Obama: Remember, He Does This Every Day Now

Obama NSA Defense FAIL: The al-Mihdar Red Herring
By Juan Cole / Jan. 17, 2014

In his speech on the National Security Agency domestic surveillance program on Friday, Obama offered an explanation of its origins:

The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11. One of the 9/11 hijackers – Khalid al-Mihdhar – made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safe-house in Yemen. NSA saw that call, but could not see that it was coming from an individual already in the United States. The telephone metadata program under Section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists, so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.

This is, of course, a steaming crock of crap. The fact is that Khalid al-Mihdar was under surveillance and so was his contact in Yemen. The US even had videotape of al-Mihdar at an al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur shortly before he went to San Diego. And US intelligence knew that al-Mihdar was in the United States.

The problem? The various intelligence agencies were each looking to make their own bust and refused to properly share information with one another.

They don’t need to spy on all of our smartphone information and track 310 million people’s telephone calls and whereabouts! They need to talk with each other there in Washington! And in fact there is a joint FBI/ CIA facility in the DC area now where files can be accessed by officers with the right clearances across agencies.



Obama’s anecdote simply does not support the case for holding phone metadata, either in the government or by private telcos. And since I don’t think Obama is ignorant or lacking in smarts, I think he and whoever crafted that reference to 9/11 into his violent assault on the Fourth Amendment were doing so in a calculated and wholly dishonest fashion.

Obama was from 2007 frank that he admired Ronald Reagan. What you’re a little afraid of is that he may harbor some sneaking admiration for Tricky Dick Nixon.

Jim Gilmore writes at PBS:

In September 2002, agents and officials from the CIA and FBI testified before a joint congressional panel about how their security agencies failed to fully share information about suspected terrorists and their activities in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

As much as anyone working in counterterrorism, John O’Neill knew about this communication breakdown. In fact, just two months before Sept. 11, in a speech to Spanish police on interagency cooperation, he had asked his audience, “How much more successful could we all be if we really knew what our agencies really knew?” O’Neill’s last major FBI investigation — the attack on the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000 — was a case study of just how bad inter-agency communication had become.

-The Critical Meeting in Malaysia

The story of this intelligence failure begins with a 1999 CIA breakthrough — the interception of communications from an Al Qaeda logistics center in Yemen about a meeting of operatives that would take place in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The names of two of the participants were mentioned: Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

The CIA tracked Almidhar on his way to Malaysia. An agent told FRONTLINE that during a passport check at a stopover, the CIA even got access to his Saudi Arabian passport and learned Almidhar had been issued a multiple-entry visa to the U.S.

Once in Kuala Lumpur, the Al Qaeda operatives were photographed — at the CIA’s request — by Malaysian authorities at a series of meetings. Reportedly, no sound recordings were made, but intelligence sources now believe the meetings were held to plan future Al Qaeda attacks. Among the men captured in the surveillance photos were:

Almidhar and Alhazmi (later hijackers of American Flight 77 which flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11);
Ramzi bin al-Shibh (a Sept. 11 co-conspirator and Mohamed Atta’s roommate. It would not be until after Sept. 11 that bin al-Shibh would be identified in the Malaysia surveillance photos);
Tawfiq bin-Atash — AKA “Khallad” (a suspected intermediary between bin Laden and plotters of the October 2000 USS Cole attack).

The CIA maintains that it did notify the FBI by e-mail of the Malaysia meetings soon after they occurred — and that it did mention Almidhar had a U.S. visa. The FBI, however, states they have no record of this notification.

The CIA admits that it did not inform the bureau that after the Malaysia meetings ended, it tracked Almidhar and Alhazmi to Los Angeles. The CIA further admits that it failed to warn the INS or the State Department, and as a result, the men’s names were not added to a terrorist watch list.

h/t for the tweet that inspired this post to @ZoeSCarpenter

Source / Informed Comment

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Why Do We Ask Who's Worse? They're All Hopeless!

Is Obama Worse Than Bush? That's Beside the Point
By Gary Younge / June 21, 2013

Obama's transformation from national security dove to hawk is the norm: any president is captive to America's imperial power

Not long after the story into the National Security Administration's spying program broke, US president Barack Obama insisted the issues raised were worthy of discussion:

"I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy. I think it's a sign of maturity because probably five years ago, six years ago we might not have been having this debate."

In fairly short order, a YouTube compilation appeared, showing Obama debating with himself as he matured. Flitting back and forth between Obama the candidate and Obama the president, we see the constitutional law professor of yore engage with the commander-in-chief of today. Referring to the Bush White House, candidate Obama says:

"This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not."

Referring to the NSA surveillance program, President Obama says:

"My assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Candidate Obama says of the Bush years:

"This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide."

President Obama retorts:

"You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices."

