Aug 15 2008 - Seattle PI
by Deroy Murdock
Five months in jail for driving Mr. bin Laden? Only in America!
Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur, recently won an appallingly light sentence for aiding al–Qaida. Hamdan's apologists call him a hapless, innocent motorist. If so, anyone steering a bank–job getaway car is "just a driver."
Hamdan is no naif. He is a camp–trained al–Qaida member whom a Guantanamo military tribunal convicted of giving "material support" to America's chief enemy in the War on Terror. Hamdan transported weapons (including two shoulder–launched missiles with which he was caught), drove and hid bin Laden, and guarded this mass murderer with a machine gun.
Aug 12 2008 - Seattle PI
by TOM TEEPEN
The verdict and sentence in the war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan at Guantanamo suggest a military judge and jury taking justice seriously, but the military commissions that President Bush designated for handling such cases remain intolerably flawed.
The president's novelty courts insult American values and affront the nation's honorable traditions of military justice. They permit secret testimony and evidence, testimony wrung out by torture and hearsay evidence. The jury pool is hand picked by a Pentagon official who also controls the budget for the detainee's defense.
Aug 05 2008 - Counter Currents
by Maher Osseiran
Why is the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold habeas corpus rights for the Guantanamo detainees so scary that Senator Lindsey Graham, with the support of McCain, will “explore the possibility, if necessary, of a constitutional amendment to blunt the effect of this decision”?
What is so fundamentally wrong with the Supreme Court’s decision, whose members are conservative or Bush appointees, to warrant amending our constitution? Have Senators Graham and McCain lost their minds?
Aug 04 2008 - Center for Individual Freedom.
Boy, what a mess the highest court in the land can create.
It was less than two months ago that a bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled that enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay naval base could proceed with lawsuits challenging their detention in our federal courts. In those seven weeks, not only has the entire legal landscape changed, but so has the real possibility that these suspected terrorists will be released –– back to battlefields abroad, or worse into our midst here at home.
All of this should have sparked massive outrage and prompted immediate action since things have turned around so quickly and dramatically. But most of America hasn’t been following just what the detainees and their lawyers have been seeking, and how the judges have been responding, in the aftermath of the High Court’s decision.
Aug 01 2008 - Times Union, Albany NY
by ANDREW GREELEY
T.S. Elliot summarized the issue, "When good does evil in its struggle against evil, it becomes indistinguishable from its enemy."
A current example is the sick morality that sees America's program of torture during the war that "they" had done it to us and would do so again. Therefore we were not evil. The Sept. 11 attacks persuaded the leaders of the country that murder, kidnapping, and torture were appropriate in the war on terror.
Jul 24 2008 - Seattle PI
by SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
We're cautiously optimistic –– as much as one can be under these circumstances –– about how the war crimes trial of former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan is progressing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Because he was charged before the Supreme Court delivered its serious blow against the Bush administration policy of denying detainees habeas corpus rights, Hamdan must go through with the military trial.
However, the judge overseeing Hamdan's trial has already decided that some of the evidence can't be used against him.
Jul 23 2008 - Seattle Times
by BOB HERBERT
You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney but without the vice president's sense of humor.
In her important new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney's main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy for the so–called war on terror.
She quotes a colleague as saying of Addington: "No one stood to his right." Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Cheney, was reported to have summed up Addington as follows: "He doesn't believe in the Constitution."
Jul 09 2008 - Seattle PI
by RUTH MARCUS
WASHINGTON –– There's someone I'd like to introduce to President Bush.
Also to Chief Justice John Roberts and Sen. John McCain. His name is Huzaifa Parhat, and that get–together might be tricky to arrange. Parhat is also known as ISN (Internment Serial Number) 320 at Guantanamo Bay.
Parhat is Uighur, a Muslim ethnic minority group from western China.
He fled China for Afghanistan, and, when the camp he was living in there was bombed by U.S. forces, he went to Pakistan. For a bounty, Parhat was turned over to U.S. authorities and shipped to Guantanamo.
Jul 08 2008 - Seattle PI
by Nicholas D. Kristof
When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
Jul 07 2008 - Seattle PI
by LAURENCE H. EBERSOLE
Orange bolt–cutters will not be needed to stop the use of Guantanamo Military Detention Facility. The practice of justice will do the job; the justice of habeas corpus reviews with prompt release from detention for the 275 detainees –– along with the justice of fair trials in U.S. federal courts. Consider these details of "Justice Summer," a mobilization by Amnesty International focused on international justice.
On June 12, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that foreign citizens held at Guantanamo are entitled, under the U.S. Constitution, to habeas corpus –– the centuries–old right to challenge the legality of one's detention.
Jul 07 2008 - Fox News
by Charles D. Stimson and Andrew M. Grossman
Last week the Supreme Court ruled that terrorist detainees held by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay can challenge their detention in federal court.
Commentators called the ruling a major blow to the Bush administration and looked to the White House for its next move. But any effort by this White House to roll back the Boumediene decision surely would fail, given its breadth and political realities.
That leaves open a question for Congress: Should terrorist detainees have more rights, the same rights or fewer rights than American citizens? If Congress does nothing, it’s made its choice: more rights.
Gitmo detainees have the right to file petitions for habeas corpus in any district court. And they are, en masse. This is a very different kind of habeas than that available to ordinary prisoners.
