Obamawatch: torture and civil liberties

[skdadl]

Yes, it's a really good site, set up by the ACLU, and I should have been reading it more thoroughly. There is just such a ton of stuff from the Merkin side. If only we could start to lay out our own stuff here, although the Merkin docs are important to us too -- they tell us how the whole clusterfork was set up and run.

[skdadl]

McChrystal submits resignation

Haven't read that yet.

Adding permalink: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/22/rolling-stone-mcchrystal-_n_621100.html

[Toedancer]

Washington weighs McChrystal Replacement

The unlucky dudes are: Two Marine generals, John Allen and Jim Mattis and Army  Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, who currently runs day-to-day combat  operations in Afghanistan while McChrystal focuses on strategic  military-political issues. I guess Gates decides, he hired McChrystal.

[Croghan27]

Originally Posted by 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.

Truman sacked MacArthur ... and they (we) still lost that war. (Bit of an error there, the war has officially never ended - just a cease fire.)
 
Shuffling the deck will not make a difference if you are using the same cards.
 
Support al Qu'ida/stop supporting al Qu'ida
Support the Taliban/oppose the Taliban
Chase ObL/do 'nation building'
Engineer Karzai's election/Seriously consider dumping Karzai
Chase the drug dealers/Hire the drug dealers (Karzai's brother)
Seize their hearts and minds/bomb the snot out of civilians
 
We need a new deck of cards.

[skdadl]

My favourite passage from Toe's first link:

"Commanders who indulge in sloppy, tough guy, cowboy lingo --  'smack-down, scumbags,' etc. -- tend to run sloppy, tough guy, cowboy  operations,'' said an experienced combat commander. "Units, and  especially staffs, tend to adopt the language and demeanor of their  commander ... Applause lines in the testosterone-driven subculture of  combat units are not likely to play well on CNN.''

Remind you of anyone?

[Croghan27]

My favourite passage from Toe's first link:



Remind you of anyone?

Let me guess ... are his initials Rick Hiller?

[Toedancer]

Just so this thread is accurate - McChrystal says He Did NOT Resign So Stein's source was wrong I guess, but he will offer his resignation today, well prolly right now in fact.

[skdadl]

Petraeus will take over from McChrystal.

That's kind of smart, imho, since Petraeus was a much greater political threat to Obama than death's-head McChrystal could be. Now he will be busy with the quagmire.

[pogge]

It's certainly a shrewd move politically since the Republicans all think Petraeus walks on water.

[pogge]

Interesting bit from the tail end of a Glenn Greenwald post:

Charlie Savage just noted on Twitter  that Marty Lederman -- the former blogger, Georgetown Law Professor, and vociferous critic of Bush executive power and Terrorism policies -- is leaving his position at the Office of Legal Counsel to return to Georgetown Law.  Late last month, David Barron -- the acting OLC Chief -- also announced  that he is leaving, to return to Harvard.  With Dawn Johnsen never having been confirmed and her nomination to head the office now withdrawn, what had originally seemed to be such a promising team at OLC -- the office which determines for the Executive Branch the legal limits of presidential authority -- no longer exists.

[skdadl]

Nice to see Lederman finally saving at least his self-respect. Yes, it's clear that Obama doesn't want a serious OLC -- he sure didn't want Dawn Johnsen, who had the votes ... It looks as though they're just going to run on acting heads indefinitely.

[pogge]

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
...
The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

Via some obscure blogger named emptywheel.

[pogge]

From the ACLU: Establishing a New Normal

...on a range of issues including accountability for torture, detention of terrorism suspects, and use of lethal force against civilians, there is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration. There is a real danger, in other words, that the Obama administration will preside over the creation of a "new normal."

[Alison]

Aljazeera : Iraqis to sue US firm at Abu Ghraib
 

A US court has given the green light to 72 Iraqis to proceed with a lawsuit against a private contractor accused of complicity in the alleged abuse of detainees at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
 
In the ruling obtained on Friday, the judge said the alleged actions by the company "arguably violated the laws of war such that they are not immune from suit under the laws of war".
 
The 72 former prisoners released after being imprisoned for between one month and four years from 2003 to 2008, accuse L3 employees of beatings, torture, sexual aggression, the use of electric shock, mock executions and hangings from their feet.

[pogge]

Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.