The notion that a president's record might contradict a presidential candidate's promise is neither new nor particular to Obama. And we should hope that politicians evolve as their careers progress and new evidence and arguments come to light.

What makes these clips so compelling is that they show not evolution, but transformation. On this issue, at least, Obama has become the very thing he was against. They're not gaffes. These are brazenly ostentatious flip-flops. And regardless of how much they cost him, Obama has clearly no intention of taking them back.

Given that he is not only defending but escalating the very things he criticized the Bush administration for, the accusation that many have made that he is "worse than Bush" on this issue, and others relating to privacy, security and drone attacks, is not unreasonable. Obama's administration has denied more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did, and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined.

But the charge also misses the point.

It should go without saying that Obama the individual is responsible for all that he says and does. It should also go without saying that once he ascends to the Oval office he is no longer simply talking for himself, but, as commander-in-chief, for the state of which he is the head.

Just as one head of a Chamber of Commerce may be more or less hostile than another to the labor movement, but is ultimately charged with representing the interests of the business community, so Obama's room for maneuver is constrained by the institutions in which he is now embedded.

Whereas Bush illegally invaded a nation with great fanfare, Obama has chosen to bump people off with great stealth (unless it's Bin Laden, in which case he metaphorically parades around with a head on a pike). Those are different strategies, but the discussion about which is better or worse is sterile precisely because neither is good and neither works. Whatever their declared intentions, both involve the murder of civilians and the creation of enemies, which in turn demand a clandestine security structure that seeks to pre-empt the metastasizing resistance to its policies both at home and abroad. The sprawling growth of its spying program is commensurate with the size of its military and the spread of its incursions into countries like Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan where it is not formally at war.

As I wrote the day before Obama's first inauguration:

"He has been elected to represent the interests of the most powerful country in the world. Those will not be the same interests as those of the powerless."

America did not come by that power through its own innate genius. It acquired it, as do all empires, in no small part through war, invasion, subterfuge and exploitation. Spying and lying about it comes with the job description for which Obama applied and was reappointed.

None of this is inevitable. But changing it cannot be entrusted to a single person at the top. It will change because there is a demand from Americans that is both large in number, deep in commitment and active in pursuit, to enable a fundamental change in America's role in the world. That does not exist yet.

Where Obama is concerned, this excuses nothing – but explains a great deal. Given the timidity of his campaign agenda, his supporters must, to some extent, own their disappointment. He never said he was a radical, nor proposed anything radical, even if he was happy at one time to be marketed as one.

Given that he kept on Bush's defence secretary and appointed an economic team friendlier to Wall Street than the poor, we should not be too shocked about these continuities. But there are some things he did promise to do – and was twice elected with a massive mandate to do them. Protecting civil liberties was one of them.

When given the choice of representing the interests of those who voted for him and the interests of American military and economic hegemony, he chose the latter. That's not the change people believed in.

© 2013 Guardian/UK

[Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US.]

Source / The Guardian

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Uygur: Drone Strikes - Amorphous, Free-Reigning Policy

Source / YouTube

Thanks to Juan Cole / Fluxed Up World

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Outside My Window

Outside My Window
By Jeff Hay / April 29, 2012

They Appear to be intelligent
engaging
even full of a type of life energy
and yet
there they are
with a table
full of buttons and stickers
supporting
advocating
voting for
a monster

On the surface
they seem to be
progressives
do they not know
have they ignored
or are they
just in denial

I'm sure
when Bush was President
they were adamantly opposed to war
to torture
to slaughtering
blowing the guts out of
women and children
of treating "illegal" immigrants
like cockroaches
of fucking the poor
while enriching his rich buddies
of shredding the Constitution
of total disregard
for the safety of our
food supply
of total disregard
for the climate catastrophe
that is unfolding
of being an
asshole

And yet they have a table
outside my window
campaigning for a man
who has invaded more countries than Bush
given more money to the Banksters than Bush
deported and imprisoned more immigrants
than Bush
wiped his ass on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
more than Bush
had more contempt for the poor
than Bush

And yet
there they are
smiling and handing out
their buttons
and stickers
never reflecting
upon their hypocrisy
upon their
favoring
the policies
they hated
when it was Bush

Then there are my
right-wing friends
who call him a "socialist"
And if
you're talking about
corporate welfare
and tax breaks for the rich
in other words
redistributing the wealth
to the already wealthy
than he is sort of a
Robin Hood in reverse
Stealing from the poor
to give to the rich
a Socialist
in reverse

My right-wing friends
wonder about his birth certificate
wondering about his
"muslim" name
never noticing
his glee
as he
"changes the mindset that leads to war"
by blowing the brains
out of
those "other" people
those "unpeople"
which he holds
in as much contempt
as Bush ever dreamed of

