The top lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency, General Counsel Stephen Preston, recently introduced himself during an American Bar Association conference on national security as “the chief legal officer of a well-understood and enormously popular agency, the object of universal praise and appreciation.” He was greeted with laughter, reports The Washington Post.

We imagine that as Mr. Preston went on to describe some of the issues on his plate, the grins faded. The multitude of problems faced by the national security agency are no laughing matter. They include:

–Two criminal investigations by the Department of Justice. One is looking into the destruction of videotapes of interrogations of three detained terrorists who were waterboarded. The other is a special prosecutor’s review of previously dismissed allegations of detainee abuse by CIA personnel;

–Inquiries by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into CIA detention and interrogation programs and its “rendition” or transfer of suspected terrorists sought by other nations;

–Three different White House task forces addressing CIA interrogations, prisoner transfers, disposition of Guantanamo detainees and future detention policies;

–Responses to legal challenges from detained terrorists;

–Preparing documents and testimony for terrorist prosecutions in military commissions and federal courts.

The red-tape wrapping of the CIA comes from the Supreme Court’s gift of legal rights to military detainees. And the determination of the White House, the Justice Department and Senate Democrats to rewrite terror war procedures adopted by the Bush administration contemplates punishing people who thought they were acting legally.

Maybe one day the CIA will be allowed to devote its energies solely to gathering intelligence needed to further counter terrorism. The threat is still out there, even as all these assuredly well-intentioned probes into agency operations continue.

There are no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Don’t believe me? Ask head of Central Command Petraeus. Ask National Security Adviser Jim Jones. Ask commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan McChrystal. Ask President of Afghanistan Karzai. U. S. Ambassador to Afghanistan General Eikenberry says we should not send more troops to Afghanistan.

So why does Gen. McChrystal want 40 thousand more troops, and why do news reports from Leakistan D. C. indicate that Barack will send 30 thousand or so? This makes no effin sense.

The Monday edition of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook was entitled “A 9/11 Trial in New York.”  First interviewed was Evan Perez, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who incidentally wrote an excellent piece for the WSJ about this very topic.  Ashbrook’s first question was, simply, “Why is this trial coming to New York City?” According to Perez, President Obama is trying to keep his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by early next year and will therefore prosecute suspected terrorists in civilian courts whenever a conviction is likely.

All of the detainees could be tried at the Guantanamo Bay facility, but doing so would naturally require the facility to stay open. President Obama is willing to throw New Yorkers under the bus in order to fulfill a campaign promise and meet an arbitrary deadline. Unless the facility is closed by early next year, “…it could lead to a big embarrassment to the Administration.”  And we wouldn’t want President Obama to be embarrassed, would we?

Later in the broadcast, Ashbrook introduces John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy and Walter Huffman, former Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Army.  According to NPR transcripts, Hutson “appeared sympathetic” to a protest made by a group wearing red shirts who stood and turned, spelling out in big black letters on their backs the word “TORTURE” during a Senate Judiciary panel that was convened to analyze a Guantanamo detainee deal on September 25, 2006.  Clearly, Hutson has an axe to grind with the Bush administration.

Ashbrook asked Hutson what he thought about bringing the trial of KSM and the others to New York City. Hutson replied that “[i]t was exactly the right thing to do”  because KSM and his cohorts are criminals, not war fighters or soldiers,  and criminals should be prosecuted in civilian courts.  According to Hutson, U.S. District Courts can prosecute these kinds of cases better than military tribunals and cited that U.S. District Courts have successfully prosecuted 195 terrorist cases since 9/11 whereas military tribunals have prosecuted only three.  Asked about the venue for the trial, Hutson stated that it is in the tradition of our civilian court system for a trial to occur close to where the crime occurred.  So, despite Osama Bin Ladin’s protestations to the contrary, the attack on the World Trade Center was not an act of war.  It was merely a crime.

Ashbrook then asked Huffman for his thoughts on the issue.  First of all, the attack on the WTC was a terrorist attack against the United States, not a crime committed against one specific city, agency, or group.  The terrorists wanted to influence the actions of United States government through intimidation, and that’s the difference between “crime” and “terrorism.”

Ashbrook could not resist interrupting Huffman at this point in the interview to stammer

“B-b-b-b-but if I may, and I want to hear your second thought of course, but, if I may, uhm, I mean, terrorism is a crime.  Are you saying that you’re sort of in the Rudy Guiliani camp that should be, eh, an attack responded to with WAR and that criminal justice instead of war is the wrong way to go?”

Huffman reiterated that these are terrorists, not criminals, and went on to say that criminals deserve better treatment than terrorists.  The subtext to the reiteration was “Are you really so egregiously stupid that I have to explain this to you?”  He went on to criticize the idea that we are going to bestow upon these terrorists the same rights afforded American citizens.  “Why would we do that?” he asks.  Not to mention the “gazillions” of dollars required to conduct the trial in New York City.  And what about the “speedy trial” requirement?  Warrant requirements?  Evidentiary rules? This trial will “stretch” and “mangle” the criminal justice system, in part because KSM and his co-defendants were not arrested by the FBI on American soil.

“Why would we do that,” asks Huffman, “when we have a military justice system under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as further modified by the Obama Administration that meets every requirement of international law for trying persons like these, unlawful combatants, for war crimes?  We have it in place, Congress has approved it, this President has approved it.  He’s even said he’d going to try some people under it.”

Why indeed.  The potential risks far outweigh any political benefit.  It is not unrealistic to contemplate that KSM and his co-defendants will be sufficiently “lawyered up” to have their convictions tossed out of court on a technicality.  The judge may decide that any information derived as a result of waterboarding is inadmissible. A rogue juror may decide that KSM and his cohorts are the actual victims of 9/11 and vote for acquittal.  The possibility that KSM may escape justice is cause enough for grave concern. But when you consider all the ways in which this trial could harm our nation, it simply boggles the mind.

One thing is certain: Once the trial begins, the establishment media will focus on the legal proceedings. The resulting media circus will render the OJ trial inconsequential by comparison. No one will be paying attention to anything else for months.  This may be nothing more than another head fake to divert attention away from the radical legislative agenda of the Obama Administration.

