I Know ... Let's Make It Easier

(Cartoon by Ted Rall published on his website 3/19/14.  Click on image to enlarge.)

You know, all along I've objected to those damned dog-and-pony secretive show trials down in Guantanamo Bay as a travesty of American principles.  I was certain that the American civilian judicial system was more than capable of dealing fairly and openly in trying those suspected of the 9/11 attacks and other planned attacks.  I looked to trials such as the current one involving Sulaiman Abu Ghaith to prove my point.

Now, I'm not so sure.

From a CNN report:

In a scathing ruling, a federal judge has denied a request by Osama bin Laden's son-in-law to have alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed testify in his defense at trial, either by teleconference from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp or via deposition.

In a motion to the court over the weekend, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith's defense team said Mohammed can provide evidence that their client had no knowledge of planned terror attacks and asked that portions of an unsworn, written statement by Mohammed be allowed before the jury even if his testimony was not.

 

Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, issued a rambling defense of Abu Gaith, who is on trial in New York. Abu Gaith is accused of being al Qaeda's propagandist in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The rare statement by Mohammed was in response to questions from Abu Gaith's attorney and was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Sunday night.

 

At a hearing on the matter Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan called the defense motion "entirely baseless" and said nothing Mohammed may testify to is relevant to Abu Ghaith's case.    [Emphasis added]

What's next?  The judge issuing simplified jury instructions which directs the jury to find the defendant guilty?

I am deeply ashamed. 

Of Blind Squirrels and Broken Clocks

(Editorial cartoon by Jack Ohman / Sacramento Bee (March 7, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

Sen. Rand Paul's old fashioned, actual talking filibuster on Wednesday was a wonder to behold.  And you know what?  I was cheering him on, something I never thought I'd do.  Apparently some of his GOP colleagues were not as thrilled as I was at his attack on drones targeting American citizens, however.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The political fallout from Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster has begun as fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham switched Thursday to support John Brennan as CIA director, saying the vote has become a “referendum” on the drone program.

Graham’s changed position comes after Paul, the Kentucky tea party favorite, became an overnight political sensation for holding the Senate floor nearly 13 hours as he pressed the Obama administration for assurances Americans would not be targeted on U.S. soil by unmanned military-style aircraft.

“I was going to vote against Brennan until the filibuster, so he picked up one vote,” Graham said. “This whole argument that somehow Brennan and the president are operating outside of just good logic and human decency – I don’t want to cast a vote to suggest that I think that’s credible.”

The South Carolina Republican and his longtime GOP ally, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, held the Senate floor for their own moment Thursday, as they defended the drone program and criticized Paul’s effort as misguided.   [Emphasis added]

What Sen. Paul did was bring the whole issue of drones before the Senate and the American people in a very colorful and newsworthy way.  For that I give him lots of style points.  I also give him credit for taking on the issue of drones being used on American soil against Americans.  I would have really liked him to go further and declare the use of drones for assassinations everywhere against anyone to be contrary to the American and International rule of law traditions.  But at least he said something, and did it for nearly 13 hours.

Way to go, Rand! 

Mad Hatter Land

I have really mixed emotions on what I normally would have considered an unmixed success of the American system of constitutionally based justice. Of course, normal doesn't seem to exist anymore, so I guess I'll have to get used to the ambiguities and paradoxes of the post-9/11 America. A man was tried for an horrendous crime and was found not-guilty of all but one charge of the more than 280 charges brought against him.

The trial was run with all the rigors the US Constitution requires, including the exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence. The defendant will serve at least twenty years for the crime he was convicted of. On its face, the story seems to prove that the US can in fact deal with terrorism in a constitutionally approved way. Scratching the surface, however, yields a different picture.

From the New York Times:

Ahmed Ghailani will face between 20 years and life in prison as a result of his conviction on one charge related to the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. But because a jury acquitted him on more than 280 other charges -- including every count of murder -- critics of the Obama administration’s strategy on detainees said the verdict proved that civilian courts could not be trusted to handle the prosecution of Al Qaeda terrorists.

Say, what? Civilian courts can't be trusted? Pretty astounding conclusion to be drawn, yet that's exactly the one being proclaimed by those who wanted revenge, not justice.

Here are a couple of quotes cited in the article which shows the deep divide the nation is facing. First, from the avengers:

"This is a tragic wake-up call to the Obama Administration to immediately abandon its ill-advised plan to try Guantánamo terrorists” in federal civilian courts, said Representative Peter King, Republican of New York. “We must treat them as wartime enemies and try them in military commissions at Guantánamo.”

Next, from those who believe the Constitution isn't just for some of the time:

...Mason Clutter, the counsel of the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a bipartisan non-profit group, said that Mr. Ghailani will serve a lengthy sentence and will have far fewer arguments to make in appealing his conviction than if he had faced a military trial.

“The system worked here,” she said. “I don’t think we judge success based on the number of convictions that were received. I think we judge success based on fair prosecutions consistent with the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Now, if the story ended with just these two views, I wouldn't have the mixed emotions I referenced at the start of this post. I know which side I'm on, and I know I have to work hard to make certain that side prevailed. But this isn't where the story ends, and at this point I'm not at all sure what can be done, short of another American Revolution.

“This complicates the equation with regard to civilian trials of high-level Al Qaeda detainees that the administration would not release” even if they were found not guilty, said Juan C. Zarate, who served as deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism in the Bush administration 2005 to 2009 but who has criticized Republicans who called for never trying terrorists in civilian court.

“The paradox with these kinds of cases has always been that if these individuals are found not-guilty, will the American government let them go free, which is the construct of a criminal proceeding? And the answer is no. That is the reality. This case highlights that tension, and will complicate the political debate about how to handle more senior Al Qaeda figures, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.” [Emphasis added]

So this is the America of the 21st Century?

Horrifying, isn't it.

Torture Is A Crime

It was kind of a dull day at Watching America yesterday. China is miffed at us for selling arms to Taiwan. Iran is still promising to become a nuclear power. Latin America is annoyed that President Obama is not paying more attention to its neighbors. Europe is fascinated by Sarah Palin. Interesting all, I'm sure, but none really grabbed me. Michael Harwood's column in "Comment Is Free" (England's The Guardian), however, did.