He said his campaign would be different
wouldn't take huge corporate donations
he lied
He said he would filibuster
retroactive immunity for the telecoms
who helped the government
spy on us
He lied
He said in his victory speech
that global warming
would start cooling
that rising oceans
would start receding
now that he was in charge
he lied
He said he would not fill his
Administration
as Bush had
with lobbyists
he lied

He said he would close Guantanamo
instead he opened more Guantanamo's than even Bush
He said he would make it easier
for workers to join a union
he lied
When it came to
who to help
he decided
that ten million people
losing their homes
while he gave trillions
of dollars
to the very people
who gave him more money
than any presidential candidate has ever received
from Wall Street
His choice was easy
I WILL FUCK THE POOR
Guess that's
"Socialism"

He "saved General Motors"
by giving billions to Management
while forcing pay cuts
loss of health care
and pensions
on the workers
Guess that's "Socialism"

He said
his administration
would be transparent and open
and democratic
he said
"whistleblowers should be protected"
he fucking lied
he has prosecuted more whistleblowers
than all other presidents in
the history of the United States combined
No President has hated democracy more than him

Oddly my right-wing friends
who loved all of this
when Bush did it
think
he's a "Socialist"
and my "progressive" friends
who hated it when Bush did what he does
are the same
in one way
they are tragically
ill informed
about
Barack Obama

Also published at Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle.

Thanks to Karen Lee Wald / Fluxed Up World

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A Thousand Words ....

Thanks to Kerry Johnson and Demand Progress / Fluxed Up World

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Chief Amerikkkan War Criminals Go Free

Doesn't this make Barack Obama and members of his administration culpable for actively harboring war criminals? Richard Jehn

Avoiding Impunity: The Need to Broaden Torture Prosecutions
By Marjorie Cohn / July 9, 2011

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says that all instances of torture must be investigated as violations of US and international law and a failure to do so will allow impunity for those who authorized these actions...

President Barack Obama declared "nobody's above the law" in 2009, as Congress contemplated an investigation of torture authorized by the Bush administration. However, Obama has failed to honor those words. His Justice Department proclaimed its intention to grant a free pass to Bush officials and their lawyers who constructed a regime of torture and abuse. US Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that his office will investigate only two instances of detainee mistreatment. He said the department "has determined that an expanded criminal investigation of the remaining matters is not warranted." Holder has granted impunity to those who authorized, provided legal cover, and carried out the "remaining matters."

Both of the incidents that Holder has agreed to investigate involved egregious treatment and both resulted in death. In one case, Gul Rahman froze to death in 2002 after being stripped and shackled to a cold cement floor in a secret American prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. The other man, Manadel al-Jamadi, died in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, which were bound behind his back. Tony Diaz, a military police officer who witnessed al-Jamadi's torture, reported that blood gushed from his mouth like "a faucet had turned on" when al-Jamadi was lowered to the ground. These two deaths should be investigated and those responsible punished in accordance with the law.

The investigation must also have a much broader scope. More than 100 detainees have died in US custody, many from torture. Untold numbers were subjected to torture and cruel treatment in violation of US and international law. General Barry McCaffrey said, "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A."

Detainees were put in stress positions, including being chained to the floor, slammed against walls, placed into small boxes with insects, subjected to extremely cold and hot temperatures as well as diet manipulation, blaring music, and threats against themselves and their families.

At least three men were waterboarded, a technique that makes the subject feel as though he is drowning. Pursuant to the Bush administration's efforts to create a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Abu Zubaydah received this treatment on 83 occasions.

US law has long recognized that waterboarding constitutes torture. The United States prosecuted Japanese military leaders for torture based on waterboarding after World War II. The Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act make torture punishable as a war crime.

Lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush, including John Yoo and Jay Bybee, wrote the torture memos. They redefined torture much more narrowly than the Convention Against Torture and the War Crimes Act, knowing interrogators would follow their advice. They also created elaborate justifications for torture and abuse, notwithstanding the absolute prohibition of torture in our law. When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, it became part of US law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. The convention says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Yoo have all said they participated in the decision to waterboard and would do it again. Thus, they have admitted the commission of war crimes. Major General Anthony Taguba, who directed the investigation of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, wrote, "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Taguba's question has been answered. None of those lawyers or officials will be brought to justice. Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta said, "We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency's history." Ominously, David Petraeus, incoming CIA Director, told Congress there might be circumstances in which a return to "enhanced interrogation" is warranted. That means torture may well continue during Obama's tenure. This is unacceptable.

Not only is torture illegal; it does not work and it makes people outside the US resent us even more. High-level interrogators such as FBI agent Ali Soufan have said the most valuable intelligence was obtained using traditional, humane interrogation methods. Former FBI agent Dan Coleman agrees. "Brutalization doesn't work," he said. "Besides that, you lose your soul."

[Marjorie Cohn is a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and she lectures throughout the world on international human rights and US foreign policy. Cohn is also a news consultant for CBS News and a legal analyst for Court TV, and provides legal and political commentary on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Air America and Pacifica Radio. She is the editor of The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse (NYU Press 2011).]

