When do lies and commission of crimes qualify candidacy for public office?

When office holders self-exempt from the rule of law and get off scot-free

Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Impunity (synonym exemption) means, according to Merriam Webster, exemption or freedom from punishment, harm, or loss; example: laws were flouted (disregarded) with “impunity.”

University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred W. McCoy spoke with Democracy Now today about U.S. torture and related contradictions, denials and lies committed by current and past federal administrations in Washington. This is some of what McCoy said in answer to Amy Goodman’s questions.

 

Impunity

First stage of impunity in crime of torture: Blame commission of the crime on “the bad apples,” as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did after U.S. crimes at Abu Ghraib were exposed in 2004.

Second stage of impunity in crime of torture: Claim the crime is/was “necessary for our national security—unfortunate, perhaps, but necessary to keep us all safe,” as former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney did and continues to do.

Third stage of impunity in crime of torture: lie (deepen the lie) or deny or say, hey, we are not going to do it anymore, as does current U.S. President Barack Obama: 

Whatever might have happened in the past, we need unity as a nation, we need to move forward together into the future.

Put it behind us, not investigate, not prosecute ─ the very definition of impunity. Lawlessness upheld by a head of state trained to be a lawyer, a professor of constitutional law.

Fourth stage of impunity in crime of torture: legalize the illegal: those authorizing or executing torture or having done so (as the agents in the George W. Bush administration) seek not only “exoneration,” license to get away with crime, but vindication for having committed it: legal by necessity in the name of “national security.”

Fifth stage of impunity in crime of torture: Codify the lies, censor and enshrine a new history. “Rewrite the history, rewrite the past,” as is being done by past and present U.S. administration cabinets, employees and related agents. “Without respect for the truth of the matter, reconstruct it in a way that justifies torture.”

Feigned commitment and outright lies

During the Cold War, McCoy recalls, the CIA taught allies how to torture but the United States did not hands-on torture. “We outsourced it. We funded prisons. We harvested intelligence.”

Under President George W. Bush, we [hands-on] did it ourselves: the United States “authorized the CIA to create a fleet of two dozen chartered jets for rendition. They authorized the CIA to open eight black sites from Thailand to Poland, so U.S. CIA agents actually engaged in waterboarding, wall slamming, and forms of psychological torture under President Bush.”

Under the Obama government, “We have gone back to the Cold War policy of outsourcing the abuse to our allies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.” The United States turns a blind eye to human rights abuse and at the same time “authorizes the CIA very quietly to conduct extraordinary rendition.”

Former president George W. Bush said, famously, America does not torture. The Obama government, on taking office declared, “My administration is going to operate in a way that leaves no doubt that we do not torture, that we abide by the Geneva Conventions, and that we observe our traditions of rule of law and due process as we are vigorously going after terrorists that can do us harm.”

But, as Alfred McCoy points out, “Under the United Nations Convention against Torture ─

A nation is prohibited from sending people to countries where they will be subject to human rights abuse as defined by the Convention against Torture.

Rendition is the process of sending somebody to a country where they are likely to be tortured.

W

ho is to say that this too is not hands-on? And even if we choose to believe that it is not actually hands-on, it is still the commission of the crime by having sent a person or people to the dungeon where the crime, the crime of torture, or other human rights abuses are sure to be committed. 

There is no escape from these truths and in order to truly preserve the rule of law, the agents of administrations past and present must be brought before the bar of justice. Moreover, those holding license to practice law or even to teach it should be stripped of both license and privilege.

