sharing.
Torturing Truth To Get To War?
"I want my colleagues and the American public to know that, measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions." -- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), speech to the US Senate, June 9. 2009.
For more than a month now, former Vice President Dick Cheney has been on a media blitz pushing the cause of torture under a more sanitized name. At the same time, more and more holes have been poked in his rosy view of the effectiveness of physical and psychological coercion. There's even evidence that getting bad intelligence to justify invading Iraq may have been part of the point, almost from the very beginning.
On April 22, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) released a report, "Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody," which concluded that harsh treatment "increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies." It also included testimony that torture was used in an attempt to establish a non-existent operational link between Iraq and al Qaeda. On May 13, Ali Soufan, formerly a top FBI interrogator, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture and borderline torture) "are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda."
That same day, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, wrote in the Washington Note, "What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."
We've been lobbying the Department of Justice all these months without realizing that the key to justice lay in the Department of the Interior, and specifically in the National Park Service, which has told activist Steve Lane he will be prosecuted if he attempts to demonstrate waterboarding at Thursday's anti-torture rally in Washington, D.C. The permit for the rally reads "Waterboarding exhibit will not be allowed for safety reasons."
Sometimes, during a tsunami of bad news, it's nice to come up for a breath of encouraging air. The only way to do that this week that I know of is to read a beautiful 42-page order by a judge (PDF). Usually such things don't strike me as beautiful, but this one says that leading torture lawyer John Yoo can be sued in court by one of his victims. It also says that his arguments for immunity are a load of crap, his arguments for the legality of torture are at least plausibly as fetid a pile of feces as they appear to the naked eye, and the treatment received by Jose Padilla is rather glaringly in conflict with our laws, basic standards of decency, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us and warned against sacrificing our rights on the temple of war. Here's an analysis of exactly how well thought out (not just beautiful) this order is, and how very likely it is to withstand challenge.
One thing, at least, could be said in the CIA's defense: McCoy never claimed that the CIA set out to promote the global drug trade. It was simply a byproduct of how it chose to "fight Communism." But this could not be said about his subsequent investigation into the CIA's role in developing torture techniques, the subject of his 2006 book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror . The CIA's development of novel torture techniques was intentional, deliberate, and took place over more than a decade at enormous cost, after which its methods were shared with authoritarian allies around the world.
McCoy previewed his findings in a 2004 article for TomDispatch, "The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America's Road to Abu Ghraib", an excerpt of which I'll present on the flip. It's safe to say that no critic has thought harder and studied more intently the hidden role and hidden costs of torture in modern American history.
Last Sunday, TomDispatch published a new article by McCoy, "Confronting the CIA's Mind Maze: America's Political Paralysis Over Torture" that throws a chilling historical light on Obama's ongoing efforts to magically make torture disappear. Real change, of course, would mean putting an end to this nearly 60-year history of US involvement in modern torture. Instead, McCoy explains how Obama is simply preparing us for more of the same sordid history.
I want my colleagues and the American public to know that measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions.
The speech goes further than President Obama's and Russ Feingold's and Carl Levin's calls on Cheney's lies in two ways. First, those other calls focused on whether the documents Cheney wants declassified actually say what he claims they say; Whitehouse focused on whether Cheney's more basic claims about torture are true. And second, Whitehouse here focuses not on whether we needed waterboarding to get intelligence (Obama, for example, said, "the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques -- which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques -- doesn't answer the core question, which is: Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques?), but whether we actually got any useful intelligence from the methods at all.
But for me, even more important was the sentiment of patriotic indignation, exquisitely expressed in relentlessly thorough logic, and culminating in lead quote above, toward the end of the speech carrying with it the accumulated weight of the various key falsehoods Whitehead had knocked down the course of his speech. This was a masterful conclusion to a compelling presentation in which Whitehouse framed the issue of torture in terms of values, not just in the abstract, but in terms of lived history confronting threats far more dangerous to our survival as a nation. This speech clearly defined for one and all what a progressive perspective on torture looks like.
A recent column by a prominent advocate of the U.S. torture program is the latest example of how its proponents refuse to address even the most basic facts concerning it.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
Someone recently asked if I could please explain to him why anybody would oppose torture. After all, we defend killing in wars, so why not defend torture? And wouldn't I torture to save my kidnapped child?
