Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
“Mr. Khadr you’re free to go.”
With those words, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Myra Bielby turned down the federal government’s last-ditch effort Thursday to keep the 28-year-old detained.
Omar Khadr broke into a big, wide smile when the decision was read. His supporters in the courtroom erupted in cheers.
Captured as a 15 year old, tortured in Gitmo, now a free man.
If for no other reason, you should be happy about this because it might give Darth Cheney a stroke.
Why on earth would they take credit for this shit show:
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack outside a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas — and warned of more attacks to come.
In a broadcast on its official radio channel Tuesday, the group said two Al Khilafa soldiers opened fire outside the event in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Al Khilafa is how ISIS refers to its soldiers.
CNN cannot confirm the claim, and ISIS offered no evidence that the gunmen were affiliates with the terror organization.
The ISIS radio announcer also referred to Simpson and Soofi as the terror group’s “brothers.” The announcement ended with this warning:
“We say to the defenders of the cross, the U.S., that future attacks are going to be harsher and worse. The Islamic State soldiers will inflict harm on you with the grace of God. The future is just around the corner.”
Sure is convenient timing…
On the one hand, good riddance (we can hope) to an inhumane and thoroughly worthless “policy”…
Families of American hostages who communicate with foreign kidnappers or raise money and pay ransoms will no longer have to fear prosecution for aiding terrorist groups, a White House-ordered advisory group on U.S. hostage policy is expected to recommend, senior officials told ABC News last week.
“There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones,” said one of three senior officials familiar with the hostage policy team’s ongoing review.
The study undertaken by the National Counterterrorism Center on orders from the Obama White House has involved interviewing many of those with tragic experience such as the parents of journalist James Foley, who were among several families alleging they were repeatedly threatened by administration officials with prosecution last summer for moving to raise millions in ransom demanded by ISIS and other groups in Syria …
Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, told ABC News last September her family was “told very clearly three times that it was illegal for us to try to ransom our son out and that we had the possibility of being prosecuted.”
“We felt compelled. We had to attempt to raise money… What would anyone do? Give me a break,” she said in the interview last year. “We don’t want other American families to go through what we have.”
Foley said Saturday that with the new policy, which officials discussed with her last week, it seems the government is “trying to make it right in their way.” …
The hostage policy review team is headed by Army Lt. Gen. Bennet Sacolick, a former commander of the elite Delta Force counter-terrorism unit, and his NCTC staff. He told the Daily Beast last week that “we can do better” at informing hostage families about developments in their cases, which has been another criticism by the Foleys who complained they were kept in the dark during their son’s captivity…
On the other hand, it seems like one more data point on the privatization of government. You want ISIS to release your loved one? Go ahead, clean out the 401(k), do some community fundraising — establish their fair market value! Just don’t count on Tha Gubmint to bail you out, ya leech…
Late Night Open Thread: Another Win for Private EnterprisePost + Comments (32)
An interesting post on Drones by Darksyde over at DKOS.
Twelve years ago today, Donald Rumsfeld composed this:
(h/t Rob Golan-Vilella)
As the entire Republican party brays for war in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, wherever next…remember: their reunion tour will make us long for Nickleback.
That bad.
As The WarCons Reband, Let Us Trip Down Memory LanePost + Comments (140)
Is there a magic nicotine patch that could help the U.S. kick its habit of disastrous "anti-terror" campaigns? http://t.co/BEYz8gMI52
— Chase Madar (@ChMadar) March 31, 2015
Even the Very Serious People seem to be sidling towards the exits. Stephen M. Walt, in Foreign Policy:
Pardon my cynicism, but the “war on terror” (aka “war on violent extremism”) is reminding me more and more of the disastrous U.S. “war on drugs.” That latter campaign, we now know, has been a costly and counterproductive debacle. The United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to interdict drug shipments, eradicate poppy and coca fields in foreign countries, and round up drug dealers and users here at home, with hardly any lasting or meaningful successes. Narcotics producers just relocate to new areas or develop new products, and smugglers find new routes to bring drugs into the United States, leaving the level of drug abuse largely unchanged. After four decades, the main achievement of the war on drugs was giving the “Land of the Free” the world’s largest prison population.