In Articles two, three and four of the UN Convention against Torture are these statements:

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.  No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
 An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.Article 2 

No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.Article 3

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Article 4

Sources and notes

“As Italy Sentences 23 CIA Agents in Rendition Case, Obama Refuses to Prosecute Anyone for Torture,” September 21, 2012,

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/21/as_italy_sentences_23_cia_agents#transcript

Alfred W. McCoy is Professor of History, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

McCoy is author of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (2009). Among his most recent articles are: “A Hundred Years of Drug Prohibition: A Study in the Failure of Global Governance,” in Michael Heazle, Martin Griffiths, and Tom Conley, eds.. Foreign Policy Challenges in the 21st Century (London: Edward Elgar, 2009), pp. 207-30; “Covert Netherworld: Clandestine Services & Criminal Syndicates in Shaping the Philippine State,” in, Eric Wilson, ed., Government of the Shadows (London: Pluto Press, 2009), pp. 226-55; “Legacy of a Dark Decade: CIA Mind Control, Classified Behavioral Research, and the Origins of Modern Medical Ethics,” in, Almerindo Ojeda, ed., Trauma of Psychological Torture (Westport: Praeger, 2008) pp. 40-69; “Torture in the Crucible of Counterinsurgency,” in, Marilyn B. Young and Lloyd C. Gardner, eds., Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past (New York: New Press, 2007), pp. 230-62. Dr.

McCoy took his doctorate in Southeast Asian history at Yale University and his M.A. at UC-Berkeley. http://seasia.wisc.edu/People/Alfred%20McCoy.htm; http://history.wisc.edu/people/faculty/mccoy.htm

CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment [excerpt]

The States Parties to this Convention,

Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Recognizing that those rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person,

Considering the obligation of States under the Charter, in particular Article 55, to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Having regard to article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which provide that no one may be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,

Having regard also to the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1975 (resolution 3452 (XXX)),

Desiring to make more effective the struggle against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment throughout the world,

Have agreed as follows:

Part I

Article 1

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 3

No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

Article 4

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature. …

The United Nations CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE contains 32 articles, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Crimes not crimes when clandestine — rights abusers, mass marketers conspire in dodging culpability

Criminals justify their crimes, purging themselves in prime time broadcasts, on powerful print pages

By Carolyn Bennett (editing, commentary)

I’m CIA, Bobby. Officially I don’t exist.…  My profit’s my reward— for selfless service to god and country.” [Before drilling 7 gun shots into two gagged, tied up internal affairs FBI officials]

“This isn’t about sides, this is about confusion. This is about creating enemies where there aren’t any. …”   [Film “White Sands”]

Art imitates life

This week’s notorious” author spy (retired)

Democracy Now! pushed a clip from CBS’s 60 Minutes with former CIA clandestine operations and lead interrogator Jose Rodriguez headlined: “Ex-CIA Interrogator says [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s Policy is to ‘Kill All Prisoners.’”

TARGETED ASSASSINATION (execution without arrest, charge or trial)

U.S. CIA assassination drone

Commenting on a system he was part of and from which he retired and wrote his book, Rodriguez said: “‘We don’t capture anybody any more … the default option of this Administration has been to kill all prisoners. Take no prisoners.…  How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.’”

A Wikipedia profile says Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is known for being the Director of the National Clandestine Service (D/NCS) of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — the top Human Intelligence operations post in the United States government.  Rodriguez was the last CIA Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Rodriguez_(intelligence_officer

Former U.S. President (#37)
Richard M. Nixon

Daily Beast reported WATERBOARDING, yes, and lie about it and cover it up

Former CIA official Jose Rodriguez “defends the waterboarding program and says he was right in 2005 to order the destruction of videotapes of the harsh interrogation sessions, in which suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were held down and subjected to a simulated drowning.”

U.S. Presidents 43 and 44
George W. Bush
Barack H. Obama

Criminals’ CONFLICTING STORIES

When Congress member claims deniability, call her a liar

While a ranking member of the House intelligence committee after September 11, 2001, she was fully informed about the use of waterboarding, says the Ex-CIA employee. “‘[House Democratic leader Nancy] Pelosi said that we only briefly mentioned waterboarding and left the impression that it had not been used [but] … I know she got it.’”

Former Speaker of
U.S.. House of Representatives
How many more atrocities 

DRONES yes/no (having it both ways)

“‘Drones can be a highly effective way of dealing with high-priority targets,’ Rodriguez writes, ‘But they should not become the drug of choice for an administration that is afraid to use successful, legal and safe tactics of the past. … There is no opportunity to interrogate or learn anything from a suspect who is vaporized by a missile launched by a keystroke executed thousands of miles away.’”