Source / The Jurist

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Did Anyone Mention You're Being Watched?

The always-expanding bipartisan Surveillance State
By Glenn Greenwald / 20 May 2011

When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin: "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state." There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .

From its inception, the law's increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.

Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden's demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes. And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings: to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government." Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government." Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture: that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of "National Security Letters" -- the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval -- so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:

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

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. . .

Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." . . .

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.

Most critically, the government's increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied -- as always -- by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions. Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government's Internet snooping powers, we have this:

The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.

The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy's reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department's refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.

The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration -- in particular the Office of Legal Counsel -- has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation's request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.

What's extraordinary about the Obama DOJ's refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities. The Bush DOJ's refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen's scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: "reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens. The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them). Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.

This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren't difficult to understand. Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches. When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent: J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King's alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York's new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities. It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens -- as we have been inexorably doing -- is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.

Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the "State Secrets privilege") even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability. That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power. And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system -- with fully bipartisan support --- is expanding more rapidly than ever.

UPDATE: I confused the timing of the second incident I mentioned here: the White House's proposal to expand NSL's to include Internet records. That actually occurred last July. But I also neglected to include in this list the Obama White House's September demands that all ISP's and manufacturers of electronic communication devices (such as Blackberries) provide "backdoors" for government surveillance, so that bolsters the points I made here.

UPDATE II: So patently illegal is Obama's war in Libya as of today that media reports are now coming quite close to saying so directly; see, for instance, this unusually clear CNN article today from Dana Bash. As a result, reporters today bombarded the White House with questions about the war's legality, and here is what happened, as reported by ABC News' Jake Tapper:



Talk about "secret law." You're not even allowed to know the White House's rationale (if it exists) for why this war is legal. It simply decrees that it is, and you'll have to comfort yourself with that. That's how confident they are in their power to operate behind their wall of secrecy: they don't even bother any longer with a pretense of the most minimal transparency.

Source / Salon

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Disappointment Is Too Shallow a Characterization

Bill Clark/Roll Call via Getty
Bernie Sanders Puts Barack Obama to Shame
By Matt Taibbi / December 15, 2010

In an era of Democratic waffling and compromise, the Independent from Vermont actually stands up for what he believes in

Not long ago I was sitting at home writing something for publication – I won’t say what, except that it was a passage about a certain politician on the Hill. Out of habit I launched into a description that was full of nasty and personal language, and I was about to press on to the next part of the piece when suddenly I hit a mental speed bump. A voice in my head whispered – this really happened – “If you write that shit and Bernie Sanders sees it, he’s going to be disappointed in you.” So I went back and removed the gratuitous body blows from the article.

I thought about this when I watched Bernie go through his amazing one-man filibuster against the Obama tax cut deal last week. Week after week, month after month, we watch politicians who disappoint us, not just as leaders but as people, failing to achieve the basic life-competency standard we expect of most grown-ups, doing things we wouldn’t tolerate from 15-year-olds. Whether it’s Mark Foley writing sexy letters to little boys, or Charlie Rangel or Duke Cunningham or Jerry Lewis doing the pay-for-play game, or even assholes like Orrin Hatch roaring with partisan excitement when the individual mandate – his own idea – was recently declared unconstitutional by a federal judge (who himself has financial stake in the health care business), these guys fail the common decency/honesty test with unnerving regularity. It’s sad but true, but in 99.9% of all cases, you wouldn’t think of looking up to an elected official as a moral role model. Which is why Bernie Sanders is such a rarity, and people should appreciate what he’s doing not just for his home state of Vermont, but for the reputation of all politicians in general.

I was in Washington last week and visited Bernie in his office, mainly to talk about the incredible results of the Federal Reserve audit, about which I’ll be writing more in the upcoming weeks and after the New Year. The audit of the Fed was undertaken because Bernie and a few other members of congress fought very hard during the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform debate to force open Ben Bernanke’s books, and as a result we now know the staggering details of the secret bailout era. We know that Citigroup received $1.6 trillion in loans, and Morgan Stanley $2 trillion, and Goldman Sachs – the same Goldman Sachs that bragged about how quickly it paid back its $10 billion TARP bailout – over $600 billion. We know that hedge fund billionaires who moved their corporate addresses to the Cayman Islands to avoid U.S. taxes were rewarded by their buddies in government with huge Fed loans; we know that the U.S. government likewise has been extending massive loans to a variety of Japanese car companies at a time when many American auto workers in Detroit have seen their wages cut in half, to $14 an hour. There’s that and there’s more on the outrage front, and we know it all because Sanders kicked and screamed and stamped his feet about Fed secrecy until just enough other members of the Senate decided to go along with him.