I have been meaning to write about this topic for several days now, in part because of Cheney and the right-wing movement’s proud defense of torture, and in part because of having finally finished (after much delay because of my book tour) Rick Perlstein’s masterful book Nixonland. I got started yesterday morning, and then got the terrible news about Dr. Tiller, and had to stop for awhile. I hesitated to keep writing because I want to be careful with tying this terrible event to the conservative movement, and indeed I want to start with some caveats. But there are some things that just have to be said on this dark day.
When last we met, Gentle Reader, it was to work through a series of legal precedents and statute law; the goal of the exercise being to determine if we could or could not define waterboarding as torture.
We have the kind assistance of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, who has provided us with his written testimony from his recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a personal interview, where he walked me through some of his thinking on the matter.
Today we're going to take a look at the precedent that he has used to reach the conclusion that waterboarding is not torture.
It's also possible that the analysis may result in the discovery of a bit of common ground...but as I noted in Part One, it's common ground that neither one of us might have seen coming.
More and more former interrogators and counterinsurgency experts are using Dick Cheney's recent ubiquity to expose his iniquity regarding the torture and abuse of detainees. Earlier this week, I wrote about Major Matthew Alexander, the former Senior Interrogator who conducted over 300 interrogations in Iraq and supervised 1,000 more. Alexander relied upon conventional means of interrogation, and his efforts led to the capture and killing of al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. Yet Alexander also witnessed the perilous consequences of Cheney's torture policy.
In an exclusive interview with Brave New Foundation, Alexander said, "At the prison where I conducted interrogations, we heard day in and day out foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."
Today, MoveOn.org and VoteVets.org joined the growing movement to amplify the testimonies of former interrogators and reveal the repercussions of treating prisoners inhumanely. Their joint campaign features a video with Jay Bagwell, an Afghanistan veteran and counterintelligence agent, who reaffirmed Alexander's assessment of Cheney's torture policy. According to Bagwell, "Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It's used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo."
I can't tell you the number of times I began a story with a plan for where it would go, only to discover that the plan isn't going to work.
The stories sometimes seem to write themselves...but other times, the research seems to do the writing instead; this being one of those times.
When the production of this story began it was with the intention of trying to explain what should be the "controlling authority" in terms of defining torture, a precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights, or Title 18 of the United States Code.
Having reviewed both statute law and numerous judgments in law courts worldwide as well as the recent Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, and having conducted an interview with Dr. Addicott personally, I've come to two rather surprising conclusions:
It may not really matter whether waterboarding is torture...and although neither I nor Dr. Addicott might have seen it coming, it's starting to appear that he and I might agree on one thing:
Waterboarding, whether it's torture or not, is a war crime.
Men In The United States Military Are Raping Men and Women Prisoners in Iraq. President Obama Is Covering It Up.
Barack Obama, the new President of the United States, the man who campaigned on a platform of having opposed the U.S. War Against Iraq from the get-go, the man who campaigned on a promise to end the U.S. War Against Iraq, the man who proclaimed to the world that he was different, he would not support or cover up or participate in or sponsor or allow the continuation of kidnapping, torture, and murder, that same President Obama is today continuing the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime, directing and authorizing the kidnapping, torture, and murder of people from other countries, has just authorized the military to release a statement to the public that the U.S. will continue to occupy Iraq as our colony for at least 10 more years, has already authorized a secret war against Pakistan, has refused to honor the law and release the prisoners against whom there is insufficient evidence to try them, has announced an entirely new adoption of the tool of dictators everywhere stating that the government may simply engage in preventative detention, imprison people forever without charges, without counsel, without rights, without a trial.
And President Obama is also directly and personally covering up the men in the United States military who have been raping men and women in Iraq as a weapon of torture. That's right: Rape. I've read that some of the children who were kidnapped and imprisoned at Guantanamo were raped, but cannot find a link right now. Who's next? Grandma? Do we have some big strong marine with steroid-biceps and tatoos of Mom all over his pec-implants who wants to rape Grandma? Is there any exemption for children under 6? No?
One of the retired generals who conducted an investigation into Abu Ghraib (like having Wall Street investigate itself) said he doesn't see any purpose to be served by releasing pictures of the rape other than a legal one. Well, yes. The purpose would be to enforce the law. Exactly. The purpose would be to enforce the law of our nation against rape, and bring to account the rapists in our military and the people who directed them. We should also allow the victims to receive monetary compensation, assuming the military didn't kill them after they were done with the gang rape.