Committing crime is okay

Legacy:
Nixon government
Obama government

If clandestine

If government officials can claim to have gotten what you wanted by committing the crime

Christian Science Monitor (2011) reports former intelligence officials’ saying, “‘We are concerned about the suggestion by some that the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques led U.S. forces to Osama bin Laden’s compound.’”

Retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated U.S. detention operations at Guantánamo, reportedly said Osama bin Laden “could have wrapped himself in an American flag and had a white flag in both hands” but “if [special operators] were told to go in and kill this guy — and they clearly understood the marching orders — he would have “still been killed.”

A group of former intelligence officials, including Herrington, released a statement in 2011 disagreeing with former George W. Bush officials’ (among them Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s television assertion that anyone saying waterboarding does not produce enormous valuable intelligence is not facing the truth) crediting themselves with criminal methods effecting the Obama government’s hunt down and assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Targeted Assassination

EVEN WHEN THE COVER SLIPS and barbarity of soldiers, embracing the pattern set by their masters, reaches sunlight, U.S. officialdom (government and mass media) denies wrongdoing and culpability, and no court holds higher ups to account for their crimes.

On the World Socialist Web Site David Walsh ended an article published on April 19, 2012:

How many individual atrocities have to take place before it becomes clear that an entire operation is criminal to its core?

Greenpeace image

“After the exposure of each U.S. atrocity—including the slaughter of civilians, the abuse and torture of prisoners, the mutilation of corpses for trophies, Marines urinating on the Afghan dead, the desecration of the Koran—American officials express dismay and describe the incidents as the actions of ‘individuals’ who have perverted a righteous cause. This is a lie. 

First, considering the unprecedented level of censorship of the war in Afghanistan, the episodes that come to light are undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg. It can be asserted without hesitation that these sorts of crimes occur on virtually a daily basis. The exposure of the Qalat desecrations depended entirely on one soldier’s courageous act.

Second, the incidents that have been publicized make clear a pattern of barbaric behavior on the part of U.S. and allied troops. This flows inevitably from the predatory character of the war and the situation in which American and other occupying forces find themselves: resented and hated by the Afghan population (the brigade lost 35 members during the year-long deployment, 23 of them to homemade bombs or suicide bombers), the soldiers’ increasing demoralization finds expression in acts of brutality.

How many individual atrocities have to take place before it becomes clear that an entire operation is criminal to its core?

Hang legal and moral questions

The “asserted” end (often itself untrue) justifies the means. Right and wrong are no more than “colored bubbles.”

As defined by a clever Clinton on matters of less import, crime and punishment, law and order, right and wrong all depend who does the crime and how, whose political party or what individual (backed by what private interest) holds the seat of power when crimes are committed; and or whether a criminal is in office committing the crime or out of office writing a book about having committed a crime.

This collective failure to call a crime a crime and to prosecute it as such results from the fact that there are powerful conspirators in the act and cover up of high crimes: from government officials to “educators” to book writers to mass communications industries (newspapers, broadcasters, hard copy and electronic publishing, web makers and masters) promoting purgative tomes of “truths,” half-truths, cover-ups, and protracted lies.

Sources and notes

Transcription from ending scenes of “White Sands” film, a speech by Gorman Lennox (Mickey Rourke)

“White Sands” [not what it seems] is a 1992 Roger Donaldson-directed film starring Willem Dafoe as New Mexico Deputy Sheriff Ray Dolezal; Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as well-heeled finder of money for any “causes” for her kickback on front or back end, whichever is more profitable; and Mickey Rourke as “I’m C [BLINKING] I A…” arms trafficker mayhem-maker, murdered for profit

White Sands at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105813/; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_(film)

Democracy Noq headlines April 30. 21012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/30/headlines#43011

“CIA Veteran Jose Rodriguez Defends Waterboarding in New Book,” April 29, 2012,

CIA veteran Jose Rodriguez answers critics of the agency’s harsh interrogation techniques—and defends his decision to destroy the tapes. Philip Shenon on his explosive new book