I’m bringing this up now to put into context what Bernie did on the floor of the Senate last week, standing up for eight hours and 37 minutes to make a case that the hideous deal that Barack Obama cut with the Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts was an outrage to the very qualities that matter most to this politician, common decency and common sense. While everyone else in Washington was debating the political efficacy of the deal – the Hill actually published a piece talking cheerfully about how CEOs found a “new friend” in Obama, while the New York Times shamelessly ran a front-page “analysis” talking up the deal’s supposed benefits to the middle class and the political benefits from same that Obama would enjoy – Sanders blew all of that off and just looked at the deal’s moral implications. Which are these: this tax deal, frankly and unequivocally, is the result of a relatively small group of already-filthy rich people successfully lobbying an even smaller group of morally spineless politicians to shift an ever-bigger share of society’s burdens to the lower and (what’s left of the) middle classes. This is people who already have lots of shit just demanding more shit, for the sheer rotten sake of it. Here’s how Bernie put it:

"How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We've got the money, we've got the power, we've got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That's the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks."

I contrast this now to the behavior of Barack Obama. I can’t even count how many times I listened to Barack Obama on the campaign trail talk about how, as president, he would rescind the Bush tax cuts as soon as he had the chance. He stood up and he said over and over again – I can still hear him saying “Let me be clear!” with that Great Statesman voice of his, before he went into this routine – that the Bush tax cuts were wrong and immoral. He said more than once that they “offended his conscience." Then, just as he did with drug re-importation and Guantanamo and bulk Medicare negotiations for pharmaceuticals and the issue of whether or not he would bring registered lobbyists into his White House and a host of other promises, he tossed his campaign “convictions” in the toilet and changed his mind once he was more accountable to lobbyists than primary voters. He pulled an Orrin Hatch, in other words, only he did it serially.

I can live with the president fighting for something and failing; what I can’t stand is a politician who changes his mind for the sake of expediency and then pretends that was what he believed all along. You just can’t imagine someone like Sanders doing something like that; his MO instead would be to take his best shot for what he actually believes and let the chips fall where they may, budging a little maybe to get a worthwhile deal done but never turning his entire face inside out just to get through the day. This idea that you can’t be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don’t stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It’s possible to do this job with honor and dignity. It’s just that most of our politicians – our president included, apparently – would rather not bother.

Source / Rolling Stone

Many thanks to Charlie Loving / Fluxed Up World

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Nima Shirazi: When Will US Hypocrisy Stop?

Israeli soldiers stand near armored military vehicles at a staging area just outside the northern Gaza Strip on December 29, 2008. Photo: Baz Ratner / Reuters.
International Flaw: With New Iran Sanctions, POTUS Calls Tehran's Kettle Black
By Nima Shirazi / September 29, 2010

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington

"By alleging Iran has some problems, America’s problems aren’t resolved. Just alleging that Iran has a problem is not going to resolve Mrs. Clinton’s problems for her." - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking with Charlie Rose, May 3, 2010

On Wednesday afternoon, in a joint press conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner announced that the United States had imposed a new set of unilateral sanctions, including a travel ban and freezing of assets, against a number of top-ranking Iranian officials whom it accused of "serious and sustained human rights abuses" since the presidential election last year. The measure, which comes less than four months after the UN Security Council's latest illegal resolution and the Obama administration's last round of economic sanctions, was enacted via an Executive Order signed into effect last night by the President.

This marked, as Clinton pointed out, "the first time the United States has imposed sanctions against Iran based on human rights abuses." Every US administration since Carter's has issued unilateral sanctions against Iran due to its continued opposition to US imperialism and insufficient deference to American diktat. However, the sanctions have previously been justified using the pretense of Iran's alleged "active support of terrorism," its totally legal and fully monitored nuclear energy program, as well as the wholly fabricated notion that "the actions and policies of the Government of Iran constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States" and required "the declar[ation of] a national emergency to deal with that threat." This last hysterical claim was introduced by the Secretary of State's Presidential husband back in 1995.

This time around, Hillary Clinton stated, with regard to the eight government officials specifically targeted by the new order, "on [their] watch or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed, and killed. Yet the Iranian Government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses, to hold to account those responsible and respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens. And Iran has failed to meet its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Apparently, the United States' own recent history regarding the invasion and occupation of two foreign countries, the kidnapping, indefinite detention without charge, and the physical and psychological torture of thousands of people, including at places like Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib (where prisoners were raped by their American captors) is irrelevant to the administration's finger-pointing charade and ongoing demonization campaign against Iran. Prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, in addition to being "chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded and kicked to keep them awake for days on end," have also been beaten to death by their interrogators. Of the fifteen soldiers charged with detainee abuse ranging from "dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter," all but three have been acquitted. Those three received written reprimands and served, at most, 75 days in prison for their crimes.