I'll bet anything the rapists were "Christians," probably screaming out scripture as they pounded some little boy's butt until it bled to the cheers of his fellow Marines, all of whom apparently stood by and allowed it to happen, but made sure to get photos on their i-phones to send back home to their girlfriends. Are they all insane? Are we feeding them all amphetamines to ensure they will be psychotic, and commit acts of barbarism on command? Do you think Sean Hannity would say rape is not torture, and would he offer to allow himself to be raped -- for charity?
These rape photos, which include pictures of both women and men prisoners being raped by members of the United States Military (was it the few, are they proud, or was it the guys from the army of one?), were obtained in connection with an investigation into abuses at Abu Ghraib as well as 6 other prisons, specifically including 400 identified instances of abuse. This was systematic and institutional, not a case of a few bad apples. The systematic, institutional torture of prisoners was ordered and directed by people at the top of the Bush Administration. They need to be tried and imprisoned. If people in the Obama administration try to cover it up, they should be prosecuted and imprisoned for obstruction of justice and for ratifying and adopting the barbaric conduct.
This is how it works: if it is okay for the government to torture, rape and murder prisoners from some other country, it's okay for them to do it here too. That's what this is. It's just the beginning. It's going to get worse unless we stop it now. And Barack Obama not only refuses to do anything about it, he wants to just cover the whole thing up, let the bad guys go free, and send the signal out to the military: Keep On Raping, Boys. Have Fun. The Few, The Proud, The Rapists? An Army Of Fun? Is it any wonder we have such a high level of violence and suicide among vets, when their own government is teaching them to be murderers and rapists?
It's beginning to seem like the United States Empire and the institutions that own and control the world -- Wall Street, the Banks, the politicians they own, the corporations, and the U.S. military -- are really in charge of everything, and the President and Congress are just a circus for the peasants, a diversion to keep us distracted. And to waste our money making campaign contributions, as if that will make any difference at all.
What change? Exactly what has changed?
"LONDON (AP) -- A former U.S. general said graphic images of rape and torture are among the photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse that President Obama's administration does not want released. Retired Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the U.S. investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, told Britain's Daily Telegraph in an article published Wednesday that he agreed with Obama's decision not to release the pictures.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them," Taguba was quoted by the Daily Telegraph. "The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
"The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib exploded after photos taken by soldiers appeared in 2004. According to the Telegraph, the new photos depicted much more serious abuses than previously documented. One photo reportedly showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner and another was said to show a male translator raping a male detainee, the Telegraph reported.
"The Telegraph said the photos relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons."
Remember this one? A group of U.S. military men murdered an entire family so they could take turns raping a 14-year-old girl, then murdered her? Reportedly four U.S. soldiers decided they wanted to rape 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza. So they went to her home, took her mother, father, and her 5 year old sister into a bedroom and killed them, then took turns raping the 14 year old girl. When they were done repeatedly raping her, they shot her in the head and killed her, then set fire to her body.
The perpetrators of this rape and these murders were prosecuted and found guilty. But if we had never invaded Iraq, or if the top leadership in our country had not directed the military to use torture and rape on the occupied territory, none of this would have happened.
I suppose if anyone wants to prosecute the people who ordered and directed the rape, the top leaders of our country during the Bush regime, the Obama Administration will say that what they did is a top secret, classified, so the trial cannot go forward. Or, maybe President Obama will announce another new policy, like the preventative detention one. He could just issue an Executive Order saying that anyone who is rich and powerful, from Wall Street to government to private board rooms, is exempt from any liability for anything they do. They'll call it the Obama Doctrine.
Let's debunk Dick Cheney's pernicious lies about torture once and for all. Let's look past the mainstream media frenzy over the personal feud between Obama and Cheney, past the ludicrous GOP talking points, and instead focus on a real story that could allow us to hold Cheney accountable. Major Matthew Alexander is a former Senior Interrogator who conducted more than 300 interrogations in Iraq and supervised over 1,000 more, including that of al Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- and he did so using traditional methods. In an exclusive interview released today by Brave New Foundation, Alexander said Dick Cheney's torture policy "literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives."