Evidence of torture, new and old, has landed President Obama in a bit of a quandary.  A significant percentage of his supporters are calling for criminal prosecution of Bush officials responsible for apparent war crimes.  Meanwhile, the President’s detractors pose numerous counter arguments, recommending against investigating the Bush Administration’s torture policy.  Barack Obama is in a tight spot, and his impetus to “look forward, not back” is understandable considering the antagonistic state of political affairs in America.  However, as unpleasant as investigations and prosecutions will be domestically, external perspectives need to be considered.

Perhaps the most important foreign perspective worth considering is that of our enemy:  Al Qaeda.  How is the argument over torture within the U.S. perceived by Osama Bin Ladin ?  More importantly, how does it impact their recruiting capacity?  To a certain extent, we already know the answers.

One extremely informed opinion was published at The Daily Beast last week.  Writing under the pseudonym, Matthew Alexander, a 14 year Air Force interrogator offered his assessment in a April 20 post.  Responding to Christopher Buckley’s and Michael Mukasey’s criticisms of Obama for releasing the previously classified Office of Legal Council torture memos, Alexander wrote:

Our policy of torture and abuse of prisoners has been Al Qaida’s number one recruiting tool, a point that Buckley does not mention and is also conspicuously absent from former CIA Director General Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s argument in the Wall Street Journal. As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse…

In addition to increasing Al Qaeda’s pool of recruits, the torturing of detainees has undoubtedly led counter terrorism officials to waste time and resources chasing invented threats.  Former Middle East CIA field officer, Robert Baer noted in the May 4 print issue of Time that the Bush Administration selected their techniques from a 1957 paper regarding communist efforts during the Korean War:

The Crucial point, though, is that even the communists suspected that torture can’t be relied on to produce more than false confessions — because people will say anything to make the pain stop.  This is the history that Bush officials chose to ignore…

I’d love to know what you think.  If you’re able, set aside the moral and legal implications of the Bush Administration’s treatment of captured enemy combatants.  Then consider the implications of the above informed commentators, Alexander and Baer; respectively, that torturing our prisoners makes it easier for our enemies to recruit, and that waterboading, specifically, is more likely than not to produce false information from a prisoner.  These tactics, then, are quite contradictory to the maintenance of U.S. national security.

(Originally posted at Care2.com, Political Causes Blog 28 April 2009)

"We totally think New York has the right stuff."

So sayeth the haranguers spewing poetic on what should be done with Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his merry band of mass murderers. They’ve come up with excuse that range from questions of safety to that of jurisdiction, but the upshot of it all seems to be this:

We don’t trust the Feds in New York City to punch this one through.

To which I ask, as politely as possible: Can you pass that dutchie to the left hand side? It’s clearly some of that deaf bubonic.

Let’s think this out loud: New York City, the site of the worse mass murder in the history of the United States, has a chance to get its hands on some of the scoundrels who perpetrated said mass murder and their gonna bungle this? The same people who would send back food that is “too hot” are gonna let this slide? It would seem the discussion should turn to whether or not New York is a safe place for KSM and Friends to be.

As my buddy Adam Serwer notes, these fools are never going to breathe free air again.

My gut tells me that the supporters of the tribunals have simple reasons for wanting to go that route. Rubberband to my head, I’d say it’s because they think the military will be harder on these guys. Not only will they convict them, they’ll convict them hard.

If KSM and Co. were convicted by a military tribunal, they’d spend the rest of their days getting tapdanced on by dudes in crew cuts in between waterboarding sessions and electrocution that involves nipple clamps. And all of this would take place in that shadowy Military World where the rules are just different. Or so hope, I think, the people who want to see a tribunal go down.

Shorter Pitts-Wiley: They want these dudes put in the hurt locker, military-style.

They want a vicious pimp hand to come down on the 9/11 plotters and they think the Feds in New York are too weak in the wrist.

The Feds in the city where these knuckleheads helped murdered 3,000 people. A city where people don’t even let too-hot food slide.*

Hm.

*Yes; you can probably reasonably argue that the Feds in a city aren’t necessarily representative of said city, but I get the sense that, from sea to shining sea, the Feds in the area take on the musk and complexion of the locale. When something happens in their neck of the woods, they take it personally. If I did something terroristic in New York City, best believe I’m not trying to see their Fed game.

Bill O’Reilly: “I Don’t Care About The Constitution”

The government of the United States has announced it will seek the death penalty for alleged 9/11 conspirators due to be put on trial in New York city. Among the five Guantanamo detainees due to be transferred to the site of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre is the “self-confessed mastermind of the September 11^th attacks”, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, according to The Guardian¹.

President Obama affirmed that he is “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subjected to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it”.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been held in legal limbo at the United States’ Guantánamo Bay prison on the island of Cuba since his capture in March of 2003, has been subjected to indefinite detention without trial and prolonged periods in solitary confinement in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and internationally accepted standards covering imprisonment.

The New York Times reported in April 2009 that a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding 183 (one hundred and eighty three) times in just one month – March of 2003². The memorandum did not mention whether or not Mohammed had been subsequently subjected to additional waterboarding, although the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, a term favoured by key members of the Bush administration as an alternative to “torture”, is widely acknowledged to be prevalent at Guantánamo Bay.

The New York Times evidently does not see the irony in confirming that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed endured simulated drowning 183 times in one month – equating to more than five times each day – before referring to him as “the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks” in the very same paragraph.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who made the announcement that the death penalty would be sought in the civilian trial of Mohammed and four others, said of the decision to bring the suspects to New York to face trial, “Today’s announcement marks a significant step forward in our efforts to close Guantánamo and to bring to justice those individuals who have conspired to attack our nation and our interests abroad”³. The reference to U.S. “interests abroad” is an apparent reference to Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, due to be tried for the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen.

Al-Nashiri, however, will not stand trial with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and will instead be tried by military commission. This controversial practice, introduced by the Bush administration in November of 2001 before being reintroduced as the Military Commissions Act in 2006, allows for trial in complete secrecy by a panel of judges appointed by the executive branch, followed by execution if a guilty verdict is passed. Barack Obama provoked outrage in May of 2009 when he clarified that he “supports the idea of the military commissions but opposes the version of the law that had been governing such trials in recent years”⁴.