In contrast, after reports of torture at Iran's Kahrizak prison surfaced, the Iranian government moved swiftly to close the facility because it "lacked the standards" to maintain "rights of detainees" and launched an investigation into the allegations. Around the same time, 140 detainees were released from Tehran's Evin Prison at the urging of the head of the Judiciary and Majlis ministers.

Additionally, according to a Financial Times report from June 25, 2009 and featured only as an insert in the print edition, several students who had been arrested during the post-election protests, rallies, and riots, were freed in order to join 1.3 million other young Iranians in taking the national university entrance exam.

In December 2009, Iranian authorities announced that twelve prison officials from Kahrizak had been arrested and charged with murder and other crimes, including abuse, negligence and deprivation of prisoners' legal rights. This past June, courts passed down prison sentences and other punishment to those accused and two prison guards were convicted of murder and "intentional assault and battery" and were sentenced to death. It was reported this week that the death sentences have been rescinded at the request of the families of the victims.

Of course, human rights abuses in Iran are indeed serious and deserve condemnation. Most recently, Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan, Iran's so-called "blogfather," has been convicted of "collaborating with hostile governments, committing blasphemy and propaganda against the Islamic Republic, and managing an obscene website" and sentenced to 19.5 years in prison.

Meanwhile, the United States continues firmly protecting its own war criminals, maintains a two-tiered justice system, routinely criminalizes dissent and whistleblowing, and breeds soldiers who kill civilians for sport and dismember corpses for fun.

"The steady deterioration in human rights conditions in Iran has obliged the United States to speak out time and time again. And today, we are announcing specific actions that correspond to our deep concern. The mounting evidence of repression against anyone who questions Iranian Government decisions or advocates for transparency or even attempts to defend political prisoners is very troubling," Clinton continued, at the press conference. The Secretary of State also noted the distressing treatment of Iranian "human rights lawyers, bloggers, journalists and activists for women’s rights."

This heartfelt announcement came just five days after the FBI launched its latest surreal assault in the US government's "war on dissent" (as termed by former FBI agent and courageous whistleblower Coleen Rowley) by kicking down doors, raiding homes at gunpoint, issuing grand jury subpoenas, and seizing the personal property, including "documents, files, books, photographs, videos, souvenirs, war relics, notebooks, address books, diaries, journals, maps, or other evidence," such as computers, cell phones, and emails of several American peace and justice activists in the Midwest. The raids were conducted under the guise of determining whether the targeted peace organizers and human rights advocates were actually devious supporters of "foreign terrorist organizations."

Elderly anti-war protesters, graduate students, neuroscientists, and civil rights attorneys have all been held for years by the US government and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences on bogus charges.

Furthermore, the claim that the US government supports "transparency" is deeply ironic, considering Obama's obsession with invoking "state secrets" and "sovereign impunity" in order to shield illegal programs like warrantless wiretapping and spying, extraordinary rendition, torture, drone warfare, and the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens from proper scrutiny and prosecution.

Whereas American officials are quick to declare their unqualified promotion of "new tools of communication" and support for "a free and open Internet," as President Obama did last week at the United Nations General Assembly, the US is itself a surveillance state, which relentlessly monitors its own citizens. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have invested in technology and companies that specialize in monitoring social media and, this past summer, a Senate committee approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that may grant the US president the authority to unilaterally shut down parts of the Internet during a "national cyber-emergency." Just this week, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration will propose new legislation to mandate US government access to all forms of electronic communications, "including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct 'peer to peer' messaging like Skype."

"In signing this Executive Order," Clinton declared on Wednesday, "the President sends the message that the United States stands up for the universal rights of all people" and serves "as a voice for the voiceless."

Obviously, she didn't mean the universal right of self-determination for or the cries for human dignity of the Palestinian people, who have been ethnically cleansed from their homeland to make room for US-backed and nuclear-armed colonial settlers and serial human rights abusers who systematically, and with total impunity, continue to dispossess, disenfranchise, displace, demolish, and destroy the indigenous population of the stolen land they occupy and control.

This should hardly be surprising due to the fact that during the "carefully choreographed" meeting between the American President and Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in July 2010, described as "empty theater" by Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Booker, Obama pointed out that his administration is "unwavering in our commitment to Israel's security," while making sure to specifically not affirm the safety, human rights, or self-determination of Palestinians.

Last week, at the UN, Obama went even further in demonstrating the blatant hypocrisy entrenched in the United States doctrine of defending Zionist war crimes while condemning human rights abuses elsewhere around the world. The President stated, as he has so many times before, that any "efforts to chip away at Israel's legitimacy [sic] will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States," continuing that "efforts to threaten or kill Israelis will do nothing to help the Palestinian people. The slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance - it's injustice."