According to Alexander, the torture and abuse conducted at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay became the number one recruiting tool for foreign fighters and suicide bombers who attacked coalition forces in Iraq. Huffington Post's Ryan Grim highlights the importance of Alexander's testimony:
Alexander easily takes down Cheney's arguments. The most immediate blow Alexander strikes is, of course, his obvious success, which undercuts Cheney's case for more brutal techniques. Alexander also engages on the level of principle. For Cheney, the suggestion that torture is a poor strategy because it aids terrorist recruitment is nothing more than old-fashioned blame-America-first cowardice.
Thanks to all who offered thoughts and wisdom in advance of my segment on MSNBC today. Truly appreciated.
At the last minute, they switched the centerpiece of our discussion away from Ari Melber's Politico piece on Obama's reality-show presidency to a discussion of Guantanamo and the new sexist RNC ad attacking Pelosi on torture.
To folks like Joel who recommended "pivoting" to a substantive discussion -- and pursuing opportunities to critique how the media often "bury the more important issues," I hope I did ya proud.
Last night, Bill Moyers closed his program with a brief reflection on Memorial Day. In it he calls attention to a reflection on war and memory by his friend Louis Bickford on Huffington Post. And Bickford, in turn, reminds us of Friedrich Nietzsche:
Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, identified three forms of history: antiquarian, monumental, and critical. The first sees history as quaint, curious, distant and irrelevant to our current lives. The second celebrates victory, heroism and tragedy in the past as precursors to current glory. The third suggests an engagement with the memory of the past, seeing the linkages between past, present and future and seeking to understand them.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is seeking to convince Americans that torture was justified. It is clear that he is interested in how this period is remembered; he is speaking both to us and to our progeny. He wants the history books and national memory to validate his time in office, and he is making active attempts to guarantee that they do. He wants to create a monumental history of the period.
If former officials succeed in making us forget that there was torture and that it was contrary to our values, they will establish impunity for the present and also for the future. That must not be allowed to happen. Extreme violations of human rights in any context, including a war, are too important to forget. We want future generations to remember that we insisted on accountability for them. Those are good reasons to have Memorial Day.
Memorial Day, for the most part, has been commandeered by those engaged in monumental history. But it began quite differently, as noted on Wikipedia:
According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic Washington Race Course (today the location of Hampton Park) in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died in captivity.
The freed slaves disinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave to be inhumed properly reposed with individual graves, built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch, declaring it a Union graveyard. A daring action for freed slaves to take such in the South just shortly after the Union's victory. On May 30, 1868, the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they had picked from the countryside and decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the first Decoration Day. Thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers paraded from the area, followed by much patriotic singing and a picnic.
Blight tells this story in his book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which traces the way in which the meaning and significance of the Civil War was reshaped in the 50 years following it, to essentially erase its central meaning and significance. The monumental approach to history always requires this, of course, though in markedly different ways with the few good wars and the overwhelming majority of bad ones.
A few decades ago, rich people fire-bombed entire neighborhoods in the Bronx. But they weren't called terrorists -- they were called landlords. And nobody did a thing to stop them. My how things have changed in the Bronx.
It's being reported today that there was a "major" FBI sting in New York City, in the Bronx, arresting four men (al Queda in the Bronx?) who reportedly were planning to (1) blow up a Synagogue, and (2) shoot airplanes out of the sky. But they couldn't do anything until the FBI sent in some informant to infiltrate (or create) their "organization" (did they sit around a trash can and drink beers and talk shit every day?). Not only did the FBI "infiltrate" the "organization," but they also (1) offered to provide explosives to be used in blowing up a synagogue, and (2) offered to provide a weapon that could blow airplanes out of the sky. It took the FBI an entire year to get these four losers to participate at all (who knows how much money they were promised), and even at that the FBI had to actually drive the guys to the "scene of the crime," and stand there and instruct them what to do, so they could be arrested. And called "terrorists."
So let's see: we've got four probably losers who hang out together and talk trash. Then the FBI, working with some right-wing Republican in Congress decides to "infiltrate," and provide a plan for insurrection, plus provide the weapons. What's in it for the FBI? How actively are the Republicans and the state police (FBI, CIA) working together to re-terrorize (is that a word?) the American public, to justify torture and international war crimes, so there will be no hearings or prosecutions? Would they go so far as to invent evidence? Well.... yes, actually. They already invented evidence to use to invade Iraq. They're actually pretty good at it.