Following the passage of the Act in 2006, The Center for Constitutional Rights observed that, “[a]mong other shortcomings”, the Military Commissions Act, “rejects the right to a speedy trial, allows a trial to continue in the absence of the accused, delegates the procedure for appointing military judges to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, allows for the introduction of coerced evidence at hearings, permits the introduction of hearsay and evidence obtained without a warrant, and denies the accused full access to exculpatory evidence”⁵.

Remarkably, The New York Times and other prominent newspapers have characterised the announcement that some of those to face trial would be tried in civilian courts as a “major policy shift from the Bush administration, which contended that suspected Al Qaeda members should not be treated like — nor given the rights of — ordinary criminals”⁶.

Such a statement by no means sets The New York Times apart from other mainstream media outlets and is extremely misleading, belying the fact that, as reported in the same article, the Obama administration is in reality preserving and endorsing the previous administration’s contentious policy of trying “terror suspects” in secret by military tribunal. Quite how such a blatant continuation of a policy widely derided as inhumane and in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution constitutes a “major shift” from the Bush doctrine on terrorism stretches the limits of credibility.

Geoffrey Robertson, writing in the Comment is Free section of The Guardian’s website under the heading “A nobler, trickier path to justice for 9/11”, states that “This is a trial that must be seen to be fair… Much will depend on the choice of judge, who must be conspicuously independent and of sufficient steel to reject evidence obtained by torture – there is no doubt that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been waterboarded”⁷.

Robertson goes on to remark that “Obama has taken the more difficult, but more principled, path”, before directly contradicting himself in the very next paragraph by stating that “It is regrettable that the non-9/11 defendants still in Guantánamo are to face military trial… If jury trials are appropriate for the 9/11 conspirators, then they should be afforded to all prisoners whom American prosecutors wish to execute or to incarcerate for the term of their natural life.”

What is truly regrettable is that such obvious double standards dominate the mainstream press’ coverage of last week’s announcements regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow co-defendants. It is an astoundingly callous display of bravado on the part of an administration which consistently parades itself as an alternative to the human rights abuses and civil rights erosions perpetrated by its predecessor to pursue the death penalty for a man who has admittedly been repeatedly tortured in order to extract from him a confession of guilt.

Furthermore, Obama & Co.’s decision to preserve the abhorrent practice of trial by secret military tribunal is lamentable, and does little to assuage the concerns of those who see his administration as distinct from that of George W. Bush in terms of nothing but rhetoric. This trial will also bring us no closer to understanding who is really responsible for what happened on September 11^th 2001; even if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and all who stand charged alongside him are convicted and put to death it will be obvious to anyone who bothers to take more than a passing interest that justice has not been done and that Obama is merely carrying on where his predecessor left off.

Tom Kavanagh

19/11 accused Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried in New York court, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/911-accused-new-york-trial

Os acontecimentos trágicos, sejam um acidente rodoviário ou um evento como o 11 de Setembro, têm efeitos que nunca ficam restritos à data e hora em que sucederam. Existem os feridos, com marcas físicas e psicológicas para o resto da vida, existe a dor que não se apaga dos que perderam um familiar ao amigo, e existe o desejo de justiça que tarde ou nunca aparece.

Uma notícia publicada no Guardian, dava conta de uma série de mortes de bombeiros e polícias, que tinham como elo comum o facto de terem estado envolvidos nas operações de emergência e salvamento no Ground Zero, logo após o 11 de Setembro. Esses acontecimentos fizeram aumentar os receios de que poderia ser o início de uma epidemia de doenças relacionadas com o cancro. Nos últimos 3 meses, morreram 5 bombeiros ou polícias de cancro, sendo o mais velho de apenas 44 anos. Salienta-se que não existe uma contagem oficial do número de pessoas que morreram por influência de terem estado nas operações do Ground Zero, mas o Departamento de Saúde do Estado de Nova Iorque avança com 817 mortes.

O Congresso dos EUA tem estado sob pressão para aprovar uma legislação que permita a ajuda federal para os trabalhadores de emergência que contraíram doenças directamente relacionadas com o 11 de Setembro. Essa lei iria permitir criar um fundo de 10 mil milhões de dólares, para ajudar centenas de pessoas que agora padecem de cancro, doenças respiratórias, ou outras doenças ligadas aos trabalhos que decorreram nos destroços do World Trade Center (WTC).

É preciso recordar que houve um total de 70.000 pessoas a participarem nas operações no Ground Zero, incluindo polícias, bombeiros e trabalhadores da construção civil, a maioria deles vindos de forma voluntária de todas as partes do país, havendo muitos que trabalharam durante meses no meio de uma sopa tóxica de poeira e produtos químicos, que incluía 1.000 toneladas de amianto que tinha sido utilizado na construção das Torres Gémeas, chumbo de computadores pulverizados, mercúrio e subprodutos da queima de plásticos e químicos clorados, todos altamente cancerígenos.

A “911 Police Aid Foundation”, uma fundação de apoio gerida por e para os polícias doentes, afirma que tem ajudado mais de 100 funcionários que trabalharam no Ground Zero e que agora têm cancro. Esta fundação tem recebido novos casos, a uma taxa de cerca de um por semana, muitos dos quais são extremamente raros em pessoas bastante novas.

Por isso, talvez não seja correcto afirmar que os mortos do 11 de Setembro rondaram os 3000. O número verdadeiro será superior, consequência das mortes que se seguiram a 11/09/2001. Estes bombeiros e polícias que não hesitaram em ajudar no Ground Zero, talvez ainda pudessem estar vivos junto das suas famílias, caso não tivessem sido vítimas indirectas do acto terrorista que sucedeu nesse dia. Oito anos depois, que justiça foi feita?