©2011 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/29/cia-veteran-jose-rodriguez-defends-waterboarding-in-new-book.html

Wikipedia Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.  profile Being the Director of the CIA/National Clandestine Service.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Rodriguez_(intelligence_officer)

“Military interrogators: Waterboarding didn’t yield tips that led to bin Laden — Several former military interrogators refute assertions that waterboarding and other ‘enhanced’ methods provided intelligence that led the U.S. to bin Laden. Some lament lost opportunity to grill Al Qaeda's leader” (Anna Mulrine, CSM Staff writer),/ May 5, 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0505/Military-interrogators-Waterboarding-didn-t-yield-tips-that-led-to-bin-Laden

“Photos of U.S. troops defiling corpses expose Afghan war’s savagery” (David Walsh), April  

19, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/afgh-a19.shtml

Images

“High Crimes” was 2002 film (starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman) portraying an case of U.S. military massacre of Latin American villagers, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0257756/

Nancy Pelosi image at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediarepublic/category/politics/

When the president does it, Nixon-Obama

http://fullmetalpatriotblog.com/2011/10/government-accountability-office-reports-executive-office-of-the-president-violated-federal-law/

File:Waterboarding From The Inquisition To Guantanamo.jpg

commons.wikimedia.org

stoptorture.png

blogs.law.harvard.edu
DoNoHarm.jpg
flashreport.org
no_war.jpg
greenpeace.org.uk
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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What goes for governance, diplomacy in 21st century Washington

DRONE
Washington's preferred
Weapon of mass destruction

The prosecutable and the scot-free

Edited, re-reported with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Iranian author and political analyst Ismail Salami has responded to the latest misguided, precedent-keeping “Axis of Evil-istic weapons-of-mass-destruction” declarations from another government in power. “Isn’t it strange,” Ismail Salami writes, “that Iran, which has long been a victim of terror and assassinations, should become a target of baseless U.S. allegations.”

Center image Iran - Britannica

Reuters reported yesterday U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s allegations that Iran had backed “a plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington.”  The Attorney General further claimed the alleged plot “was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the guardian of Iran’s 32-year-old revolution, and the Quds force, its covert, operational arm.”

Convenient criminals — Allegations of convenience

History of covert operations against Iranians

“Apart from sabotaging the nuclear program in Iran,” Ismail Salami continued, “Washington has shamelessly engaged in a series of assassinations against Iranian nuclear scientists.

DRONE

“In 2010, nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran.

“On November 29, 2010, two other scientists were targeted by bombs that hit their cars in the capital. The assailants on motorcycles had stuck magnetized bombs to the victims’ cars.

“Professor Majid Shahriari was killed on the spot. Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi and his wife sustained minor injuries and were taken to a hospital. Citing French Weekly Le Canard, the Jerusalem Post carried a report “that Mossad [the national intelligence agency of Israel] had conducted the assassinations — ‘with the help of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Secret Service, MI6.’”

In a Republican debate this year in Iowa, “[F]ormer U.S. Gov. Tim Pawlenty spoke venomously in favor of attacking [Iran] and boldly lauded the ‘good works’ of the U.S. government in assassinating Iranian scientists and the ‘good work’ of creating the Stuxnet computer virus — confirming that “the USA was behind all those atrocities.”

Now in a full-bore campaign for the U.S. presidency and tens of thousands of protesters on U.S. streets, the current government has drawn the wagons in an easy image: evil axis-foreign weapons-of-mass-destruction, continuing Washington’s strategy of “demonizing and isolating the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Rabid “diplomacy”

“‘It’s critically important that we unite the world in the isolation of and dealing with the Iranians,” Salami quotes the U.S. vice president. “‘That’s the surest way to be able to get results.’

Region targeted and in conflict 

“[Adding] more fuel to Iranophobia,” Ismail Salami writes, “U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on other countries to work together against what is becoming a ‘clearer and clearer threat’ from Iran. Referencing the “‘minds of many [unnamed] diplomats and government officials,’” the secretary reportedly said the alleged plot “‘crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.’

