Obamawatch: torture and civil liberties

[skdadl]

Thanks for the link, Alison -- will listen later this a.m. People have been deducing for some time -- from the released OLC memos, the CIA IG's report, and the summary index documents the CIA has been releasing in dribbles -- that the EITs were medical/psychological experiments. The DoD was part of the program too -- the OLC memos are evidence of a three-way conspiracy to justify the experiments after the fact. Abu Zubaydah told the ICRC he believed he'd been the subject of experimentation, which he clearly was.

Maybe the professional profiles of the authors of this report will have enough of a public impact to make Obama and Holder think again, but ... we'll see. There is a lot out there already that they have simply brushed aside.

[pogge]

No Escape from Guantánamo: Uighurs Lose Again in US Court

...eight and a half years after they were first seized by mistake, it is apparent that, in the cases of the Uighurs, political maneuvering — and not justice — dictates what will happen to them, and in this, all of those involved in the United States — the Obama administration, lawmakers in Congress, and the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., with its penchant for upholding the kind of far-reaching claims for executive power that President Bush embraced — ought to be deeply ashamed. In this whole sordid story, only Special Envoy Daniel Fried, who has worked tirelessly to find new homes for the men, and former White House Counsel Greg Craig, who came close to rehousing the men on the US mainland, emerge with any integrity.

[skdadl]

Utterly disgusting.

I don't know how the U.S. dares to go on calling itself a republic. The courts (and Congress, by half-measures and default) are basically saying that if the president puts someone, anyone, in limbo and then decides to keep him there, there is no legal recourse. That's not a republic; it's not even a monarchy; it's a dictatorship.

[skdadl]

The eternal U.S. prison colony at Bagram

Back later.

[Croghan27]

That good 'ol liberal Paul Klugman passes a comment on how to balance the US budget when the economic situation gets back to what passes for normal:

 
So America has a long-run budget problem. Dealing with this problem will require, first and foremost, a real effort to bring health costs under control — without that, nothing will work.

Under control = cut a few, charge a few and fuck the rest.
 
No mention of a trillion here, a trillion there for foreign, imperialist wars.

[skdadl]

The U.S. Supreme Court has just affirmed that all forms of aid to "terrorist" groups, including training in peaceful negotiation, are criminal.

This is being read widely by civil libertarians as an infringement on the First Amendment, and a criminalizing of free speech. Among those who have given listed groups training in the past would be, eg, President Jimmy Carter in his work with Hamas.

There are nuances to all this, and I'm still digesting them by reading the folks at EW's place. Watch for Greenwald and Scott Horton as well.

[Toedancer]

Oh.  IHH will be given 'terrist' designation no doubt.

[skdadl]

McChrystal may have met his Waterloo; Obama may be having his MacArthur moment.

That's TPM reporting on a new Rolling Stone article about McChrystal -- the link to the RS story (a pdf) is there -- I haven't read it yet, but apparently it's incendiary.

[skdadl]

Here's a better link to the pdf; the first wasn't readable for me.

[Toedancer]

'incendiary', oh yeah. I read it in the Grope Article this wonderful paragraph  should open some eyes.

This week's development comes as criminal investigators are said to be  examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as  much as $4-million (U.S.) a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax  dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban,  according to a U.S. military document. The payments are intended to  ensure safe passage through dangerous areas they control.
  The payments reportedly end up in insurgent hands through a $2.1-billion  Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and

That is being read widely and I hope it sends peeps tysterical. I found this wonderful quote in David DeGraw's Masters of War

Famed two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient US Brigadier  General Smedley D. Butler accurately summed up the situation when he  said: “I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a  high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism…. The general public  shoulders the bill. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly  placed gravestones, Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and  homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and  generations.”

I also found it too intriguing, in a gut churning way, (BRB)

[skdadl]

Wait till you hear about the fiction McChrystal wrote as a student at West Point. There's one mystery story where he, as the narrator trying to stop a presidential assassin, turns out at the end to be the assassin. Ahem.

[Toedancer]

Oh. My.

Sorry I wanted to finish that above post, but had to go away.

this few paragraphs, again, from D. DeGraw,
 

The US working class is the biggest threat to them and they  want us  eliminated.
   As the IMF would say, there has been a structural adjustment  program in place, and the US working class is obsolete.
   When you understand this, you can understand how the wars in Iraq,  Afghanistan and Pakistan are wars against the US public.  Wars that  weaken and drain the US working class of vital resources and social  safety nets.
 
 In the overall picture, the technocratic elite see everyone as a  number on a spreadsheet.  To them you are what your economic net worth  says you are.  Considering this perspective, most in the US public have  much more in common with an Afghanistan farmer than the billionaires on  Wall Street.  And the billionaires have put us in the same category as  those in Afghanistan.  To them it really doesn’t matter if it’s an  American life ended or an Afghani life ended in the war, as long as the  profits keep coming in… they can care less.
   Common sense and statistics demonstrate that the more troops you send  into war, the higher the causality count will be, and the more costs  will rise, leading, of course, to higher profits.
   So as the Obama illusion and the motives behind this war become  exposed, and the massive theft by the economic elite becomes known to a  critical mass, the elite are ramping up their psychological operations  on the US public by turning up their mainstream media distraction  machine.

 From his 3rd part in his series  War   Racket
 

  Scary shit huh?

[pogge]

McChrystal may have met his Waterloo; Obama may be having his MacArthur moment.

That's TPM reporting on a new Rolling Stone article about McChrystal -- the link to the RS story (a pdf) is there -- I haven't read it yet, but apparently it's incendiary.

Paul Wells: Gen. McChrystal gets hacked

Gen. Stanley McChrystal will be on a flight home from Kabul today, under orders from President Obama to attend the Wednesday strategy meeting on Afghanistan in person instead of by teleconference. McChrystal is in a spot of hot water over some wildly incautious remarks he and his entourage made to a freelance reporter for Rolling Stone. He probably won’t lose his job over this, but there’s no guarantee of that.

[skdadl]

I've read the article now; the guy is a sociopath at least (but we already knew that). I'm tending to side with the people who think McChrystal did this on purpose to get fired. He knows his COIN strategy is not working; he has political ambitions; and he wants to leave Obama holding the bag. That all seems highly likely to me.

I hope that Biden gets his licks in, though.

[Toedancer]

I'm sure you've seen this site before skdadl, but just in case Throughout the month of June, we’re observing Torture Awareness  Month by posting a formerly-secret document every day on the Torture  Report Diary.[/COLOR][/FONT]