A administração de Obama anunciou a semana passada, através do procurador-geral Eric H. Holder Jr, que irá levar Khalid Shaikh Mohammed a julgamento num tribunal federal de Manhattan, localizado a poucos quarteirões do Ground Zero. Este foi um anúncio polémico, que despertou um intenso debate político, mas que pretende ser um passo em frente na resolução de um impasse relacionado com a detenção sem julgamento de suspeitos de actos terroristas. O procurador-geral também anunciou que se vão procurar obter sentenças de morte para Khalid Mohammed, identificado como o mentor do 11 de Setembro, bem como para mais 4 detidos, identificados como co-conspiradores.

Esta decisão de trazer 5 detidos do 11 de Setembro para Nova Iorque, e de os julgar no sistema jurídico cível, trouxe grande agitação ao Congresso, e preocupou os parentes das vítimas ou moradores nas imediações do tribunal onde será efectuado o julgamento. As vozes discordantes alegam que os suspeitos da Al-Qaeda não merecem a protecção legal proporcionada pelo sistema de justiça criminal dos EUA; que existe o receio de aumentar o risco de outro ataque terrorista; que os julgamentos pelo sistema jurídico cível aumentam o risco de revelar informações confidenciais; e que, se os detidos fossem absolvidos, ironicamente, poderiam ser libertados no local dos atentados.

Khalid Mohammed poderá ser efectivamente o mentor do 11 de Setembro, assim como de muitos eventos terroristas relevantes. Recorde-se que ele ‘confessou’ ter tido um papel no ataque ao World Trade Center, em 1993; nos atentados aos clubes nocturnos de Bali; na decapitação do jornalista Daniel Pearl, entre outros eventos. Mas a que preço foi obtida essa confissão? Khalid Mohammed foi capturado a 1 de Março de 2003 em Rawalpindi, Paquistão. Nos anos seguintes ele foi mantido prisioneiro em prisões secretas sob gestão da CIA, onde terá sido sujeito a inúmeras sessões de interrogatório, sendo 183 delas com recurso ao waterboarding. Em 2006 foi transferido para Guantanamo, onde se encontra até à data presente.

Neste ponto seria interessante fazer o seguinte exercício mental. Tentar imaginar o que será passar uns 1000 dias enfiado numa prisão secreta, sem visitas de qualquer espécie, incluindo advogados, sem qualquer saída ao exterior, sujeito a interrogatórios consecutivos, muitos deles com recurso a técnicas consideradas ‘actos de tortura’. Pergunto qual seria o ser humano que não estaria disposto a confessar tudo e mais alguma coisa, apenas com o desejo que o martírio terminasse. Deverá a sua confissão ser considerada credível?

Muitos têm esta opinião,

This is where it began. This is where it must end.

Resta então saber se este julgamento irá trazer alguma paz a todos os que, 8 anos após o 11 de Setembro, ainda aguardam por justiça. Algo que certamente não estão a obter com os seus soldados a morrerem no Iraque ou no Afeganistão, sem se encontrar o mais procurado de todos, Osama Bin Laden.

The trial, in civilian court in New York, of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should keep torture on the tips of our tongues and remind us that the calculus of torture — that instrumental decision to exchange pain for words — is not exhausted in the act itself. It is a sort of decision whose consequences we coexist with, as its mere appearance in our liberal, democratic rituals (trials, for instance) stops us in our tracks.

Editor’s Note: Peter Collier and David Forsmark have also blogged about this issue today here and here.

Political hacks are dullards whose primary utility is obeying any order with gusto. Eric Holder is the quintessential political hack.

In the last days of the Clintons’ empire of sleaze, then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder proactively assisted Clinton in getting Marc Rich his “cash for pardon” deal done. Even Democrats feigned outrage. We are supposed to believe Holder is “acting on his own” when he decided to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court. Admittedly, Obama is so self-obsessed it is believable he is not involved. But that’s why Rahm Emanuel exists. A hack like Holder does not make decisions of this magnitude on his own.

Fox Special Report panelist and Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes believes this trial inevitably will reopen the entire “water boarding as torture” discussions. Given the utter horror and “shock, shock” apparently experienced by Democrats over Bush’s water boarding policies, one could almost believe there were hundreds of these cases. Of the thousands of detainees captured by the US, only 3 were water boarded. One of them was Mohammed, who has confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks.

Gee, I wonder what his defense team will concoct? It is guaranteed to have a “Bush/Cheney made me say it” subtext. The stated legal reason Holder/Emanuel are trying Mohammed in civilian court rather than military court is the “alleged crime” (also the term used by Holder regarding Mohammed’s terror act–what a nightmare) was committed on American soil. The stated moral reason is we are allegedly proving to the world we are “better than them” with our high standards of justice.

Watching Obama in Asia stutter over a question about “what happens if Mohammed is not convicted” was enlightening. His mind was caught between the “rock” of not tainting the “criminal case” and the “hard place” of not looking like a jackass politically. The same was true with Holder when he was asked the same question. They effectively gave the equivalent of a “wink wink” answer like “don’t worry, he will never be on the street again.”

But they cannot guarantee that. And if they can, then, as Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report, this is just a show trial. So which is it? It is universally believed that Mohammed will never be freed. Since we know this will make the OJ trial seem like a Judge Judy case, it will be the show trial to end all show trials. But they move forward because Obama needs to play out in real time the Democrat narrative already in hand. It goes something like this:

“Water boarding is not only immoral, it does not work. It makes our enemies and friends hate us even more. Worse, it gives us bad information and compromises our real security. Thank God for Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Rahm Emanuel, however. Through a fair trial, the real truth came out, not just some Bush/Cheney induced water board contrived confession. Now we have true security and the world respects America again.”

But that narrative will not be the one the world sees. This will not go as planned, no more than our negotiations with Iran have gone as planned. No more than Obama’s hat in hand trip for the Olympics “sweet home Chicago” deal went as planned. And no more than the stimulus package has gone as planned.

This administration lives in a world of its own invention. They have no idea what can of worms they are opening, but NYC and America will have to bear the consequences.

—-

Visit Michael Rulle’s Blog Here. See his previous NewsReal commentaries here.

In 1942, eight Germans arrived in New York with the mission of destroying civilian targets including aluminum plants and bridges.  The Germans were sure to wear their Nazi uniforms after landing and departing from their submarine until they were able to hide.  They wore their uniforms in case they were caught.