No mention was made of the constant Israeli murder - with US weaponry - of Palestinian civilians, despite the fact that, in the past decade alone, Israeli security forces have killed 6,371 Palestinians, of whom 1317 were minors, about 250 were police officers bombed to death during the 2008-9 Gaza massacre, and 240 were targets of assassinations. Apparently, this is not "injustice," according to the President, it's just a necessary side-effect of Zionism that didn't warrant a mention.

Hillary Clinton, after announcing the new Iran sanctions, claimed that "[the US] will hold abuse of governments and individuals accountable for their actions." The simplicity of this statement is profound considering it is a complete and provable lie.

Last year, when the United Nations released the Goldstone Report, which found overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that Israel had committed gross "violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" during its 2008-9 Gaza assault, the US government roundly condemned the findings and refused to hold Israel accountable for anything.

Last week, the day before Obama addressed the General Assembly, the UN itself released its findings with regard to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre. The report stated, not only that the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal under international law and constitutes collective punishment (which is a war crime), but also:

"The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds. It constituted grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law."

The UN report also found "clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health," and stated that Israel had seriously violated its obligations under the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the "right to life...torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment...right to liberty and security of the person and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention...right of detainees to be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person...[and] freedom of expression."

Additionally, in July 2010, domestic Israeli policy and its occupation conduct had been found to violate these very same statutes (among others) by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Based on both "forensic and firearm evidence," the fact-finding panel concluded that the killing of American citizen Furkan Dogan and that of five Turkish citizens by the Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmara "can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions."

It has also been reported that Israel is not only proud of its actions, but actually awarded the Israeli commando who single-handedly shot most of those killed on the Mavi Marmara with a medal of valor, despite the fact that the government refuses to publicly release the soldier's name. What a hero.

In response, the United States voiced its objections to what it termed the UN report's "unbalanced language, tone and conclusions." It seems that the US government won't hold Israel accountable for the intentional murder of its own citizens, just as it has looked the other way when Israel has killed American sailors, severely injured American peace activists, and blinded American art students.

The same day the US dismissed the UN Flotilla report, President Obama signed his Executive Order sanctioning Iranian officials for human rights violations.

Despite Israel's constant ignoring of international law, UN Security Council resolutions, and blatant disregard for human rights, including brutal torture, beating and raping Palestinian children in prison, rampant police brutality and the aggressive stifling of peaceful dissent and demonstrations in East Jerusalem, the deliberate killing of protesters, the raiding of peace and justice organizations, the restriction of press freedom and enforcing media blackouts, the kidnapping and torture of democracy advocates, the destruction of Bedouin villages in the Negev, and the arresting of Torah-carrying women who dare approach the male side of the Western Wall to pray, the US government continues to provide political cover, financial assistance, and tremendous military aid without reservation.

The US Congress endorses each and every illegal act of Israeli aggression, defends West Bank colonization, praises the flotilla massacre.

In his much-lauded June 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama declared, "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

But the illegal colonization of the occupied West Bank didn't stop. Not only that, massive US aid to Israel was completely unaffected by Israel's refusal to abide by international law and weapons trade between the countries actually increased. Eventually, the US just dropped any demand for a settlement freeze of any kind.

Between last year's UN General Assembly address and the one delivered last Thursday, it appears that Obama has also dropped any real demands regarding permanent borders, Palestinian refugees, and the status of Jerusalem.

During Wednesday's press conference, Clinton, on behalf of the American government, declared "solidarity with their victims and with all Iranians who wish for a government that respects their human rights and their dignity and their freedom" and "convey[ed] our strong support for the rule of law." Whose rules and which law she was referring to is unclear.

Among the latest stipulations of the new UNSC sanctions, bullied into approval this past June, is the insistence that "States will be required to block Iranian investments outside the Islamic Republic in uranium mining or the production of nuclear materials and technology" and that "States will be barred from supplying Iran with specified categories of heavy weaponry that could potentially be used in offensive military operations," due to Iran's perceived violations of international law.

Nevertheless, the US government has continued to violate international and domestic laws regarding Israel's undeclared nuclear program and the constant shipment of American-made weaponry to the so-called Jewish State.

Recently, the United States has "sold" Israel, among other armaments, AH-64 and AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, F-16 and F-15 Eagle fighter planes, F-16 Peace Marble II and III Aircraft, F-35 fighter jets, Boeing 777s, Hercules C-130J airplanes, Arrow missiles, Arrow II interceptors, AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles, GBU-9 small diameter bombs, bunker buster bombs, Tomahawk missiles, Patriot and Hellfire precision-guided missile systems, D9 Caterpillar military bulldozers, specifically designed for Israel's use in invasions of built-up areas.

Such sales are governed by the US Arms Export Control Act, which limits the use of US military aid to "internal security" and "legitimate self defense" and prohibits its use against civilians along with the Foreign Assistance Act which explicitly prohibits US assistance "to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country."

A more appropriate and accurate description of the State of Israel can not be found.