Similarly, the broad U.S. effort to address the threat from al Qaeda and its like-minded successors seems to be lurching from failure to failure. Indeed, the entire U.S. approach to the greater Middle East has been a costly series of missteps, which is why some of us have called for a fundamental rethinking of the whole U.S. approach. The GOP would like to blame the current mess on U.S. President Barack Obama, but U.S. Middle East policy is a bipartisan cock-up going back more than 20 years…
…[P]ost-Qaddafi Libya is a chaotic failed state, and likely to be a source of trouble for some time to come. Yemen is well on its way to the same status, and more than 15 years of U.S. counterterrorism operations now appear to have been for naught. The Syrian tragedy grinds on, reminding us that the only thing worse than a despotic government is no government at all. (And no, the situation in Syria would not be better if the United States had intervened earlier; this would merely have hastened the onset of anarchy and ensured that the warring factions had even more weaponry to use against each other.)
If one steps back and takes the long view, in short, it is clear that two-plus decades of U.S. policy — much of it focused on combating extremism — has not worked. In 1990, al Qaeda was in its infancy and most Middle East radicals were preoccupied with local concerns. Today, the entire region faces a rapidly morphing array of extremist groups whose message finds sympathetic audiences in many countries. The danger of direct terrorist attacks here in the United States remains very low — fortunately — because the United States is a long way away and because our law enforcement agencies have made it more difficult for large-scale plots to take place here. The rest of the counterterrorism agenda — and in particular, the various interventions the United States have waged overseas — has been mostly a bust.
In short, when historians a few decades from now look back on U.S. policy, they will no doubt regard this record as a massive, collective failure of the entire U.S. foreign-policy establishment…
This Spencer Ackerman piece in The Guardian on former Chicago cop Richard Zuley hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention. It details a major investigation by the paper into Zuley, who went from Chicago to Gitmo as a Naval reservist after a 20-plus year career as a police detective, and brought the kind of brutal police intimidation and abuse usually reserved for black suspects in Chicago’s north side to the interrogation rooms at Guantanamo Bay in order to get confessions.
A Chicago detective who led one of the most shocking acts of torture ever conducted at Guantánamo Bay was responsible for implementing a disturbingly similar, years-long regime of brutality to elicit murder confessions from minority Americans.
In a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture, a Guardian investigation can reveal that Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007, repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse.
Zuley’s record suggests a continuum between police abuses in urban America and the wartime detention scandals that continue to do persistent damage to the reputation of the United States. Zuley’s tactics, which would be supercharged at Guantánamo when he took over the interrogation of a high-profile detainee as a US Navy reserve lieutenant, included:
• Shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts for hours on end.
• Accusations of planting evidence when there was pressure for a high-profile murder conviction.
• Threats of harm to family members of those under interrogation used as leverage.
• Pressure on suspects to implicate themselves and others.
• Threats of being subject to the death penalty if suspects did not confess.
The Cook County state’s attorney office now has an examination open into a second conviction involving Zuley, filings in an Illinois court showed on Tuesday. (The Guardian is publishing the first part of its investigation on Wednesday.) While representatives of the state’s attorney’s office told the Guardian that the examination concerns only a single case, the office is seeking civilian complaint files regarding Zuley from a local independent police review authority.
Do check out the article there. Of all the horrible torture regime psychopaths working the circus of pain in Gitmo, Zuley appears to be one of the worst. And he had years to hone his technique beating confessions out of black suspects as a Chicago cop. If your goal was to recruit people who could get confessions out of terror detainees by any means necessary, what better farm system for raising career torture experts did America have than urban homicide divisions in major police departments?
We had tons of bad cops like Zuley ready to go after 9/11. They had been getting confessions for years and after what happened in NYC they were ready to take some serious revenge. After warming up in the minor leagues on black men getting beaten until they confessed to murder raps, of course Gitmo was the obvious next stop for guys like that and the Bushies gladly acquired their services “for America”.
Why wouldn’t Dubya’s crew ignore such a perfect resource like that for the wetwork at Gitmo? And of course, the best part is the brain trust behind all that is now on team Jebbie. That’s going to be awesome.
A news CBS poll has found that since September, America has definitely changed its mind on sending ground troops in to fight ISIS. This is not a good thing, in fact it’s terrifying.
Amid more executions by the militant group ISIS, Americans increasingly see the group as a threat to the U.S. Now, 65 percent of Americans view ISIS as a major threat – up from 58 percent in October – while another 18 percent view it as a minor threat. Majorities of Republicans (86 percent), Democrats (61 percent) and independents (57 percent) view ISIS as a major threat.
With concern about ISIS growing, support for the use of U.S. ground troops in the fight against ISIS has risen. For the first time, a majority of Americans (57 percent) favor the U.S. sending ground troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS. In October, Americans were divided (47 percent favored and 46 percent opposed), and in September these numbers were reversed (39 percent favored and 55 percent opposed).