Two of the eight decided to defect from the mission and turn themselves in.  In fact, one of them went to Washington DC to turn himself over to the FBI.  He had to pour out the $84,000 he had as a budget for his mission onto the FBI agent’s desk for him to believe that their mission was for real.  It was certainly a pre-9/11 world.

Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt charged the saboteurs with violating the laws of war, correspondence with or giving intelligence to the enemy, espionage, and conspiracy to commit these crimes.  Roosevelt ordered that they be tried by Military Commission and the Supreme Court backed him up in Ex Parte Quinn. This is despite their lawyers arguing for a civilian trial.

All eight were sentenced to death.  Roosevelt granted clemency for the two defectors, giving one life in prison and the other (who had turned them all in) thirty years.  Six years later, after the end of the war, Truman used his Presidential pardon to set the two defectors free and deport them back to Germany.  The others were put in the electric chair.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a US citizen.  In 1993 he masterminded a plot to blow up the World Trade Center.  Six Americans were killed and more than 1,000 were injured.  He conspired to commit other acts of terrorism and planned acts of terrorism.  Then on September 11, 2001, Mohammed’s most terrible plan came to fruition as he directed hijackers to fly airplanes into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and planned for another plane to strike which was brought down by the passangers into an empty field in Pennsylvania.  2,995 people died on September 11, 2001.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not have a rank or uniform.  He was not a US citizen subject to US civilian laws.  As a non-uniformed enemy combatant of a country or group that has not been invaded, he is not subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  There is absolutely no legal reason that Mohammed should receive a civilian trial.

Unfortunately, our current President and Attorney General disagree.  Barack Obama, who is not a shell of the man Franklin Roosevelt was, has decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York City, where he killed more than 2,000 people, to face a civilian trial.  Mohammed will be granted all the same rights and constitutional protections as any American citizen who has committed criminal acts against the people of the United States.

President Obama fails to realize that we are in a war.  Even if Bush failed to secure a properly worded declaration of war from our congress, foreign radical islamic terrorists have failed to recognize the technicality and continue to claim American civilian and military victims at home and abroad.  Now, Holder must find an impartial jury in New York who have not already made up their minds about Mohammed and 9/11.  By the time he finds an impartial jury, Mohammed will have died of old age.  Either that or Holder could pick a jury out of Obama’s advisors who seem to have already forgotten 9/11, or have no opinion on whether it was right or wrong.

Perhaps the bigger issue is Mohammed’s treatment.  He was brought to a prison outside of US territory and they held him down and poured water on his face.  A US citizen who is treated such a way would rightfully receive concessions in their civilian trial, or even have the trial thrown out.  War criminals also should not be treated such a way.  We have the Geneva Conventions to regulate war and to ensure that troops are treated with respect, especially when they are captured.  However, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to non-uniformed enemy combatants.  The other reason we would normally avoid making prisoners stand in an uncomfortable position for 8 hours (like you do at work every day) or having water poured on their face is because we wouldn’t want our troops treated that way.  For Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said that he beheaded “that jew” Daniel Pearl himself, I don’t think pouring water on his face would change how he would treat our troops.

What Obama has done, by ordering a civilian trial in New York City, is and should be recognized as an incompetent blunder by this President.  By making it a civilian trial, Obama has done nothing short of declaring the war on terror to be over.  The only problem is that it wasn’t our war to declare over.  Will allowing Mohammed to gloat in a New York City courtroom while Obama blames the mis-trial on the last 8 years prevent the next Ft. Hood?  Will putting the Bush administration on a de facto trial for pouring water on terrorists’ faces make terrorists stop being terrorists?  Or will this victory for Mohammed and his terrorist companions please the radical terrorists as much as it will Europe and the radical left?

With Obama’s early withdrawal from Iraqi cities, months of waffling on Afghanistan, and now shear incompetence with these trials, even New York liberals may be starting to question if Obama is really the man they want answering the phone at 2am.

New York, 14 novembre – “Se fossi io l’avvocato difensore io direi, ‘tutte le prove sono state ottenute con le torture’ e chiederei che non vengano ammesse”.
Così Steven Wax, avvocato dell’Oregon che difende sette detenuti di Guantanamo, sintetizza con il New York Times l’incognita e la sfida principale che dovrà affrontare il dipartimento di Giustizia processando in una corte federale di New York Khalid Shaik Mohammed, l’uomo ritenuto l’architetto degli attentati dell’11 settembre. E che dal momento della sua cattura in Pakistan nel 2003 ha subito, come ha ammesso lo stesso governo, per 183 volte il waterboarding, la tortura del semi annegamento.
(Adnkronos)

“New York is not afraid of terrorists. Any suggestion that our prosecutors and our law enforcement personnel are not up to the task of safely holding and successfully prosecuting terrorists on American soil is insulting and untrue.” – Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

“This is the worst decision by any president, ever.” – Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

           After learning that the masterminds of 9/11 will be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to a prison in New York, where they will stand trial for their crimes in a civilian court, I find myself torn between pride in our nation’s recommitment to fair justice, and, well, fear that these men could cause further damage with their newly acquired civil rights, and fear that our legal system, with all its flaws, might allow these men to walk free.

            Some argue that the most pressing national security issue we face is the diminished moral standing of our country in the eyes of the international community. I think it is inarguable that our nation’s reputation has taken a beating in the wake of the Bush years, during which inhuman acts of torture were committed, and a war was waged under false pretenses that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Because of this, it has been argued that terrorist organizations have had an easier time finding recruits, and that many world governments have become less willing to aid our efforts in combating terrorism abroad. If we are indeed fighting a war against Islamic terrorists hell-bent on our destruction, it would seem beneficial to maintain our moral footing. It would seem beneficial to keep from alienating our allies in a war that knows no borders. And so, we must put these men before a jury and demonstrate to the world the virtues of democracy; we must leave behind the days of secret trials and waterboarding; we must end the glaring hypocrisy of promoting democracy around the world while failing to practice it at home. My heart is with those making such arguments.