Mr. Harwood, in discussing the decision by the UK's judiciary to publish a memo prepared by US intelligence agencies on the torture of Binyam Mohamed, makes it clear that at least at this point neither country has gone completely over to the dark side. The judges of both nations are still digging their heels in.

The UK court ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed demonstrates once more that judges on both sides of the Atlantic have had enough of governments hiding behind national security "secrets" to shield themselves from their many trespasses in the "war on terror".

The court's decision to publish a seven-paragraph summary of intelligence given to MI5 by the CIA has been met by the convenient, and wholly unbelievable, argument from British and American officials that the release could damage intelligence co-operation and sharing between the two allies.

Mr. Harwood calls "Bullshit!", and properly so. When the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband whined that the court's decision would mean the end of cooperation between the nation's intelligence agencies, the White House sent out a spokesperson to nod in agreement, "Uh-huh, that's right. Now we can't trust you enough to let you know when your country is about to be hit." Hacks and flacks, however, are stupid instruments, as this particular case makes eminently clear.

I cannot imagine a scenario in which the US would not keep the UK apprised of any danger uncovered in any way. There really is a special relationship between the two countries. Furthermore, if word got out (as it usually does at some point or another) that the US failed to warn any country of an impending terrorist attack there would be hell to pay.

But Mr. Harwood's point goes beyond that:

...the seven-paragraph summary details that the interrogation practices endured by Mohamed while in American custody during 2002 constituted "at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment". It reveals nothing besides the fact the US and its proxies resorted to barbarous methods to extract information from captives they believed were al-Qaida terrorists.

Second, far more damning information on Mohamed's torture was published last year by a US court. In November 2009, US District Judge Gladys Kessler granted the habeus corpus petition of Gitmo detainee Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed – another indicator of the cross-Atlantic return of the rule of law. The prisoner had been held indefinitely without charge at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, based partly on Mohamed's confessions to US interrogators. There was one problem, however: US interrogators coerced Mohamed's allegations against Mohammed through torture. "The government does not challenge Petitioner's evidence of Binyam Mohamed's abuse," Kessler wrote in her decision. It's important to note that the "abuse" Mohamed says he endured during his detention included having his genitals slashed by a razor.

In short order, the information the British court ordered released yesterday was neither intelligence nor secret. What it did show, however, was what we already knew. The US had systematically tortured detainees it deemed terrorists without due process, and British intelligence was complicit. [Emphasis added.]

Judge Kessler did her job, as have many other District Court Judges on the issue of torture, and as have her counterparts in Britain. How long that will be true in this country remains to be seen. Obviously the current US Supreme Court is a little dicey when it comes to such decisions, primarily due to the Democrats' obsession with dry powder the past ten years.

More troubling, however, is the fact that the current administration fought vigorously to have the memo of the torture suppressed in the British court, even as it continues to fight to have such information suppressed in current US court hearings. President Obama promised all of that would end, and yet his Department of Justice continues the battle on "state secrets."

This is just one more issue in which nothing has "changed." And, in the long run, it might just be the most important one.

Gitmo North

Watching America had in interesting blend of stories about the US. Most were about Barack Obama, and those were split between the Nobel Peace Laureate's announcement of a troop surge in Afghanistan and his appearance at the climate conference in Copenhagen. One article, however, had a different subject: that of President Obama's attempt to close down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. With its accurate analysis of the US prison culture, the article was a painful read.

From Germany's Die Tageszeitung:

Obama’s goal of closing the Guantanamo facility is thus one small step closer to realization. According to one of Obama’s first orders, Guantanamo was to be closed by the end of January 2010. That this will not occur is one of Obama’s bitter realities as this internationally very popular decision ran up against stubborn and totally irrational opposition in his own country. Besides, the measure resulted in many inevitable court rulings that were seen as advantageous to the inmates. ...

More than two million people are behind bars in the United States. American society cares about the fate of these social losers to the extent that they are locked away. The criminal justice system in the United States also creates jobs in many areas; where factories closed down, prisons were built so the unemployed at least had a chance to work as guards, or in institutional laundries and bakeries. Thomson was one of those lockups, but its prisoner population today is a mere 200 inmates. ...

This all worked without any great difficulty, as long as the inmates consisted only of spree killers, murderers, rapists and narcotics kingpins. But those coming from Guantanamo apparently belong to an entirely different category, presumably some kind of monsters with supernatural powers. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was “deeply disturbed” by Obama’s plan and remarked, “This action will expose our citizens to unnecessary danger; that’s unjustifiable and unacceptable.”

Ouch!

The opinion writer pretty much nailed the US penchant for locking people up and throwing away the key, although it does not take into consideration the huge number of people in prison for drug-related crimes, such as simple possession. Still, the implication is clear: the US is more interested in incarceration than in rehabilitation. And that implication leads to the next, one that is even more damaging to a nation which claims to be devoted to the Rule of Law.

"The only thing that President Obama is doing with this announcement is changing the ZIP code of Guantanamo," said Tom Parker, Amnesty International USA policy director. "The detainees who are currently scheduled to be relocated to Thomson have not been charged with any crime," Parker said. "In seven years, the U.S. government, including the CIA and FBI, has not produced any evidence against these individuals that can be taken into a court of law." [Emphasis added]

During the election campaign, Barack Obama promised to close down Guantanamo Bay. Many of us and most of the rest of the world were relieved when he moved to keep his promise shortly after his inauguration. Unfortunately, the promise was an empty one, as Tom Parker pointed out. Those prisoners who have not been charged are simply being transferred from one locale to another. The president intends to hold them indefinitely because they are "dangerous," even though no credible and admissible evidence has been produced to justify the detention, contrary to the requirements of the US Constitution.

This is both deeply shameful and extremely dangerous, more dangerous to our democracy than the 70 or so men being transferred could ever be. It is also a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration policies.

No change here.

Finally!

There is something exceptionally sweet in finding someone who not only analyzes an issue the same way as I do, but who presents that analysis in far better prose than I am capable of. I came across that kind of serendipitous moment in this column by Issac Bailey of The Myrtle Beach Sun and featured by McClatchy DC. His subject is the decision by the Department of Justice to try the alleged conspirators in 9/11 in New York City in the environs of the Twin Towers and the hysterical response to the announcement of that decision.