And yet, the United States shipped 3,000 tons of "ammunition" to Israel in the middle of the 2008-9 Gaza massacre. US weaponry was undoubtedly used in the assault, during which gross violations of international law, abrogation of human rights, and crimes against humanity were committed.

The connection of US outrage and sanctions to international human rights is, quite simply, absurd. One look at the recent $60 billion arms deal the US made with the human rights-challenged Kingdom of Saudi Arabia makes the American contention ridiculous and embarrassing.

The United States fetes European and Israeli war criminals, all of whom call for military aggression against the Islamic Republic, while imposing a travel ban on Iranian officials.

The double standards of the US government continue to betray its real intentions and motivations regarding the Middle East, namely the maintenance of military hegemony, allegiance to Zionist mythology, and the continued demonization and threatening of any country that dares question the moral superiority of the United States or opposes American and Israeli imperialism in the region. While Barack Obama continues to claim that he is "willing to reach out with an open hand to the Iranian government," it seems he's forgotten to first wash off all the blood.

Source / Wide Asleep in America

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Obama: Just Getting Started with Bad Decisions

He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in. Graphic: Chris Coady/NB Illustrations.
Obama's secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all
By Johann Hari / February 12, 2010

He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in.

Osama bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause – and we are giving it to him.

The day George W Bush was elected, Omar says, "my father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs – one who will attack and spend money and break [his own] country". Osama wanted the US and Europe to make his story about the world ring true in every mosque and every mountain-top and every souq. He said our countries were bent on looting Muslim countries of their resources, and any talk of civil liberties or democracy was a hypocritical facade. The jihadis I have interviewed – from London to Gaza to Syria – said their ranks swelled with each new whiff of Bushism as more and more were persuaded. It was like trying to extinguish fire with a blowtorch.

The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap – but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama's orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unarmed drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out Al Jazeera any night.

Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush's network of kidnappings and secret prisons. He said bluntly: "I do not want to hear this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that... but as a parent I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." He said it made the US "less safe" because any gain in safety by Gitmo-ing one suspected jihadi – along with dozens of innocents – is wiped out by the huge number of young men tipped over into the vile madness of jihadism by seeing their brothers disappear into a vast military machine where they may never be heard from again. Indeed, following the failed attack in Detroit, Obama pointed out the wannabe-murderer named Guantanamo as the reason he signed up for the jihad.

Yet a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely – and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was – and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.

This is not an unusual event in Afghanistan today. In this small village of 300 people, some 16 men have been "disappeared" by the US and 10 killed in night raids in the past two years. The locals believe people are simply settling old clan feuds by telling the Americans their rivals are jihadists. Habib's cousin Qarar, who works for the Afghan government, says: "I used to go on TV and argue that people should support the government and the foreigners. But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so?"

Where are all these men vanishing to? Obama ordered the closing of the CIA's secret prisons, but not those run by Joint Special Operations. They maintain a Bermuda Triangle of jails with the notorious Bagram Air Base at its centre. One of the few outsiders has been into this ex-Soviet air-hangar is the military prosecutor Stuart Couch. He says: "In my view, having visited Guantanamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantanamo look like a nice hotel. The men did not appear to be able to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo."

We know that at least two innocent young men were tortured to death in Bagram. Der Spiegel has documented how some "inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". The accounts of released prisoners suggest the very worst abuses stopped in the last few years of the Bush administration, and Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it's hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years – a process that often drives people insane. The International Red Cross has been allowed to visit some of them, but in highly restricted circumstances, and their reports remain confidential. In this darkness, abuse becomes far more likely.

The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world – with no legal process – and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.

Once you vanish into this system, you have no way to get yourself out. The New York lawyer Tina Foster represents three men who were kidnapped by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai and bundled to Bagram, where they have been held without charge for seven years now. She tells me there have been "shockingly few improvements" under Obama. "The Bush administration rubbed our faces in it, while Obama's much smoother. But the reality is still indefinite detention without charge for people who are judged guilty simply by association. It's contrary to everything we stand for as a country... I know there are children [in there] from personal experience. I have interviewed dozens of children who were detained in Bagram, some as young as 10."

Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates – the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness. Obama also asserts his right to hand over the prisoners to countries that commit torture, provided they give a written "assurance" they won't be "abused" – assurances that have proved worthless in the past. The British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US.

As Obama warned in the distant days of the election campaign, these policies place us all in greater danger. Matthew Alexander, the senior interrogator in Iraq who tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says: "I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight... We have lost hundreds if not thousands of American lives because of our policy." The increased risk bleeds out onto the London Underground and the nightclubs of Bali. I oppose these policies precisely because I want to be safe, and I loathe jihadism.

President Obama has been tossing aside the calm jihad-draining insights of candidate Obama for a year now. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully – you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way.

Source / The Independent

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