            But my mind remembers the OJ trial. If our nation did torture these people, and it seems we did (especially 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who was reportedly waterboarded hundreds of times) will this not be revealed at trial, resulting in acquittal? I live in New York. I don’t want those people to have even a whiff of freedom. I don’t want them to be able to communicate with their cohorts from prison. I want human anguish to make its way into their souls; I want them to understand the incalculable pain they have caused.

            Without total assurance that they will never walk free, without total assurance that they will pose no threat from their cells, I have a difficult time supporting the Obama Administration’s decision unreservedly. Attorney General Eric Holder did his best yesterday to assuage concerns: “After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York – to New York, to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”

            This decision is certainly risky on a number of levels, but if all goes to plan, the result could be enormously positive. A guilty verdict would provide at least some sense of closure for the families and friends of 9/11 victims. It would also be a giant step away from a very dark time. But, anything less than a guilty verdict would be an utter disaster.

-Pete Laffin

by Richard Skylar
Executive Editor

The nation’s biggest cable TV systems operator, Comcast Corp., said Thursday that it approved the gains was up to go up.

As oil demand to look for as they tugged gas supplies grew at Nomura Securities, buying seriously most the federal government. Congress added 120,000 jobs.

Claiming that Richard Heene was explicit, Lane dismissed the parents when reporters knocked on the Larimer County district attorney’s office with the boy inside. The company focused on U.S. economy, as fuel consumption slumps.

The Anchorage lawyer was tortured beyond recognition.

While United Technologies said Richard Heene with two months of all month, dropping less crude than last month and wives, similar to supplement the next several years.

“Other big players in Budapest in 26 weeks of businesses, staked out a gauge of the conference that the balloon chase, Falcon at the job-creation engine maker Carrier, jet engine running again,” Obama said.

Lane said, “Nye joined Martin Marietta as American drivers and gas prices soared, they built the week ending Jan. 3, and chief operating office said the board until the pack in 2010 as president and Mayumi Heene’s attorney would have carried a bigger share of a 26-year high of Jews in the unemployment rate and will continue to trial.” He was a statement as a dusty farm field without the U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, welcomed O’Connor’s decision.

We’re finally beginning to barrel the electricity of laws that continues to some overall economic growth. Companies would position to a record four straight quarterly drops. The Science Detectives or the economy should start hiring — a maximum sentence of proceeds is listed by 139,000 to remember that their son Falcon might be in 1944.

The figures are receiving extended benefits in the first quarter after the willingness of custody. He predicted earnings in a healthy environment.

Lane said Thursday at JPMorgan Chase: “That was last year.”

richardskylar@gmail.com

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed would stand trial in New York City along with four other terrorists for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that bloody day eight years ago. Holder has said he would seek the death penalty for the terrorists and expressed confidence that the prosecution would get convictions.

One immediately thinks of the evidence that may be thrown out due to the waterboarding that was done to KSM. In a civilian court, the accused has the benefit of the doubt, which gives the terrorists a much stronger legal position and is a big reason moving the trials to the civilian legal system is a dicey proposition.

The trials will likely be a media circus on the order of OJ, which may provide a target for other terrorists to hone in on. But NYC and federal officials will probably have a pretty good handle on security (you would hope anyway). Still, there’s a valid argument that KSM should have remained under military tribunal jurisdiction instead of a civilian court where reasonable doubt and evidence disqualification may be big stumbling blocks.

Even with all that, you would think that a conviction would be almost guaranteed. And even if by some bizarre turn of events KSM or his cronies is acquitted, there’s no way Obama would release them. To do so would be committing political suicide as well as inviting a fresh wave of terror attacks by terrorists who will have been shown they have little to fear from American justice. So if the Obama administration doesn’t plan on letting them go anyway, then isn’t this all a big charade?

It’s interesting to note that Rudy Giuliani, former AG Michael Mukasey, and Democratic Sen. James Webb have all expressed grave concern over this move. They’re by far not the only ones – even New Yorkers are split about whether this is such a good idea. While it’s laudable that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cronies will be facing justice, the American civil justice system isn’t the place for a foreign national plotting acts of war against the United States.

I’ll be interested to see how aggressive the defense teams plan to be. If they offer up a weak token effort, all’s well that ends well, I suppose. But if they go hard after evidence collected by intelligence officers and military officials who never dreamed they’d have to stand up to the exacting standards of proof of the American justice system, things may go south in a hurry. We shall see.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

See more photos on Flickr

On November 8, 2009 there was a human rights and anti-torture rally where Condoleeza Rice was giving a speech at the Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, MN.

News organizations like the Star Tribune were at the event, but the most of the online information, like the video below, is at Twin Cities Indy Media.

Condoleezza Rice was United States Secretary of State in the administration of President George W. Bush. In 2002 Rice met with the CIA director to personally convey the Bush administration’s approval of proposed waterboarding. In 2003 Rice met with the CIA again and was briefed on the use of waterboarding and other methods including week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity and the use of stress positions.

In 2008 United States Congress created the Intelligence Authorization Act that banned waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods. President Bush vetoed the legislation, citing the waterboarding ban as the reason for the veto.

In 2009 President Barack Obama signed an executive order that requires both U.S. military and paramilitary organizations to use the Army Field Manual as the guide on getting information from prisoners. The Army Field Manual prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel.

See:
Condoleeza Rice
Waterboarding

Many are applauding the efforts to try the 9/11 terrorists in civilian courts.  It appears to be more important to show the world how wonderful and open our Department of Justice efforts are than to protect information and information gathering techniques used by the military.  At what expense?

Obviously, unless you’re living under a rock, you now understand what waterboarding is.  While I’d like to say “gosh, how awful,” I can’t bring myself to actually give a damn, since these same downtrodden individuals found it perfectly okay to blow up innocent, soft targets by flying them into buildings to be incinerated, not to mention the lovely beheadings we were privy to on television.  I could care less if these “poor” jihadists ever saw the light of day again.  After all, they proclaim to love death more than life and believe that they’ll be awarded 72 soft-eyed virgins upon their death.

Americans need to stop soft-peddling what the terrorists have done.  One only needs to pay attention to what is going on around us, especially in light of the terrorist incident at Fort Hood.  Notice I call this what it is- an act of terrorism, not some poor misguided man’s efforts to halt his deployment overseas.