His lede grabbed me by the heart:

I didn't know we had so many scared conservative leaders.

There are a fair number of scared liberal ones as well, given the rhetoric from Washington, Columbia and New York.

But I thought conservative leaders and pundits were the "Bring it on!" types who crave confrontations with terrorists.

Heh.

That craving is usually satisfied vicariously by sending young Americans to war, usually with inadequate support, equipment and protection, but I digress. Mr. Bailey then takes aim at one of the reliably conservative huffer-and-puffers, Cal Thomas:

But Cal Thomas, one of the country's most widely read columnists, took the cake with this assessment:

"The administration's first mistake is to label these men 'criminals,' as if a terrorist attack and the announced objective of forcibly 'Islamisizing' America were the same as robbing a bank," he wrote. "The 9-11 attacks were an act of war, as much as if a nation-state had attacked us. Trials should not be held for war criminals until the war has been won."

First notice the inconsistency, which is abundant in this debate. Thomas chastises the administration for calling terrorists "criminals" then goes onto to label them "war criminals." Call them terrorists or murderers or kidnappers or hijackers or kamikaze, radical Islamists. I don't care. Just bring them to justice and prevent other planned attacks.

Thomas also makes a sleight-of-hand argument about how there should be no trials "until the war has been won." Others like him say we are in a war and therefore must temporarily put aside our ideals. Never mind that standing on principles in the toughest moments is the ultimate show of strength. Those same critics even complain that more people aren't calling our efforts "The War on Terror."

We are in the midst of a war that won't ever end because no president will dare declare mission accomplished against radical Islamic terrorism. And yet we are told parts of the Constitution should not apply until the war is won.

Why not just throw the whole thing out. That'll prove how tough we are.

And that's what it's all about, really. Either we believe that our Constitution is one of the most sublime gifts ever offered to humankind because of its stern insistence on due process, on the rule of law, and on the limitation of government in matters of civil liberties, or we don't. And if we don't, we stand right next to the governments we excoriate daily in the newspapers: China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea.

If our Constitution only applies when the sun is shining and Wall Street posts another high, then we are not only not exceptional, we are sadly run-of-the-mill cowards.

I was brought up differently.

Sometimes A Great Nation

I was gobsmacked by an editorial in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. The "center left" board actually got it right, all of it.

The subject of the editorial was the trial and conviction of 23 CIA agents for illegally kidnapping and torturing Muslim cleric Hassan Osama Nasr.

"Extrajudicial detentions" and "extraordinary renditions" were nicely scrubbed terms for the Bush administration's policy of capturing suspects in one country and spiriting them away to another, where they were harshly interrogated and even tortured. Now an Italian court has called this CIA practice by its real name -- illegal."

Noting that the judicial decision is largely symbolic (the defendants were tried in absentia and no request for extradition has been filed), the editorial makes it clear that the symbolism is powerful, something the US government would be well-advised not to shrug off as meaningless.

...Yet the decision matters. It repudiates President Obama's expressed desire to look away from the ugly past, and sends a strong message that the U.S. government cannot operate outside the law with impunity in the name of fighting terrorism. ...

Obama has since ended CIA interrogations in secret prisons and shut overseas jails used by the CIA, but he has not stopped the practice of extraordinary rendition. The difference between his and his predecessor's policy is that the administration will now demand credible assurances that prisoners won't be tortured, and that prisoners will be "rendered to justice" rather than held indefinitely without trial.

We don't like renditions and generally think even the most dangerous criminals are entitled to due process, including extradition hearings. A war against violent extremists cannot be won by immoral or illegal means; the U.S. can't outsource dirty work and claim to have clean hands. [Emphasis added]

Well said.

The current administration cannot and should not walk away from this finding by the Italian court. Nor should it assume that the decision doesn't matter. It does, if only by reminding the White House that the rule of law is a meaningless concept unless it is actually put into effect. Americans are notorious for their short memories, and unless the government puts the same effort into investigating and trying those who deliberately broke domestic and international law as it does into investigating and trying those who would wreak terror on the nation, the whole eight years of the Bush administration's malfeasance will be forgotten. The perpetrators who walk freely away from the mess will return, and their subversive ideas will be re-implemented.

If President Obama really wants to heal the divisions in this country, then let that healing begin by tracking down (or up, as the case is here) all of the law breakers and those who not only enabled the crimes but authorized them, and punishing them according to law. Putting a bandaid over an infected wound before cleaning it out is not only useless, it is dangerous.

The Justice Department (the home of many of the perpetrators in the last administration) should be instructed to investigate all of the crimes related to the kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, and torture of people by American authorities. If the investigation leads directly to the Bush White House, then so be it.

The call is not for vengeance, but for justice. The nation and the rest of the world deserve no less.

The Scarlet Letter Of The Law

I've a few professional friends who've begun taking in immigration cases and they tell me that it's a difficult branch of the law, very difficult, primarily because it is so technical. That doesn't surprise me. After all, it's federal law we're talking about here, and the federal court system. Still, attorneys know that, and if they are serious about their jobs, they cope with it. Some of the time that works, but, unfortunately, other times it simply does not.

An article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune is an example of what happens when the letter of the law is invoked to defeat the spirit of the law, and common sense.

[Hoa] Nguyen, 29, came here from Vietnam on a student visa 10 years ago, earned a bachelor's degree at Luther College and a master's degree at the University of Minnesota, got married and made a life in Minneapolis. But she failed to file for a green card and missed a court date in August; she was jailed in Sherburne County.

Last week, an immigration judge denied Nguyen's motion to re-open her case, noting that her arguments did not constitute the "exceptional circumstances" needed to grant the motion. She now faces deportation, possibly within the next two weeks.

Let's review the facts. She came to this country legally on a student visa. She was a student until just recently when she took a break from her PhD program at UMinn. She got married last November to an American citizen. She and her husband went to Viet Nam for a marriage ceremony earlier this year, but when she and her husband returned to the US in February, she was stopped at the airport by immigration authorities who advised her there was an issue as to her student status. Then she received a hearing notice requiring her to appear before an immigration court on August 13. She didn't appear, and on August 14, immigration authorities appeared at her door, arrested her, and took her to jail.