Fucking really, people? 57 percent of us want another goddamn ground war in Iraq and now Syria? I just…no. Just no. Take the short bus to hell.
Support for sending U.S. ground troops to fight ISIS has risen among all partisans, but particularly among Democrats and independents. Back in October, 56 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents disapproved of using ground troops – now 50 percent of Democrats approve and 53 percent of independents favor using ground troops.
Super awesome. We have learned a grand total of absolutely goddamn nothing over the last 13 years, so let’s just have another decade of boots on the ground and see if that fixes things. I’m sure it will. The last 13 years? Didn’t happen.
Good job, America. Last one left turn off the giant flashing neon “We’re #1!” sign with the naked chick ghost riding the M1A1 Abrams tank on the way out.
In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld directed a Task Force to determine the causes of radicalism & terrorism. Its conclusions: pic.twitter.com/4eRmvXtI01
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 16, 2015
Paul Waldman, at the Washington Post, “Get ready for the return of the Global War On Terror“:
… To date, ISIS has killed four Americans, a horrible tragedy for those people and their families. But since the idea of the group’s threat to America is at this point entirely hypothetical, we should be as specific as we can when we talk about that threat. Do we think they’re going to try to hijack planes or send agents here to set off bombs? And if so, what do we need to do to counter those threats that we aren’t already doing? If we’re going to expand our military involvement in the Middle East, is there a way to do it that won’t create more problems than it solves?
Those are simple, obvious questions, but so often they’re overwhelmed by people waving their arms and shouting “We’re all gonna die!” In the days and years after September 11, Republicans repeated that al Qaeda was an “existential threat,” a notion that was utterly insane yet seldom examined. And we certainly acted as though the very existence of the United States of America was indeed in question. Congress gave the federal government a slate of new powers to spy on its citizens. We created a surveillance apparatus of gargantuan size and scope. We deployed a network of secret prisons as sites for a program of torture. And we all got used to the idea that the War on Terror is forever.
Given that Republicans control both houses, there are only two plausible outcomes to the debate over the AUMF. The first is that Congress can’t agree on a resolution. The second is that a broader resolution passes, perhaps one that eliminates the three-year expiration date written into Obama’s proposal and includes mention of Syria, where Republicans are eager to expand U.S. military operations. In either case, Obama will end up making the same decisions for the remainder of his term, since he already believes he has whatever authority he needs to fight ISIS.
So as much as anything this debate is about what powers the next president will have. Republicans pushing for a more expansive authorization are hoping that president will be a Republican, and that this resolution can be a tool for him to renew the Global War on Terror to all its former glory. …
My emphases. Those were glory days for the GOP, of course, and what matter if the whole world burns in the attempt to claw back some shreds of such “glory”?
Had to share this one, if only because some of the commentariat will remember the David Levine cartoon it references. Here’s the NYTimes‘s mealy-mouthed version, for reference purposes:
During the 1980s and ’90s, the historic alliance between the wealthy monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the country’s powerful clerics emerged as the major financier of international jihad, channeling tens of millions of dollars to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Among the project’s major patrons was Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who last month became Saudi Arabia’s king.
Some of those fighters later formed Al Qaeda, which declared war on the United States and later mounted major attacks inside Saudi Arabia as well. In the past decade, according to officials of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Saudi government has become a valuable partner against terrorism, battling Al Qaeda at home and last year joining the American-led coalition against the extremists of the Islamic State.
Yet Saudi Arabia continues to be haunted by what some suspect was a tacit alliance with Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those suspicions burst out in the open again this week with the disclosure of a prison deposition of a former Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, who claimed that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures were donors to the terror group and that a Saudi diplomat in Washington discussed with him a plot to shoot down Air Force One.
Saudi officials have staunchly denied those claims, noting that Mr. Moussaoui was a convicted terrorist with a history of mental troubles and little to lose by spreading lies about Saudi officials. On Wednesday, experts on the kingdom also expressed strong doubts about Mr. Moussaoui’s claims…
But Mr. Moussaoui’s sensational allegations have drawn attention in part because far more credible figures, including some members of the national 9/11 Commission, believe the Saudi role in the attacks has never been adequately examined. More broadly, the episode has drawn new attention to Saudi Arabia’s longtime policy of using its oil wealth to try to shape foreign battlefields, currently by backing militants in Syria and Libya, and the reactionary religious ideology that underlies its society.