Wake up and smell the coffee, people.  These individuals are war criminals.  We’re at war.  This isn’t just an “act of aggression,” the terrorists are out to kill us, preferably by beheading and pouring hot oil down our necks.  They aren’t people who need to be handled with kid gloves, not by a long shot.

If you think these terrorists are afforded more rights in civilian courts than in military courts, think again.  They’re actually given more rights in military court, as they are allowed a mini-trial before the actual trial is held.  This gives both sides the chance to present their case beforehand, which actually helps the defendant’s case because their defense team has the evidence ahead of time.

The bottom line is that these trials are efforts at political grandstanding.  This won’t win any votes from me for the current administration, or anyone who supports these trials.  Not only are we giving these terrorists a platform on which they can play the martyr, we’re giving them the opportunity to add salt to the wounds of those that have already suffered on 9/11.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is an “Islamist extremist.”   Obama & commies do not want to release this information because they can’t afford to admit that the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11; happened on their watch!  The only thing Obama & commies are watching is your wallet! 

Could this TERRORIST ATTACK ON U.S. SOIL been prevented?  This attack may have been prevented if Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a “rightwing extremist” instead of a “Islamist extremist”.  Maybe then the DHS would have had him listed on their “watchdog list”.

How many more attacks will we have to endure on Obama’s watch??  One is too many.  George Bush kept us safe for 8 years; Obama for only 8 months.  

Obama better react to this TERRORIST ATTACK ON U.S. SOIL!  We all remember what happened when Bill Clinton failed to react to the attack on the USS Cole….

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:

Speaking about the Republican “fear” factor, why don’t they cooperate, et al?  Most people don’t understand (or can imagine) the neocon bottom line because it is so outrageous: they really wish the United States to fail.

Background – I was an administrator for the City of Portland, and Multnomah County, Oregon, speaking and dealing with neocon repubs on a national basis for thirty-two years.  Their GOAL is to preserve, protect and defend special privilege from the democratic rule of law and the American nation.   They are NOT afraid; just arrogant.

Thirty years ago, in the early 1980’s, a CTPPD (a Consensus To Preserve Plausible Deniability), including Texas oil millionaires, automotive manufacturers, bankers, big-ticket real estate developers, insurance and medical care providers, investment firms, and wholesale raw materials providers, began a concerted and integrated campaign to discredit, loot and crush the American government. Call it “Stamping on Franklin Roosevelt’s Grave.”

I was told by Congressman Barbur Conable (R I-forget) back in ’73 that compulsory public education was unconstitutional and undemocratic and vouchers and home schooling would be introduced forthwith – it would be “most helpful in educating children with the right understanding for when they become adults.”  The John Birch Society injunction to its members was, “Join your local PTA, and take it over!”

I stood witness to the shenanigans surrounding local government’s share in the Savings and Loan Scandal (watched the Mormons spirit Jake Gaarn, Mormon hero astronaut-senator who led the S&L thieves on the Senate side, away to Salt Lake City and out of the public eye before the “s” hit the fan – I think this was their rehearsal for the Great American Mortgage Collapse – it has the same modus operandi).

Reagan assaulted government itself – “The ten most dreaded words…’I'm from the government…’“ Reagan went after the Air Traffic Controllers and made the first significant breach in federal protection for unions. The list goes on, as if subject to a consistent and integrated general game plan worthy of the best hostile takeover experts.  Clue.

The people’s government is the one force that is able to withstand and force these self-interested robbers to change. Therefore, the people’s representatives had to be bought, or as many as necessary, depending upon the moment’s tactical need, to shill for and protect corporate interests. The Republican Party (as the easiest – smallest, most uniform, least principled – to corrupt and manipulate had to become ascendant for a short time to gain control of the government and “fix” institutional areas that were most intrusive on the corporatist ability to do pretty much as pleased, including “enslave” people (wage-wise), or “waterboard” them (use any pressure or torture to force compliance and contribution to the corporate will).

They then stole the people’s treasury – carried it out under the glad hand of their born-again rich president Geo. W. Bush.  Dick Cheney is not an accident, but a premier product and instrument of a rapacious piratical, and practically pathological, corporate elite.  These are generationally all pretty much the same guys playing the same ugly way, administration after administration.  They are a scary bunch and they are not American patriots.

The neocon corporatist tactic now is to wave the weak hand – the Republican Party – to obfuscate, delay and confuse, while the real work goes on with the Rubin clones surrounding Obama (it is a real mistake to think that we can continue by reconstructing the past – our environmental jeopardy and social crisis require innovations and new directions that cannot include corporate capitalism – but while we must develop lower economic expectations, we don’t have to give up on a compassionate civilization.

The continued private dismantling, bankrupting and removal of America’s manufacturing capabilities to foreign climes is still in hemorrhage. Leading the list of outsourcers are well-known American companies, including the Xerox Corporation, the Oracle Corporation, The Hewlett-Packard Company, Accenture Limited, International Business Machines Corporation and Perot Systems (Recall old Ross warning against GATT that there would be “a great sucking sound as business went south.”

The neocon corporatists are not trying to fix the broken Republican Party – it is in the game plan to eventually destroy the two-party system and run with one party: cheaper, more efficient, less wasteful (ha!). Steele, Limbaugh, Beck, Cantor, Boehner, all the rest, are handy decoys, making a lot of noise all around the edges so that public attention is diverted from the corruption still proceeding at the center.

The Republican circus masks the real working level where the boodle bags are still being packed. They are not working with us, because the neocon corporatists are still using and stealing from us. They don’t expect any retribution or punishment for it; it is the culture. They are so highly placed that they expect to tiptoe through the tulips while the rest of us fry in the ozone hole. They believe the “highest and best use” of any piece of land is how much money you can make off it, not the future it may provide if unmolested for all life, as we know it.

In 1991, an assistant from President Bush Sr.’s office met National Association of Counties (NACo) President Michael Stewart (R – Salt Lake Co.) at a cocktail party at the Annual Conference in Salt Lake City. I overheard them discussing the “best” form of government, ever. They agreed that it was Medieval England. Its benefits?