Read the story in the New York Times (link below) and get the details of this absurdity.
Given the well-documented history of the FBI in not just framing people and creating false evidence, but out-right murder, I would never assume anything they say or report is truthful. The fact that this entire "investigation" took a year to complete stinks to high heaven. If these men were such a danger to society, then why were they allowed to roam our streets for an entire year
My guess is that they are four loser-nobodys, low-IQs, just like those dudes from Florida who wanted to make a revolution, and whose demands were that they wanted new boots. People like this are used and manipulated by the state police forces to create a phony crisis. I'll bet anything that these four will be held under some terrorist statute that will prevent their attorneys from providing them with a basic defense to the charges. Or even presenting a defense. You know -- "National Security" and all that. Or maybe this will be a test of the new policy of "preventative detention" by which our government claims they can lock us up forever, without trial. You know. To "protect" us.
If somebody wanted to blow up a building, they could get gasoline and soda bottles. If they wanted to kill people, they could get a gun. This whole story stinks. It's like the FBI came up with some truly bizarre scenario to maximize the level to which the public could be terrorized. I'm betting we'll see three things at work in this phony story: Entrapment, Entrapment, and Entrapment. This will undoubtedly be used by the Republicans to justify their torture and international war crimes, and to support the further elimination of our basic constitutional rights. Will it be used by the Democrats to justify the planned war against Pakistan, and Obama's just-announced policy of preventative detention without trial?
What does the New York Times report in its article on May 22, 2009, titled "N.Y. Bomb Plot Suspects Acted Alone, Police Say"? Here are a few important points.
1. The four men who were arrested are described by local cops as "petty criminals."
2. They were acting alone, not with any terrorist organization. (Until the FBI got involved, anyway).
3. All four men had previously been in prison, for petty crimes.
4. The FBI found these four losers by sending informants into a Muslim mosque, and looking for -- poor people?
5. The "plot" consisted of the FBI informant wooing these men for a year, buying them meals, (did the FBI buy these men the SUV they drove to the "crime scene?") and promising them -- what? Millions of dollars? Even at that, the FBI informant, who told the four men he represented some foreign group, spent an entire year before he could get them to agree to do anything. Even then, the four men did nothing. The FBI gave them something which they said was a bomb, and drove them to a synagogue, then sat there and waited for the men to put the bomb out front. The FBI gave these four men something they said was a missile, and the FBI was supposedly going to drive the men to an airport where they would then shoot down airplanes. The four men did nothing. The FBI apparently planned the crime, got the "weapons," got together their "crew," maybe gave these men an SUV, maybe gave them money, maybe promised them millions. Whose the real criminal here? This is so weak that the case should be dismissed immediately.
6. The U.S. Attorneys' office describes the four as "extremely violent men." That's not what the local cops said -- the cops who know these guys. The local cops said these guys are petty criminals. Not based on their conduct. They didn't do anything except what the FBI informant told them to do. We already know the FBI is extremely violent. But these four men have no reported history of violence of any kind. So why would the U.S. Attorney's office come up with the description of "extremely" violent men? I'm guessing because they're going to be held forever, without a trial. Or maybe with some secret trial.
7. Three of the men are U.S.-born, one was born in Haiti. All four men are being reported by the FBI as being Muslim, although family relatives do not confirm that. For example, Wanda Cromitie is a sister of one of the four men arrested. She said: "she was shocked to learn of her brother's arrest while watching television this morning. She said she was unaware that her brother may have had extreme political views, and that she had last spoken to him about two years ago when she thought he was working at a Wal-Mart or Kmart store. " [Which could make anyone have extreme political views]. "'Right now, to me he's, like, the dumbest person I ever came in contact with in my life,' Ms. Cromitie said. She added that as far as she knew, he was not a Muslim, but said 'they do a little time in jail and they don't eat pork no more.'"
8. The FBI sent informants into a Muslim mosque in the hometown of these four men several years ago at least. "At the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh where the men first met the F.B.I. informant, they were not considered devoted members, said an imam at the mosque, Salahuddin Mustafa. He also said that the man he believes was the informant showed up about two years ago and started inviting people to meals, where he would talk about jihad and violence.