“Some pundits believe  the U.S. move will put Iran in the forefront of global hatred [but] this will never happen,” Salami concludes, “as the U.S. and … Israel have already played similar games about Iran over and over again. … What the U.S. government has done to the Iranian nation is not easy to forget …”

Land between Iran and Russia
Azerbaijan

“Implausible” charge

Meanwhile, former U.S. CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency Officer Philip Giraldi is reported to be questioning the U.S. allegations that Iran was planning to wage terror attacks in the United States. Giraldi told Press TV he does not “‘understand how an allegedly sophisticated plot …would involve a drug gang from Mexico. It just doesn’t make any sense.’”

Calling the reports “‘implausible,’” Giraldi said he hopes the American public will “be skeptical about the allegations.”

Ghosts never die

Guantanamo prisoners 2002

Finally, under the heading of unfinished business of presidential atrocities, Amnesty International today is urging Canadian authorities to arrest and prosecute former U.S. President George W. Bush for authorizing torture in his U.S.-led war on terror. 

The former president is expected to attend an October 20 economic summit in Surrey; and when he does, Amnesty’s Susan Lee says, Canada, under its international obligations, is required “to arrest and prosecute” the former head of state “given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture.”

Sources and notes

“U.S. playing the Saudi envoy game,” October 12, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204218.html

“Iranians charged in U.S. over assassination plot,” October 11, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/11/us-usa-security-iran-idUSTRE79A5E020111011WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters)

Ismail Salami

Iranian author and political analyst Ismail Salami has written several books and articles on the Middle East some of which have been translated into more than ten languages. His analyses may be found on other online publications such as Veterans Today, Media Monitors, Global Research, Opinion Maker, Palestine Chronicle, Dissident Voice, Foreign Policy Journal, Al-Ahram, Arab News, Salem News, Intifada Palestine, Iran Review, Counter Currents, Turkish Weekly Journal, Intrepid Report and Ramallah Online.

 “U.S. allegation of Iran plot ‘implausible.’” October 12, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/204065.html

“Amnesty urges Canada to arrest Bush II,” October 12, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204211.html

Caption: Guantánamo prisoners 2002 Photo: picture-alliance/dpa Image may be subject to copyright, http://msrb.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/spanish-prosecutors-will-investigate-guantanamo-torture/

Map images Britannica
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire
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U.S. Constitution staggers but stands under terror mongers

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
“The constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction.”

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan today in the case of Ahmed Ghailani barred testimony of a government witness whose identity was obtained through torture.”

Human Rights First’s Daphne Eviatar reported from the court —

Judge Kaplan “upheld a longstanding principle of the rule of law, barring testimony derived from the torture of the defendant. The issue here is not that the testimony has been barred, but that the defendant was tortured. The fact that [the judge] recognizes that evidence derived through torture is inadmissible also strengthens the view that civilian federal courts — not military commissions — can best handle difficult terrorism cases.”

The barred testimony in the Ghailani case is not the only evidence the government will present in this case. The government convicted four of Ghailani’s alleged co-conspirators in the same federal court, without the testimony of [the barred] witness. The significance of Judge Kaplan’s decision signals “that the court will not countenance evidence derived from torture.”

Judge Kaplan issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which the prosecution witness, Hussein Abebe, testified about his dealings with authorities.

“Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA,” Al Jazeera reports. “The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani’s treatment while in CIA custody,” the judge said. “It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced.”

Defense counsel had asked the judge to exclude Abebe’s testimony on the grounds that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress. The judge concluded that the government had failed to prove that Abebe’s testimony was sufficiently attenuated [thinned, separate and apart] from Ghailani’s coerced statements to permit the testimony into evidence.

“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly, Judge Kaplan wrote of his decision. [The court] is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live.… [But]

“The constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction.”