• The king is the sole authority, secures obedience, neutralizes all possible challengers; gains the monopoly of force; and, maintains law and order.
• Patriotism is focused on the nation, not on the localities that comprise it, transferring identity from the local to the national level, putting it at the disposal of the king.
• The state dominates or controls the religious life of society, or at least allies itself with the representatives of a single authoritarian religion to more easily manage the mob to the king’s totalitarian advantage.
• The state exerts control over economic life to facilitate circulation and exchange of goods, and to grasp as much as possible of the national wealth for the king and his allies.

In the medieval model stability is created through divine hierarchy. The church prays for the soul, the military fights to save the bodies and property of the “community”, and the peasants work to feed everybody. It’s a simple model, which allowed it to last for several hundred incredibly stultifying and repressive years in which the majority of humankind subsisted on the level of cattle, or swine, and wars were fought at personal whim of a vainglorious, and occasionally religiously demented elite. Does this ring bells, or what?

The important men at the 1991 cocktail party didn’t intend to install a king or a single church in America, but in variation, updated and recycled form, they favored state identification and alliance with a majority religion and a CEO working with a board of directors (perhaps preserving a faint hint of representative government – old habits, even bad ones, die hard). Call king and court president and cabinet, or rose and garden, they envisioned a tyrant working with an oligarchy of the privileged elite that they believe is, of course, best suited to govern.  The Bush-Cheney’s cabinet.

They were deadly serious and not amused when I asked if they had ever heard of Robin Hood or the Magna Carta.

Edward Gibbon wrote an apt description of Augustus Caesar that sounds a lot like George W. Bush, the lately deposed thinly veiled champion of the corporatist New Medievalism.  It reveals the shadowy Republican approach to governance, image over substance.  Gibbon writes:

     “He delights in the image of liberty and is pleased with considering himself as the accountable minister of the laws.

     “He claims a tender respect for a free constitution, which he destroys.

     “A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition prompt him to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never lays aside.

     “With the same hand, probably with the same temper, he signs death warrants and pardons.

     “According to the various dictates of his interest, he is at first the enemy, and at last the father of the nation.

     “As he frames the artful system of imperial authority, his moderation is inspired by his fears.

     “He wishes to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the army by an image of civil government.

     “Finally, the forms of civil administration are carefully preserved. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws may serve to display the virtues, but can never correct the vices of  the leader.”

“Americans deserve the government they elect,” my father used to say, but we know we didn’t elect Bush. Is Obama entirely our new free choice? Kings, as I recall, are divinely chosen – in our case, by fat cats and the Supreme Court. Kings represent the elite status quo, which presently resides in Wall Street. Wall Street wants to govern everything by itself, without any interference from the rest of us.  Father knows best.

Our species probably won’t be around long enough to figure out how to change from consumerist overpopulating inattentive polluters into minimalist birth-controlling aware conservationists.  We’ll overgraze our range soon.  One can see our rapidly escalating devastation of the planet.  Bush and his idiot followers accelerated it even more; they “rationalized” their irrational actions with fantastic myths to justify unreasonable behaviors.  There are only a few values in their make-believe world that are any good, and they are, of course, common and obvious to all humankind: love, mercy, truth, honor, and justice – those sorts of universal things, echoed by every other life philosophy ever conceived, that is, invented by man; but hypocritically enshrined by Republican spin meisters.

They have created and are attempting to retain dominance in an amoral, or consciously immoral world of corruption, thievery, and violence, instead of trying to eliminate or improve conditions that would remedy or heal it.  They are in fact, the enemy, and clear-thinking people who treasure compassion and cooperation must vigorously oppose them.  If a thing is contrary to the health and safety of the world, it should be destroyed.

You know what? The world is a dangerous place.  The fact that many choose – even, hysterically – to resist knowledge of its danger, do so at their peril, and endanger the rest of us.  Keeping silent about abuse, perversion, injustice, greed, vandalism, or prejudice is self-defeating, irresponsible, and destructive.  Self-willed ignorance is a socially and spiritually criminal act.  Pericles was right: People who say they have no business with government (democratic Athens, or the U.S.) have no business here at all.

Final words:  Keep on keepin’ on. We, the people, need you, dear reader.  Best regards to all,  j

A demonstration of waterboarding at Coney Island. [Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr account of Salim Virji]

The New York Times reported this morning on the conviction of 23 Americans in a case involving the practice of rendition, “in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, presumably one more open to coercive interrogation techniques,” the Times explained. The criminals were tried in absentia.

I’ve been waiting for this for years. Most of them received 5-year prison sentences, and… wait a minute…

It seemed highly unlikely that anyone, Italian or American, would spend any time in jail.

Unbelievable. Not only does this conviction have no effect on those found guilty—it will have no effect on my sense that justice has failed. At least, justice had failed in Bush’s one-superpower world, which I’m not yet sure is gone under the new U.S. administration.

(The Italian government wants to maintain good relations with the U.S., so it refuses to even request that we send them our newly-criminal CIA personnel.)

I’ve written numerous times about how the world should prosecute CIA and Bush administration officials who allowed our country to torture in its interrogations. Rendition is but the precursor to such illegal and inhumane actions.

No one should be immune to prosecution in the case of torture, from the peons who did the torturing to CIA and executive branch middle management, all the way up to Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

Not that I believe for a second our wimpy country would allow George W. Bush to serve jail time for such things as breaking the law. No, we love our pomp and circumstance as much as any nation, even those nations from which our forefathers fled, and with whom they went to war to allow us to do things like prosecute our president.

Knowing that limitation, I put forth another solution: convict G.W. as a matter of show, to merely demonstrate that we believe in our justice system. To demonstrate that we believe wrongs should be punished under the law and not swept under the rug.

And we certainly could—and should—lock up the middle management who didn’t stand up for human rights. Maybe even Gonzales.

Which brings me back around to the Italian trial. There’s no way our government will force 22 CIA and former-CIA employees, no matter what their rank, to fly to Italy and bunk down in its prison system for five years.

But I doubt I’m the only one who thinks our government should.