The Young Turks :Justice for Guantanamo Detainees
Nov. 20,2008
No evidence to continue detaining five prisoners at GITMO.
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O'Reilly Says ACLU Aids Terrorism?
LiberalViewer
Added: November 20, 2008
On Fox News this week, Bill O'Reilly's latest attack on the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming the ACLU aids terrorism, was based on fear and fallacies rather than facts as I show with the clips and analysis in this video.
The Ghosts of Torture
And so here's a video of one of those hardened " Terrorists ": detainee Omar Khadr who is a Canadian citizen who has been abandoned by the Canadian Bush Friendly Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And yes we Canadians voted this Neoconservative back into power .According to International Law and the Geneva Conventions Omar Khadr is to be treated as a "Child Soldier. But it appears the Bush Regime and our own Stephen Harper feel they are no longer obliged to follow the the rules of the Geneva Conventions or other International Agreements or Laws. For instance Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been told to hand over POWs or detainees to American authorities or Afghan authorities even though it is quite probable that these detainees will be abused and torured by American officials including private contractors or the CIA and that the Afghan military is also known to abuse and torture "detainees" . Note they prefer the word " detainee " thereby by a little verbal slight of hand as it were denying them the status of Prisoners of War or Enemy Combatants.
Gitmo Tape Shows Sobbing Youth-CBS July 15, 2008
The youngest person ever accused of a war crime, Omar Khadr, can be seen crying and pleading for his death in the first surveillance tapes to be released from Guantanamo. David Martin reports.
There are longer versions of the interrogation of Khadr at YouTube - but it is hearbreaking as he accuses the Canadian official of not really caring what happens to him- when the boy tells the official about abuse the official says he's making it all up but as is apparent the official does nothing to check into the story since he knows the Canadian Government wants to know as little as possible about what's going on at Gitmo so they can have "Plausible Deniabilty" which is all any bureaucrat really cares about.
Canadians should be ashamed but it appears most Canadians are indifferent to Omar Khadr or to anybody else who has been detained or tortured in our so called War on Terror. Is the lack of concern merely indifference or is it racism or a belief that we need to exact revenge for Canadian troops killed in Afghanistan. And does it matter if those who are detained , abused or tortured are guilty or innocent as long as we get our" pound of flesh".
Canadian Mother Speaks Out on Son at Gitmo
And here's another case of a " detainee " who was abused at Guantanamo but never charged with a crime. It appears the only reason he was detained was because he was on the staff of the Arab news Network Al Jazeera.American officials only like a Free Press when they can control its content. We know this from the facts gathered about how the Bush Regime manipulated the Press in the United States even sending News Rooms " The Talking Points of The Week" and paying reporters to write favorable stories about the Bush Regime's policies . They also did this with the Media in Iraq.
Sami Al-Haj freed from Gitmo after 6 years without charge
After More than Six Years, Al Jazeera Cameraman Sami al-Haj Released from Guantanamo Bay-Democracy Now! Amy Goodman
Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj's first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan and speak to his brother, Asim al-Haj.
And in a related story we are told that there are rogue elements in the CIA that have been running covert operations without US Governments approval
CIA still above the law & acts with impunity because government officials and legislators fear retaliation from the CIA.
As for covert operations there is more evidence of wrong doing at the CIA as reported in an article at MWC.
More CIA Killings, Lies, and Cover-Ups Nov. 21 by Jacob G. Hornberger Media With ConscienceMWC
“According to Mr. Helgerson’s report, C.I.A. officials ‘within hours’ of the downing explained the accident as a one-time mistake in an otherwise sound counternarcotics program. ‘In fact, this was not the case,’ the report said. It said that the C.I.A. repeatedly misled the White House and Congress between 1995 and 2001 about the Peru operation. The inspector general’s report said that after the downing of the missionaries’ plane, the C.I.A. had conducted internal reviews ‘that documented sustained and significant violations of required intercept procedures.’ But it said that the agency had denied Congress, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council access to these findings. Mr. Hoekstra said Thursday that the inspector general’s investigation specifically named C.I.A. officials responsible for the alleged cover-up, but he declined to name those officers.”
Republican Congressman Peter J. Hoekstra, who released unclassified portions of the report, observed, “This is about as ugly as it gets.”
Will the Justice Department pursue criminal prosecutions against the CIA officials involved in the lying and cover-up, as it did against Martha Stewart?
Will U.S. officials ask Peru to indict the CIA agents involved in the killings for murder, manslaughter, or negligent homicide?
Don’t hold your breath.
C.I.A. Withheld Data in Peru Plane Crash Inquiry By MARK MAZZETTI Published: November 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.
The August 2008 report by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, could lead the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the shooting, examining in particular whether senior C.I.A. officers obstructed justice or lied to Congress by burying details about the episode and the C.I.A.’s broader counternarcotics program.
A C.I.A. surveillance aircraft mistakenly identified the plane as a drug-smuggling aircraft, and a Peruvian military jet shot it down, killing an American missionary and her 7-month-old daughter. The Justice Department closed its investigation into the matter in 2005, declining to prosecute agency officers for any actions related to the episode.
But Mr. Helgerson’s report, parts of which were made public on Thursday, said that the Justice Department investigators and Congress were never allowed access to internal C.I.A. reviews that portrayed the downing as one mistake among many in the agency’s counternarcotics program in Peru. The report said the agency routinely authorized interceptions of suspected drug planes “without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life.”
The counternarcotics program was begun under President Clinton in 1994. The report said it had operated for years outside legal boundaries set by the White House.
In releasing unclassified parts of the report on Thursday, Representative Peter J. Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was asking the Justice Department to consider whether the C.I.A.’s actions after the incident amounted to obstruction of justice. “This is about as ugly as it gets,” said Mr. Hoekstra, who added that the Justice Department had closed its investigation based on a review of “incomplete information.”
Meanwhile the Religious Right is complaining about losing the election claiming it was because the Republican candidates were not far enough to the right. Whereas the more popular view is that in part voters were scared away by the extremist rhetoric of Palin and McCain combined with the economic crisis and that McCain was seen as too similar in his policies to the Bush Regime.
The Right Goes Into Denial
By Kyle | November 18, 2008 - Right Wing Watch People For The American Way
I fully understand the Religious Right's need to explain the trouncing the Republican Party experienced at the polls and fight back against the idea that they were somehow to blame. I likewise understand their standard post-electoral trick when explaining such losses is to claim that the reason the GOP lost not because of the Right, but because the candidates and the party were not sufficiently committed to their right-wing agenda.
But what I don't understand is this incessant effort to rewrite history, especially when the time frame at issue was just a few weeks ago:
Some pro-lifers, [Mike] Huckabee said, abandoned the Republican Party in recent years because it failed to stand up for pro-life principles. Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006 and then padded their majorities this year.
"We didn't lose elections because we were pro-life," Huckabee said. "We really started losing elections when we didn't act like that mattered. And so, the people who really do care about issues -- whether it's marriage, life, Second Amendment -- felt like, 'If this party isn't going to have a significant different stand than the Democrats, then why not just vote for the Democrats and give them a chance?'"
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