Through an attorney, she argued that her case should be reopened because she was married to a US citizen, and had been for 10 months. The judge denied her motion and ordered deportation. His point was that being married to a US citizen was not a good enough excuse for not appearing on August 13.

OK, she's a flake. She should never have blown off the hearing. She should have appeared with her husband and with a certified copy of her marriage certificate in hand. She probably should be punished, perhaps with a stiff fine for disregarding a valid court order, or a period of time in jail, or perhaps a period of community service. But deportation for 5 years or so? Come on, that's both ludicrous and overkill.

That, however, is how our immigration system works.

Shameful.

What A Coincidence!

How unusual: just as Congress is prepared to discuss the extension of three provisions of the Patriot Act which expire at the end of the year and to consider some new bills which would tighten the requirements for obtaining national security letters and other tools for intrusions into the civil liberties of citizens, the Justice Department announced a breakthrough in an investigation into a terrorist plot involving bombs and men with Arab sounding names. Just a coincidence, I guess, an unhappy happenstance.

The Washington Post only indirectly alluded to that coincidence in this article, concentrating instead on the rather muted Justice Department response to the various proposals floating around Congress:

At hearings in the House and Senate, the officials repeatedly said they had no position yet on legislation that Democrats have introduced that would tighten standards and oversight of surveillance tools authorized under laws including the USA Patriot Act.

"We are trying to figure out whether the provisions that are suggested there will work for us as is, or perhaps with modifications," David S. Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday on whether to renew a trio of Patriot Act powers set to expire Dec. 31.

Those provisions allow investigators to use "roving wiretaps" to monitor suspects who may be trying to escape detection by switching cellphone numbers; obtain from third parties the business records of national security targets; and track "lone wolf" suspects who may not belong to a terrorist group but may be planning attacks.

Assistant Attorney General Kris was playing it close to the vest, primarily because he can as the developing story on the latest bomb plot takes up increasing column inches on the front pages of national newspapers. With that kind of backdrop, he knows that he can appear above the fray. The Justice Department has done its job in keeping the country safe.

But it's not just those provisions of the odious Patriot Act which are about to expire that are under discussion in Congress. The national security letters have also grabbed some attention because they completely circumvent the judicial oversight necessary to protect our civil liberties.

Among the most problematic provisions targeted by Democrats is one not due to expire. But Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine testified Wednesday that the national security letter -- a tool that lets FBI agents obtain phone, bank and other personal records from third parties without judicial approval -- has been subject to "serious misuse."

The Patriot Act, passed in late 2001, broadened the FBI's authority to use national security letters by lowering the standard for issuing them and by expanding the number of FBI officials who could sign them. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and two colleagues introduced a bill this week that would place a four-year expiration date on the letters' authority and tighten the standard for issuing them.

Under legislation introduced last week by Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold (Wis.) and Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the FBI would also have to show that people whose records are sought have some connection to terrorism or espionage. Both bills would also, to varying degrees, strengthen requirements for the use of other surveillance tools.

In light of the Inspector General's testimony regarding the "serious misuse" of the national security letter system, it will be interesting to see how long the Assistant Attorney General for National Security remains coolly above the fray with respect to the proposed bills. It will also be interesting to see how President Obama, who deplored the Bush administration's disdain for civil liberty and the US Constitution during his campaign, will react to the proposed cutting back on the powers granted the government under the Patriot Act.

Finally, it will be most interesting to see how the "tenthers" and "teabaggers" will react to a curtailing of the executive branch's over-reaching when it comes to our right to privacy and to be secure in our homes. After all, that's what they seem to be most concerned about.

Going Home

It looks like there just might be some real justice for one Guantanamo Bay detainee: Mohammed Jawad might be sent home to Afghanistan in three weeks, unless, of course, the Obama Justice Department operates the same way the Bush Justice Department did.

From McClatchy DC report:

The Obama administration on Wednesday said it plans to release a young Guantanamo detainee after military and civilian judges banned almost all evidence against him that they ruled was extracted through torture. ...

Government attorneys, however, reserved the right to file new charges in federal court against Mohammed Jawad if they find evidence against him before he's freed.

The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle to grant them 22 days to release Jawad — seven days to notify Congress of the release plans, as current law requires, and then 15 days until a cooling off period mandated by law expires.

If no new charges are filed during that time, the government said it would promptly release Jawad. The Justice Department didn't specify where it would send him, but his lawyers say they expect he'd be returned to his native Afghanistan.

There are several significant points in the story. The first is that the judiciary did the job they are sworn to do. By ruling inadmissible evidence garnered through torture, Judge Huvelle and the military commission judges made clear that the rule of law trumps torture and that such unlawful behavior by the government will not be tolerated by the courts.

The second point is that the government didn't make its usual noises about an immediate appeal, which hopefully means that the Department of Justice may have just blinked when it comes to "win at all costs" prosecution.

The third point is a bit more troubling, however. The prosecution has reserved the right to refile the charges if it can find enough evidence that hasn't been tainted by torture to do so, and it wants the court to give them that 22 days to find that evidence by claiming that the law requires such a delay, something young Mr. Jawad's lawyers noted:

Jawad's lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union said that while they're hopeful that their client will be sent home soon, they think the government should move more quickly.

"We're cautiously optimistic that they appear closer to recognizing that Mr. Jawad needs to be sent home as soon as possible," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the ACLU's National Security Project. "We remain concerned by some of the arguments they make with regards to the court's power to order an immediate remedy."

Hopefully the judge will rule quickly on the requested delay so that even if the government's request is granted, the clock will start running.

It's time for the release of Mohammad Jawad. It's long past time for an end to this obscene display of a government's power run amok.

Assassination and Enemies

The power trip in the recently dislodged maladministration went much farther than its proponents would have expected when it set up a program to do in its enemies list. As TPMuckraker points out, there was not just the mindset of declaring 'enemies', left over from the Nixon criminal gang. There was also a commitment to do away with those enemies here as well as at large through the world.