Throughout the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and the United States were partners in bankrolling the mujahedeen, hailed as freedom fighters by President Ronald Reagan, who were battling the Soviet military in Afghanistan…
Yeah, the Saudi monarchs figured they could “control” the mujahedeen, just like Reagan’s handlers figured they could “control” the contras they were bankrolling. Of course, the only Very Serious American who paid any price for our hemispheric meddling was Bill Casey, if you believe the rumors, since Oliver North has been more than well compensated for his briefly unpleasant role in the aftermath. Presumably the Saudi family members & retainers who got close enough to Osama bin Laden to be tainted are, shall we say, aging out of the public spotlight — everything goes to shit at home, they’ve got safe havens well away from the reach of a bunch of low-rent Wahhabi wannabes.
Vice Magazine:
What really happened at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on the night of June 9, 2006?
According to the US government, three detainees — all imprisoned as part of the global war on terror — hung themselves in their cells that night. But Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman, who was on guard that night at Camp Delta, came to believe something very different: that the three men were murdered in a secret CIA black site at Guantanamo.
After leaving the Army, Hickman spent years looking into the deaths. His investigation has led him to write a new book, Murder at Camp Delta…
There was speculation at the end of the year that “The Obama administration is accelerating its efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, preparing to move dozens of inmates out of the prison in coming months in a step forward for President Obama’s redoubled attempt to achieve a core national security objective before he leaves office.” It was elsewhere reported that President “Obama is also shifting his strategy by portraying the closure of the facility in Cuba as a fiscal issue… the administration hopes that reducing the prison’s population to just a few detainees will bolster its argument that keeping the facility open isn’t cost-effective.” When the new Cuba initiatives were announced, even the Grey Lady admitted that Guantanamo “remains a sore point for Cubans, a deeply felt grievance that the Castros, first Fidel and now his brother Raúl, have long pointed to as a stinging symbol of American imperialism.” The sooner that blot is removed, the better!
I read the Harpers excerpt from Hickman’s book (mentioned in the video around the 10:30 mark) back in 2010, but Harpers notoriously discourages internet links to its print work, and trying to write a coherent post eventually drove me to give up in despair. It’s become clear, since then, that a significant portion of the American public is perfectly happy that “we” torture people to death, and an even greater percentage just doesn’t care enough to keep the torture enthusiasts in line. But “we” will be paying for our sins, at Guantanamo and elsewhere, long after Dick Cheney’s artificial heart has ceased to propel his carcass.
Long Watch: “Were Gitmo Murders Covered Up As Suicides?”Post + Comments (21)
Today's sketch of #tsarnaev just released pic.twitter.com/Ih8WOYuakP
— Jesse Grossi (@producerjesse) January 5, 2015
Barring a most unexpected plot twist, Dzokhar Tsarnaev will remain in federal custody for the rest of his life. There are many mysteries about the journey that led from four dead and 260 wounded victims at the Boston Marathon to Tsarnaev cowering in that drydocked boat in a Watertown back yard, but the only suspense is whether the government will be granted permission to end his life before he succumbs to old age or accident.
From WCVB, local news station Ch.5 [warning – autoplay video]:
… Monday’s proceedings began what could be weeks of jury selection in the nation’s most closely watched terror trial since the Oklahoma City bombing two decades ago.
Security was tight, with dozens of police officers stationed inside and outside the federal courthouse, along with bomb-sniffing dogs.
The potential jurors seemed riveted by Tsarnaev and by U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr.’s explanation of the gravity of what they will be asked to do if they are picked: They must decide not only whether the former college student is guilty or innocent, but also what his punishment will be if he is convicted — life in prison or execution…
O’Toole briefly outlined the 30 charges against Tsarnaev, which include using a weapon of mass destruction. He is also accused of killing an MIT police officer as he and his brother, now dead, made their getaway…
Over three days, a pool of about 1,200 prospective jurors will be summoned to court. Twelve jurors and six alternates will be selected. The judge said testimony in the trial will begin on Jan. 26 and is expected to last three to four months…
The unusually large pool was seen as necessary because of the need to weed out people who might be unduly influenced by heavy news coverage of the tragedy, along with the many runners, spectators and others affected by the bombings. Also, those who are opposed to the death penalty will not be allowed on the jury…
Since approximately 60% of Massachusetts voters have rejected the death penalty, repeatedly, over the last 30 years, the jury will not accurately represent our Commonwealth, but of course that’s not why this spectacle is being conducted. Per CNN [warning – autoplay video]:
… Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys for Tsarnaev have held talks on a possible plea agreement but failed to reach one, U.S. officials familiar with the talks say.