Jul 06 2008 - Times Union, Albany NY
The American public is now getting a glimpse of just what charges are facing the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and it's far from reassuring. Indeed, the evidence against one prisoner was found so lacking by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that it ordered the release or a new hearing for the accused. So lacking, in fact, that one judge was moved to mock the government's case by comparing it to a Lewis Carroll nonsense poem.
Editor's Comments:
War is not perfect and neither are US judges. bbm
Jul 01 2008 - Seattle PI
by BOB HERBERT
Thursday was the 21st anniversary of the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
It was also the same day that two Bush administration lawyers appeared before a House subcommittee to answer questions about their roles in providing the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques that inevitably rose to the level of torture and shamed the U.S. before the rest of the world.
The lawyers, both former Justice Department officials, were David Addington, who is now Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There is no danger of either being enshrined as heroes in the history books of the future.
Editor's Comments:
Only problem, Herbert never draws the line as to what terrorism is and what it isn't. He gives us cases which most of us would agree to be torture, but he also gives us some which I don't consider torture. Forcing prisoners to parade naked in front of females? Maybe not comfortable, but not torture. So where is the line, Herbert? bbm
Jun 30 2008 - Seattle PI
Being faced with documents exploring legal justification for torturing detainees is the sort of thing that might cause alarm to a thinking person, for whom laws without morality are little more than authoritarian rhetoric used to cloak a corrupt, unjust system.
Such a memo elicited an entirely different response from David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to The Associated Press, Addington said, "Good, I'm glad you're addressing these issues." Addington and former Justice Department attorney John Yoo both seemed put out last week while being questioned by a House Judiciary subcommittee looking into the role Bush administration lawyers played in greenlighting torture.
Editor's Comments:
Just what is torture? They didn't bother to define it, because they can't. bbm
Jun 28 2008 - The New York Times
by Richard A. Epstein
LAST week’s Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush settled a key constitutional issue: all prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay are constitutionally entitled to bring habeas corpus in federal court to challenge the legality of their detention.
This 5–4 decision was correct. The conservative justices in the minority were wrong to suggest that the decision constitutes reckless judicial intervention in military matters that the Constitution reserves exclusively for Congress and the president. (Disclosure: I joined in a friend–of–the–court brief filed on the plaintiff’s behalf.)
Jun 28 2008 - The Independent Institute
by William J. Watkins Jr.
In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court gave the Bush administration a black eye in its controversial war–on–terrorism policies. The Court held that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to pursue habeas corpus challenges to their detention. The alternative procedures to habeas review crafted by the government under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Court said, do not include adequate legal protections to be a substitute for the constitutional requirements of habeas corpus. Because of the High Court’s ruling, the detainees, some who have been in custody for six years with no judicial determination of the legality of their detention, can ask the federal courts to finally make this basic assessment.
A writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a legal mechanism requiring that the custodian of a prisoner bring the prisoner before the court for a determination of the lawfulness of incarceration. While bills of rights serve as guideposts for the people to monitor government infringements on their liberties, the “Great Writ” provides a mechanism by which a person can challenge a loss of personal freedom.
Jun 24 2008 - Town Hall
by Fred Thompson
As I pointed out last week, and as legal scholar John Yoo did earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, the “Boumediene Five” have done our nation and our Constitution no great service. But beyond the rhetoric, we really need to understand the real world impact of this ruling on the war we are waging against our enemies.
In Boumediene v Bush, besides, for the first time in history conferring habeas corpus rights on alien enemies detained abroad by our military during a war, the Court struck down as inadequate what Chief Justice John Roberts called “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded enemy combatants.” Consider the rights that our country provided to the enemy prisoners in question before Boumediene:
Jun 23 2008 - Human Events
by Charles D. Stimson
In a sweeping decision that will have myriad consequences –– foreseen and unforeseen ––the Supreme Court found that the right of habeas corpus under the U.S. Constitution applies to terrorist detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a controversial 5–4 decision written by Justice Kennedy that is already being reported as a major loss for the Administration’s detainee policy, the Supreme Court ruled that the petitioners detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus; that the Detainee Treatment Act’s (DTA) procedures for reviewing their statuses was not an adequate and effective substitute for the habeas writ; and that section 7 of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) is an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. In other words, the Constitution applies to unlawful enemy combatants at Gitmo, and the one–time Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT’s) didn’t cut it.
Jun 23 2008 - Human Events
by Jed Babbin
It’s rare that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D–Mi) suffers from a political tin ear. A week after the Supreme Court’s poorly–reasoned and outrageous decision granting the Constitutional right of habeas corpus to terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, Levin today will chair a hearing supposedly investigating the “origins of aggressive interrogation techniques.”
It’s just another voyage for Captain Ahab Levin in his endless quest to harpoon Moby Bush on the Iraq war. The last time we reported on this, Levin’s idea for a media show trial to label Bush administration lawyers as torturer–mongers was just in the planning stages. Today –– possibly aided and abetted by certain news organizations that Levin’s staff is apparently spoon–feeding –– Levin will hold his first hearing.
Jun 20 2008 - Town Hall
by Paul Greenberg
Nothing so well illustrates the essential asymmetry of this country's worldwide struggle against terrorism than last week's 5–to–4 opinion out of the U.S. Supreme Court. The enemy is fighting a war; we are litigating a plea.
Throughout the sleepy Nineties, we dealt with two – two! – earlier and incomplete attacks on the World Trade Center not as the barbaric acts of war they were, but as isolated matters for the criminal justice system to deal with when and if it could. While we slept, the enemy plotted. We paid the bloody price for our obtuseness – in thousands of innocent lives – on September 11, 2001.