Since the news broke (sub. req.) at the start of the week that CIA director Leon Panetta had pulled the plug on a secret program to assassinate or capture al Qaeda leaders, we've been raising questions about one key aspect of the story. In particular, what was it about the program that was so shocking that Dick Cheney reportedly ordered it kept secret from Congress, Panetta quashed it as soon as he heard about it, and Congressional Democrats risked being painted as soft on terror by shrieking about being kept in the dark?

We may have gotten a good piece of the answer here: The Washington Post reports today on how the program had been revived and then put on hold several times since 2001. But it also says, referring to the "presidential finding" with which President Bush authorized the program in 2001:

The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.

"No geographical limitations" presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone -- including even the US itself. And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question.

The methods used by the gang in power in the executive branch just past are more those of a takeover by a foreign power than those of a real and valid executive. The remains of that takeover are still present, and still exercising public powers, and will take time to oust entirely.

During some discussions of the DOJ conversion to political purposes, I have to insist that simply replacing prosecutors from the previous maladministration would weaken the case against that practice. When they are removed, it should be for cause, not for political purposes, not as the war criminals acted. When we have the plots against 'enemies' again shown as a basic part of the winger psyche, it is a good lesson in what we should avoid repeating.

The service if public interests is being returned to our government's agencies, and that should be the prime reason for government, once again. Putting down opponents was much too real a threat from the political purposes of the wingnuts in power so recently. That enmity should be avoided by decently functioning members of the government, government that we need. Our government is there to serve the people rather than subjugate them.

Prosecution of the criminals would be the best prevention of their criminal conduct for the future.

New Words, Same Problem

One of the things I noticed in my latest trip to Watching America is that members of the world press are starting to be a little less patient with and a little more critical of President Obama. I suspect that part of the reason for that is the novelty has worn off, the honeymoon is over. That said, I also think that the rest of the world has noticed that the big changes President Obama promised have not come to pass on some rather substantial issues, at least not yet.

One of the articles that intrigued me, however, was an opinion piece in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald because it targeted not only President Obama but also the American public for its willingness to dispense with constitutional guarantees when it comes to the "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay.

Because the essay written by Richard Ackland was so thought provoking, I am going to bend the "fair use" rules and quote it extensively:

Poll results released this week show that 52 per cent of American respondents are opposed to closing the detention "facility" at Guantanamo Bay. Thirty-nine per cent thought it should be shut down, which leaves 9 per cent who perhaps thought it should be a little bit open and a little bit closed.

Less than half (48 per cent), according to The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, supported moves by the US President, Barack Obama, to ban "harsh interrogation practices", ie torture. Forty-one per cent thought torture of detainees is not such a bad idea.

Obama's promise to close Guantanamo by January is causing big headaches and is one of the reasons behind the slide in his job approval rating - down from 61 per cent in April to 56 per cent. Americans love their enemy combatants holed up in someone else's country and for the nasty interrogation to be done in offshore black-hole venues. ...

They don't want "enemy combatants" tried in United States criminal courts or put away in homeland jails. No nasty terror people locked up in my parish, thank you very much. Cuba is just fine.

The difficulty is that some of the worst of the worst cannot be tried at all because the only evidence against them has been "coerced". The option of indefinite detention without trial raises as many constitutional problems as the political difficulties created by closing the Cuban detention centre.

Constitutionally it would be extremely difficult to bring these people to the US and not try them. These are the problems Obama faces as he tries to restore America's standing in the world.

None of which is to say that the whole construct of the "enemy combatant" has legal validity. The category didn't exist until the Bush administration coined it and it has now been quietly dropped.

Apart from the September 11 plotters, who else has been designated an enemy combatant? Many detainees were not really enemies at all - in fact people sold to the Pakistanis or the enemies of the Taliban.

People rounded up who were merely unco-operative with the Americans, even doctors who treated the enemies of the US, also became enemies of the US, Hippocratic oath notwithstanding. Except for the Afghans and Iraqis the "enemy combatants" have all been from countries that were not at war with the United States.

They were a bundled-up assortment of suspects, including journalists, students, diplomats, a member of Bahrain's royal family, even people who fought against the Taliban.

In fact, only 5 per cent of those captured in Afghanistan were apprehended by US forces.

Although Mr. Ackland has not explicitly criticized President Obama in this excerpt, implicit in his recital of the facts is the notion that our new president has not shown the leadership this country needs to get out from under the paralyzing fear the last administration drummed into us with color-coded security alerts and the constant repetition of the unholy mantra of "9/11." Yes, he is diligently working to release those detained wrongfully, those who should never have been picked up and transported in the first place. He is not, however, using the same diligence in educating the citizenry about the dreadful mistakes made and the need for an honorable disposition for those unlawfully locked up. Shipping the Uighurs a half a world away where they have no contacts, no community support, no connection because some Americans are fearful of what these men might now do simply reinforces the belief that if they were in Guantanamo Bay they must have done something wrong.

Nor has he made clear that if there is anything exceptional about this nation it is our Constitution and the belief that the rule of law is more important to a democracy than a handsome, likable leader with whom one could enjoy a beer. By backing off on his promise to end the obscenity of the military commission system and to try those who might have indeed been engaged in crimes against this nation in our civilian courts, with all the protections that implies, he is in effect admitting that our Constitution is only appropriate during the good times and only for certain people.

Mr. Ackland's assessment of what this portends for our future is right on the money:

...The point is that implicit in the terrorism laws is an overreach, to create a mechanism whereby anyone can be rounded up and labelled an enemy combatant, tortured, indefinitely detained and kept in a condition of constitutional suspension. [Emphasis added]

So, President Obama, how about it? Got game?

Rules, Regulations and Laws

There aren't many reasons for having a government that doesn't rule. The unfortunate use that was made of this one for the previous maladministration was simple protection of the moneyed interests from rules.

The results have been catastrophic. While I have reservations about the authorities now in place to prevent further losses, I do have hope that a return to sound practices is in progress. Today's WaPo op-ed from Treasury Secretary Geithner and Director Summers of the National Economic Council give reason for optimism. They have written up a series of needed controls for a financial system that had been looted rather than used to our advantage. As Mr. Geithner has stated, we need to act not, while the need is still at the forefront of our consciousness.

The financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and distributor of risk. Instead, it magnified risks, precipitating an economic contraction that has hurt families and businesses around the world.

We have taken extraordinary measures to help put America on a path to recovery. But it is not enough to simply repair the damage. The economic pain felt by ordinary Americans is a daily reminder that, even as we labor toward recovery, we must begin today to build the foundation for a stronger and safer system.
(snip)
Some people will say that this is not the time to debate the future of financial regulation, that this debate should wait until the crisis is fully behind us. Such critics misunderstand the nature of the challenges we face. Like all financial crises, the current crisis is a crisis of confidence and trust. Reassuring the American people that our financial system will be better controlled is critical to our economic recovery.

Exactly. If we do not acknowledge that laws are for the purpose of protecting the people, and are needed for that reason, we ignore the reason for government.

When people who have no desire to keep this country's people safe are in power, there is obvious danger to our well being. Nothing has been more proven than that ill will toward America cannot ever again be allowed to happen in the highest realms of the U.S.

The Cost of Bad Information

The media continues to represent the country's attitudes by thrusting immoderates into the limelight. On the Sunday news shows, the freaks like George Wills and Pat Buchanans are lined up beside Dr. Paul Krugman and Sen. Patrick Leahy, as if they had the weight and soundness of real intellects.

The results are dismally predictable. Craziness sounds like sanity, so the careless listener gives it credit. We get opinions that poll as if the entire constituency of the country were gaga. Today's AP poll results were released, and we who keep pounding out facts and trying to counterbalance the lies are discouraged.

What is the majority convinced of by bad information?

Torture is okay if it gives good results, even though (1) it's illegal and unconstitutional and (2) the results of torture are known to be unusable as actual intelligence.

Closing Gitmo is okay, but not if it's hard work.

Just over half of Americans say torture is at least sometimes justified to thwart terrorist attacks and are evenly divided over whether to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, according to a poll that underscores the challenges President Barack Obama faces in selling his terror-fighting policies.
(snip)
A novice commander in chief, Obama risks further defeat of his policies in Congress and disapproval of them abroad if he can't get the public on board. Thus, he's making a tough sell.

For now at least, the AP-GfK poll shows most Americans have faith in him, with 70 percent saying they are confident of Obama's ability to address terrorism. That's divided along party lines, with nearly all Democrats, two-thirds of independents and just over a third of Republicans expressing confidence.

Nearly eight years after terrorists struck on U.S. soil, more than a third of Americans say they worry about the chance that they or their relatives might fall victim to a terrorist attack — essentially unchanged from 35 percent five years ago.

While the total failures of the ideology that prevailed through disgusting tactics for eight years has had some effect of alienating the afflicted public, continuing media coverage of war criminals that erases their crimes works against their outright rejection.

Folks, we need to be clearer. Prosecution is going to have to follow crime, and the polls show it. While they knew they were being robbed, your average Joes/Janes are just not making the connection that the folks who were robbing them were the ones charged with enforcing the laws. We don't make the point until we actually do enforce them.

The media doesn't do its job until we give it no choice.

**************************************************************

The TX legislature adjourned without doing its basic job. A very good coverage of this is at jobsanger;

.....the Republicans spent a large part of the session trying to pass a voter suppression bill (which they called the Voter ID bill). The Republicans know the political winds are currently blowing against them. They have only two choices -- moderate their views and appeal to a broader range of voters or suppress as many votes as possible. These right-wing nuts chose voter suppression.

The voter suppression bill easily passed the Republican-dominated Senate, but was killed in the House (where there are 76 Repubs and 74 Dems). The only hope to revive the bill is to force the governor to call a "special session" of the legislature. That is why the Senate refused to pass the resolution to keep TxDOT alive for another two years. If they had passed it, there would be no reason for a special session to be called.

So don't be surprised when the governor calls for a special session to save TxDOT. And don't be surprised when a voter suppression bill is added to the special session agenda. That's what this whole mess is about.

We have a whole mess of recidivists in Austin keeping the government from protecting the citizens. It's gotten closer in numbers, the Democrats are close to balance now. We have to push harder.

Justification Isn't Justice

When the trial of the Holy Land Foundation was held in Dallas Federal Court, I had the opportunity to attend. It was something I wanted to do since what I had seen reported - that prosecution included witnesses who were unidentified, a practice contrary to our Constitution - had made me uncomfortable with what our Justice Department was doing.

The several times I did attend the trial showed that I had only had a dim idea of the extent to which the trial violated our laws. As I have written here previously, procedures were allowed that had jurors supposed to come to judgment on the charges by such illegal practices as hearing witnesses that had been encouraged to give their views on what people of Palestine thought and felt, and claims by a witness, an Israeli agent, that he could "smell" terrorism. A major witness admitted that his testimony would be factored into his own sentencing on unrelated charges. In his closing remarks, the prosecuting attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that Freedom of Speech did not obtain in this trial, for these defendants.

Today's editorial in the Dallas Morning News bases much of its finding that heavy sentences the defendants received were justified because most of the defense was about causes for support of the charities - charities that in Palestine are associated sometimes with groups whose members are sometimes terrorists. The defense showed abuse of the people of Palestine, something that the editorial was uncomfortable about, so condemned.

Regardless of the rationale behind the Richardson-based group's actions, anyone who helps fund groups that make bombs to blow people up deserves stiff punishment...
His (Shukri Abu Baker of Garland) statement was an appalling attempt to distract the public from the true effect of his crime: to collect money that helped Hamas kill, maim and fulfill its goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Have Israelis done their own share of killing and maiming? Absolutely. It is painfully obvious to the entire world that this cycle of retaliatory bloodshed must stop. To reach a peaceful solution, each side must acknowledge publicly and without equivocation that its militants have committed wrongs. Contrition seems absent from their vocabulary.

It's appalling enough that our constitution should be thrown out in the conduct of a trial, but being incensed by expressing an appeal to common humanity is as twisted as it gets. Being made to feel guilty is justifiable; the judgment was against acknowledged charitable activities. The connection with terrorism was made only by distant association.

Being mad about feeling guilty is a character flaw. That the News insists the defendants ought to be apologizing is a projection by those whose consciences would be assuaged if they could get some reassurance that this judgment is not deeply flawed.