9. An assistant imam (like a minister or pastor) at that mosque said that one of the four men appeared to be mentally ill. He "often talked in circles, showed signs of paranoia and kept bottles of urine in a messy apartment. 'He has some very serious psychological problems,'" (the assistant iman said.)
10. Therefore, according to the New York Times, the FBI sent an underground informant into a Muslim mosque, and that informant would invite poor ex-con members out to meals where he would talk to them about violence and jihad. Yes, that's called inciting violence. What exactly did the FBI promise these four men? Money?
11. Actually, these four men were given up by another guy who had been caught in criminal activity, and agreed to be an informant to the FBI in exchange for staying out of prison. This weasel told the FBI that these four losers wanted to attack the U.S. That's how this all began. Or so the FBI claims. Some weasley criminal turned these four guys in so he could stay out of prison. And even at that, it took the FBI an entire year to get these four guys to go along with this ridiculous "plot" to attack a synagogue.
It gets better. The FBI informant actually drove these four losers to the synagogue and watched (or instructed) one of them placing packages (supposedly with explosives) inside cars parked out front. The four bad guys and the FBI who directed the whole "plot" were inside a black SUV. Whose car was this? Did these four men even have a car? The newspaper calls the driver a "cooperator." Is that the same as FBI Informant? The FBI immediately moved in from all sides, including in armored vehicles, smashed in the windows of the SUV (why?) and made the big arrest. Of Al Queda in the Bronx.
The newspaper reports that none of the four resisted at all. Yet the place was swarming with FBI and cops: "'Other police officers, along with members of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the F.B.I., and the state police, were also on hand, and moved in and took those individuals away.'"
Then to cap it off, we have a new term, "aspiration." The FBI is claiming that these four men "aspired" to be bad guys, but did not have the materials or abilities to do so. Good thing the FBI jumped in to direct, encourage, and pretend to arm them. Entrapment. And a waste of taxpayer money. "A federal law enforcement official described the plot as 'aspirational' - meaning that the suspects wanted to do something but had no weapons or explosives - and described the operation as a sting with a cooperator within the group." Aspirational. They aspire to commit crimes. A "cooperator" in the group: that's the FBI plant who came up with the plan, promised money to the others if they would go along with it, got the phony weapons, and was in charge of the entire bizarre incident. This is a new low.
Here's another good one: "The shadowy figure of the F.B.I. informant is, in many ways, a driving force of the plot laid out by prosecutors." Well yes, driving force. He invented the whole thing. He created it. Delete "in many ways."
So, what's really going on with these two-bit criminals being set up like big-time terrorists? Find some ex-cons including one who's crazy, probably poor and unable to find work. Tell them what to do, pretend to represent some wealthy foreign group, provide them with the pretend weapons, promise them what? Millions of dollars? All set up by the FBI.
Here's the proper role for law enforcement: (1) when there has been a crime committed, they investigate, find evidence, turn it over to a prosecuting attorney who decides whether to file charges; (2) if they hear of a planned crime, investigate that, gather evidence to be used to stop the crime. But it is not the proper role of law enforcement to manufacture crimes, to try to get other people to commit crimes so the law enforcement can act like big shots when they arrest the guys. Which is what appears to have happened in this case.
The government got four losers and set them up to take a fall as some big-time Al Queda in the Bronx. But for what? I'd say it is to (1) re-terrorize the public, make people fearful, (2) convince the public that torture and wars of aggression are necessary, so there should be no hearings or prosecution or punishment of those who committed those crimes, and (3) provide further support for the elimination of the constitutional rights of the citizens of this country.; and (4) maybe test out the new "preventative detention" theory being floated by our federal government, the idea that they can jerk us out of our homes at any time and throw us in prison, without trial, forever. You know -- to keep the country safe.
When I taught Ethics and The Constitution, I never ran across anything resembling a "Feasibility" Clause..!
It's really sad that clearly President Obama still does not get it...
The Constitution is not a Chinese menu from which you can and choose one from Column A and one from Column B...a document of convenience..one you can make it up as you go merrily along..!
Once you leave the comfort and shelter of the Constitution you are on the road to ruin, as both Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi are learning the hard way, and suffering the ramifications thereof..and President Obama shall apparently learn the hard way as well..sadly...for us all..and his legacy..