The discussions in recent months have centered on the possibility of Tsarnaev pleading guilty and receiving a life sentence without parole, according to the officials.
But the talks have reached an impasse because the Justice Department has resisted removing the death penalty as a possibility, these officials say…
Attorney General Eric Holder is a critic of the death penalty, but he authorized seeking capital punishment in this case saying Tsarnaev acted in “an especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner.” He also cited a seeming lack of remorse…
So Holder is against state-sponsored murder, except in a case where his opinion would actually affect the outcome. Since federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz is notoriously in favor of the death penalty for all criminals more depraved than parking-ticket scofflaws and those who fail to return library books in a timely fashion, this allows Holder the comfort of his principles without the risk that he might inconvenience the various national security agencies that want Tsarnaev silenced permanently. Truly, this case will stand as an exemplar of our modern era for future historians… or anthropologists.
We have always been or have not always been not at war in Afghanistan, except when we have or have not been… A little help here, Minitrue.
— Billmon (@billmon1) December 29, 2014
Lest we forget. Dan Murphy, at the Christian Science Monitor, on how “The Afghan war that didn’t really end yesterday ended in defeat“:
… While most of America’s NATO allies that hadn’t already washed their hands of combat will now do so, American fighting and dying will continue, with 11,000 US troops remaining in the country. There will be talk of “advising,” and “training” and “non-combat” presence. But for the most part that can be safely ignored.
Afghanistan is a dangerous place. The US-installed government there is on shaky ground, and just advising Afghan troops is a dangerous job, given that a high-percentage of US military deaths in recent years have been caused by Afghan soldiers and police. In August, Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was murdered by an Afghan soldier, becoming the highest ranking US officer killed overseas since Vietnam.
US casualties compared to Afghan ones have been negligible. Over 4,000 Afghan soldiers and cops were killed fighting in 2014 alone, compared to 2,224 US soldiers killed fighting there since 2001. Civilian deaths had soared to 3,188 by the end of November, making this year the bloodiest for civilians since at least 2009, when the UN began tracking civilian deaths. The civilian death toll is at least a 20 percent increase over last year…
Meanwhile, opium production in Afghanistan has soared despite $7 billion flushed down the tubes by the US on opium eradication. Afghanistan can not by any stretch be called a democracy – vote buying and thuggery at the polls dominate elections. The country’s government is entirely dependent on foreign aid, and has been gifted or burdened, depending on your perspective, with assets it cannot afford…
We did, however, give our remaining forces a kewl new label, so there’s that.
The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reportsto the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.
The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents. They were posted on the NSA’s website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
In a 2012 case, for example, an NSA analyst “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting,” according to one report. The analyst “has been advised to cease her activities,” it said.
Other unauthorized cases were a matter of human error, not intentional misconduct.
Last year, an analyst “mistakenly requested” surveillance “of his own personal identifier instead of the selector associated with a foreign intelligence target,” according to another report.
In 2012, an analyst conducted surveillance “on a U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization because the analyst incorrectly believed that he was authorized to query due to a potential threat,” according to the fourth-quarter report from 2012. The surveillance yielded nothing.
Two thoughts: One, as I’ve said numerous times, it’s entirely possible to hold the position that both the NSA needs massive reform to prevent civil liberties abuses, and that Edward Snowden went about exposing these abuses in a way that damaged national security. The ACLU on the other hand requested this information through FOIA, and got it. No espionage or skulduggery was required, and the information clearly shows the NSA isn’t following its own procedures. This was the right way to get evidence of these massive abuses and does so in a manner that’s both responsible and powerful.
And that brings me to Thought Two: please remember that Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul, killed legislation that would have increased oversight and civil liberties protections involving the NSA just last month, so the opportunity to do something about this was killed by the GOP. They’re not interested in reforming the NSA, they’re interested in allowing these abuses to continue, and the next Congress will do precisely nothing to rein this garbage in.
It’s pretty rancid for a Christmas Day news dump, but there you have it.
Sometimes, when the terrorists win, we ALL win:
LOS ANGELES — North America’s three largest multiplex chains – Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark — on Wednesday canceled bookings for “The Interview,” a crude comedy that had prompted a threat of terror against theaters.
Together with Carmike Cinemas, which decided not to play “The Interview” late Tuesday, the four exhibitors control more than 19,200 screens in the United States and Canada, ending any prospect of a serious theatrical release.
This sounds as driven by movie house legal team skittishness than any credible threat, but all’s well that ends well.
Open thread.
North Korean Hackers Heroically Spare America Exposure to Insipid FilmPost + Comments (118)