That assurance would be admission of guilt, and the defendants do not admit that supporting charities is the same as terrorism. The admission the editors want is like the ex-Veep seeking to extract information contrary to fact, from detainees, by torture. The connection used to drag this country into war, that al Qaeda was associated with Saddam Hussein, was one that was not true.

Would the News want to suggest to their jailers that it would be much appreciated, that their consciences will be easier, if they get confessions, please, and waterboarding is known to produce this kind of result? Wanting the facts to conform - when they don't - is not a desire for justice, but for justification.

This case will be appealed, and hopefully the violations of law that occurred will be enough to show it was not conducted under our constitutional system.

Justice

This is a high point for justice, and I wish her well.

U.S. President Barack Obama tapped U.S. Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, officials said, making her the first Hispanic in history picked to wear the robes of a justice.

If confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter. Two officials described Obama's decision on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement had been made.

Administration officials say Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

The court has descended to representing injustice and the powers of business, under the past terms of right wing representatives. It is past time for respect for law to retutn to this country.

The law, as the president has stated, is about people, not just paper and pencils.



{Sorry, am off line right now a lot, just had oral surgery. Ouch.}

Trial And Error

It is some consolation that others agree with me that President Obama's decision to resurrect the military commission system for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay is simply wrong. It is, however, reassuring that one of those who agree with me is a columnist for Germany's Financial Times Deutschland. The piece was written by Fidelius Schmid and is titled "George W. Obama." Unfair? I think not.

...now Obama wants to resurrect military tribunals, as well - the same ones the Bush administration, in defiance of every established Western principle of law, had wanted to use to try suspected terrorists. This decision is not just another intelligent application of knowledge, but rather a regrettable weakness of a man who inherited a catastrophe. ...

The tribunals Bush created are simply outrageous. They limited the rights of defendants to legal counsel, permitted hearsay as evidence, and allowed confessions extracted during torture. Anyone who defends these legal institutions should not criticize Islamic Sharia courts.

Admittedly, Obama does want to improve the tribunals. Statements that had been extracted with the aid of so-called waterboardings and other brutal interrogation techniques will no longer be allowed. This surely mitigates some of the outrage, but does not get him off the hook entirely. With all due respect and understanding for the tactics essential for domestic politics, his decision on the tribunals is counterproductive and unnecessary.

...there are only two options for these prisoners. Americans could either turn them over to Afghan or Iraqi authorities, or else just keep them in custody. Their concern is legitimate. But then these prisoners would have to be entitled to all the rights the Geneva Convention outlines for the protection of prisoners of war. ...

It is complicated and going to take a long time to issue a final sentence to anyone in a proper court. Can anyone be sentenced there without first having proven his guilt beyond any doubt? Could a guilty party inadvertently escape justice? Yes, this is true. And yes, this is not practical. But these are basic principles, and this is the best the U.S. and all Western-style democracies have. These principles distinguish Western democracies from dictatorships, quasi-democracies, and theocracies. [Emphasis added]

Preach it, my brother!

Those are exactly the points which are in play here. I don't know Mr. Schmid's age or his ideological background, but it is clear he appreciates the difficulties and the successes of the Nuremberg Trials. In those proceedings, international law was as much on trial as the defendants, and international law came through brilliantly, primarily because the nations and prosecutors involved held the concept of the rule of law, not the rule of a man or men, to be paramount. Prosecutors were prepared to fail, but they were not prepared to accord those in the dock, many of whom were characterized as monsters, anything less than full legal rights.

It is easy to accord those rights to the guy down the block busted for driving under the influence of alcohol. It is harder to accord those rights to rapists and murderers, but it is possible. Hardest is according those rights to those who admit to wanting to bring an entire nation to its knees by terrorist acts. But if we truly believe in the rule of law, all of those defendants must be entitled to it. There can be no exceptions. None. That is where the rubber meets the road in democracies such as ours.

The real danger to this country is not the so-called terrorists or the actual terrorists being "detained" at the prison camp in Cuba, it is the loss of one of the most integral threads in the fabric of our democracy: the right to a fair trial, one in which all evidence is discoverable, all witnesses available for cross-examination, all charges known. Anything less is a "show trial," the kind the Soviet Union and Latin American countries in the last century were famous for.

Today we honor those who died in war. We are told that they died so that we could be free. If that is truly the case, then we dishonor their lives and their deaths by diminishing that freedom by turning our backs on the basic principles of our Constitution. I want no part of that dishonor.

Cry Me A River

It's hard for me to summon up much sympathy for hand wringing CIA officials and agents who now are worried that their jobs and future might be jeopardized by the decision to ban torture and to restrict interrogation techniques to those outlined in the Army Field Manual. Agents have already been assured by President Obama that they won't be prosecuted for using the torture specifically condoned by the Bush era Justice Department, even though those agents knew full well that some of the techniques they were using were in clear violation of both domestic and international law. What are they so worried about?

This article by Walter Pincus in today's Washington Post, as oddly disjointed as it is, gives us a few hints. Here's the most obvious one:

Although President Obama has said no CIA officers will be prosecuted for their roles in harsh interrogations if they remained within Justice Department guidelines in effect at the time, agency personnel still face subpoenas and testimony under oath before criminal, civil and congressional bodies.

As part of an ongoing criminal inquiry into the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting waterboarding, CIA personnel will appear before a grand jury this week, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is continuing. The Senate intelligence committee is pursuing its investigation into whether harsh interrogations, including waterboarding, brought forward worthwhile intelligence, as agency and Bush administration officials have maintained. [Emphasis added]

Apparently the CIA is not happy about all the attention. The way it does business and the very techniques that it uses are about to hauled into semi-public attention. The CIA will have some light shone on it, and that is something it clearly does not appreciate.

While intelligence gathering depends on some measure of secrecy, nowhere is it written that the CIA (or any other intelligence agency, for that matter) can do whatever it pleases, especially when what it pleases involves the kind of heinous behavior we have discovered agents engaged in. President Obama has already approved the "I was just following orders" defense for agents, even though that defense was deemed to be unacceptable at Nuremberg. Their personal backsides have been covered. Now it's time to find out just what was done, why, and what we have to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And if it upsets the suddenly sensitive feelings of the CIA officials and agents to have to provide testimony to the country that pays their salaries, well, I'm sure there are plenty of tissues to mop up the sweat and tears which will flow.

Changing His Mind

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama decried the use of military commissions to try the Guantanamo Bay detainees because the system denied the defendants basic legal rights by allowing the inclusion of evidence obtained by torture and the inclusion of hearsay which would deprive the defendants the right of cross-examination of the sources of the evidence. Such evidence would be excluded in Federal Courts.

Then, shortly after becoming president, Mr. Obama requested and received a suspension of military commission trials, thereby leading most of us to believe that the system was dead. Apparently we were quite wrong in that assumption, according to the NY Times. The suspension period is about to end and hints from top members of the administration, including Attorney General Eric Holder, suggest that President Obama may very well keep the system after tweaking it a bit.

Why the "change"? Well, some of the detainees are charged with helping to plan the 9/11 attacks, and apparently this administration wants to nail them as badly as the last administration, due process and the rule of law be damned.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies. ...

Any plan to adjust the military commissions would walk a tightrope of granting the suspects more rights yet stopping short of affording them the rights available to defendants in American courts. Several lawyers say the commissions are only beneficial for the government if they make it easier to win a prosecution than it would be in federal court. [Emphasis added]

So, I guess we'll be seeing a little cosmetic rejiggering of this blatantly unconstitutional system and the re-introduction of a new and improved version of jack-bootery. Winning, after all, is more important than a couple of hundred years of protecting people from the overstepping of their own government.

That's not exactly the kind of change I voted for.

Picture This

Those excruciating pictures of Abu Ghraib are responsible for a lot of things, but not for the humiliation of this country. That was accomplished by the creepy war criminals who tunneled through our system of laws and carefully realigned the executive branch to serve party politics rather than the country's best interests. The pictures of their degradation are not the problem, nor the solution.

We need publication of the scenery of our disgrace, no matter how distasteful it is. This is that thing called a 'learning experience' that comes into our lives unwelcome but leaves us better or destroys us if we can't bear up under it with some grace.

As Diane has said; Justice and our national honor require no less.

The torture of our victims has led to worse than bad information, and we need to face all that it did destroy. Relations with our allies, even to the point that they refused to share information with us, also suffered.

AT the height of the American-led war on terror, George W Bush began to encounter an unexpected problem. The use of harsh interrogation techniques on captured Al-Qaeda terrorists caused a damaging rift with leading US allies, among them Britain and Israel, according to a former State Department official.

Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, revealed last week that “some of Europe’s best allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism, because they feared becoming complicit in a programme their governments abhorred”.

A member of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team also disclosed yesterday that during a series of secret briefings late last year at the CIA, aides to the then president-elect were told that several foreign intelligence services had refused to share information about the location of terrorism suspects for fear of becoming implicated in the use of torture during interrogations.

Evidence of allied resistance to US anti-terror tactics added yet another layer of controversy to an anguished debate about torture that has confounded Obama’s attempts to draw a curtain over the past and is threatening to overshadow his presidential record as he marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.
(snip)
From The Sunday TimesApril 26, 2009

Allies split with US over tortureTony Allen-Mills in New York
AT the height of the American-led war on terror, George W Bush began to encounter an unexpected problem. The use of harsh interrogation techniques on captured Al-Qaeda terrorists caused a damaging rift with leading US allies, among them Britain and Israel, according to a former State Department official.

Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, revealed last week that “some of Europe’s best allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism, because they feared becoming complicit in a programme their governments abhorred”.

A member of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team also disclosed yesterday that during a series of secret briefings late last year at the CIA, aides to the then president-elect were told that several foreign intelligence services had refused to share information about the location of terrorism suspects for fear of becoming implicated in the use of torture during interrogations.

Evidence of allied resistance to US anti-terror tactics added yet another layer of controversy to an anguished debate about torture that has confounded Obama’s attempts to draw a curtain over the past and is threatening to overshadow his presidential record as he marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.

Related Links
One tortured lie: that’s all it took for war
CIA: torture memo release has put US in danger
TEXT: 10 'torture' techniques blessed by Bush
After a week of ugly disclosures and furious recriminations, it was clear that far from laying the torture issue to rest, Obama has created a legal and political nightmare that may haunt his presidency.

A barrage of revelations about who knew what about torture and when will be followed this week by the release of hundreds of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration.

Officials insist there is nothing in the photos as shocking as previously circulated pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison. But they are certain to arouse Middle Eastern anger just when the US military is struggling to contain a renewed outbreak of suicide bombings that killed at least 159 people in Iraq last week.

Hillary Clinton, Rice’s successor as secretary of state, arrived in Baghdad for a surprise visit yesterday and sought to calm local alarm by describing the latest bombings as “a signal that rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction”.

The Pentagon photographs, which are being released to avoid an embarrassing legal battle that was heading for the US Supreme Court, will also fan demands from many of Obama’s supporters for a formal commission of inquiry to consider prosecutions of officials who authorised or engaged in torture. The proposal has divided America, provoked consternation at the CIA and is causing serious strains within the president’s Democratic party.

Several former Bush aides and ex-CIA officials warned last week that what some described as a “witch-hunt” would have disastrous effects on US counterterrorist capabilities, crippling the CIA’s intelligence gathering and bolstering the morale of America’s enemies.

“We ask these [CIA agents] to do extremely dangerous things, things they’ve been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong,” said Mark Lowenthal, a former CIA assistant director.

“They don’t believe they have that cover any more and [releasing the photographs] will make it much worse.”

There was also alarm at suggestions that the government should prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote widely criticised memos justifying the use of waterboarding (simulated drowning) and other extreme methods.

The quandary about what to do about crimes is specious at all levels. Under a rule of law, prosecution is the natural outgrowth of criminal behavior. Without that punishment phase, the term 'Rule of Law' is hollow sham.

The information we were denied might have assisted our intelligence community. The result of torture was bad information from the tortured and no intelligence from civilized nations.

We need to redeem our own intelligence community by putting it back on the right path, and renouncing the regrettable incidents we committed and caused.