Sources and notes


Ahmed Ghailani is accused of assisting in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Two hundred and twenty-four (224) people died, hundreds suffered wounds. Ghailani is the first former Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in civilian U.S. federal court.


Human Rights First, a New York and Washington D.C.-based non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization publishes a mission of building “respect for human rights and the rule of law and helping to ensure the dignity to which everyone is entitled and to stem intolerance, tyranny, and violence,” http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/usls/2010/alert/665/; http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about_us/about_us.aspx


Amnesty International wrote before Kaplan’s latest ruling —


The decision to prosecute Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani in an ordinary court instead of continuing to hold him in indefinite detention without criminal trial or trying him before a military commission is a welcome decision. However, a shadow lies over the proceedings.


The trial serves as a reminder that Ahmed Ghailaini remains the only Guantánamo detainee to have been transferred to the U.S. mainland for prosecution. Nearly a year after the U.S. Attorney General announced that five other detainees would be brought to New York to be prosecuted in relation to the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, the five men, along with more than 150 others, remain in Guantánamo without charge or trial. Many of detainees and survivors of the attacks “continue to wait for justice.”


Although the U.S. government has succeeded in seeing off defense motions to have charges against Ahmed Ghailani dismissed, government has failed “to ensure accountability and remedy for such human rights violations – including the crimes under international law of enforced disappearance and torture” – leaving an injustice that must be addressed urgently and thoroughly.


“The trial of Ahmed Ghailani, who was arrested in Gujarat in Pakistan on July 24 or 25, 2004, and secretly handed over to U.S. custody on a still classified date the following month, could and should have occurred years ago. However, U.S. authorities chose to subject Ghailani to two years in the secret detention program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).


“During that time, he was subjected to enforced disappearance and to detention conditions and interrogation techniques that violated the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. He was transferred to indefinite military custody in Guantánamo in early September 2006 before being charged for trial by military commission in March 2008.


“Four months after President Barack Obama took office (May 21, 2009), the Department of Justice announced that Ahmed Ghailani would be tried, not by military commission but in federal court under an indictment that had been pending against him (since March 2001) in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. On June 9, 2009, he was transferred from Guantánamo to New York and charged with complicity in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people were killed and many more injured. He faces a life sentence if convicted.”


“USA: Shadow over justice— Absence of accountability and remedy casts shadow over opening of trial of former secret detainee accused in embassy bombings — The trial of a Tanzanian man transferred last year from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to the U.S. mainland for prosecution is set to begin in New York on October 4, 2010.” Amnesty International USA, October 1, 2010, http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGUSA20101001001&lang=e


Lewis A. Kaplan (b. 1944, in Staten Island, NY), Federal Judicial Service: Judge, U. S. District Court, Southern District of New York, nominated by William J. Clinton May 5, 1994, to a seat vacated by Gerard Louis Goettel, confirmed by the Senate August 9, 1994, received commission on August 10, 1994
Education: University of Rochester, A.B., 1966, Harvard Law School, J.D., 1969
Professional Career: Law clerk, Hon. Edward McEntee, U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, 1969-1970
Private practice: New York City, 1970-1994
Special master: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1982-1983
http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=1226&cid=999&ctype=na&instate=na


“U.S. judge bans Guantanamo witness — Court delays start of the first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee citing irregularities with state witness,” October 6, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/10/2010106152441461929.html


United States District Court Southern District of New York
United States of America against
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Defendent

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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; The Book Den Ltd: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net[DanvilleNY]

U.S. Gov't denies and defends —

Detention, rendition, torture, secrecy —
No cease and desist order, no apology for  breach of law, abuse of human rights past or present
Editing with comment by Carolyn Bennett of an American Civil Liberties Union account of fallout, continuing abuses connected with the United States’ protracted global war on terror and related cover-ups

Mohamedou Ould Salahi spent months in total-isolation detainment at Guantánamo. While there, he was —

Kept in a freezing cold cell
Shackled to the floor Shackled to the floor
Sexually abused by female interrogators
Deprived of food
Made to drink salt water
Forced to stand for hours at a time in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music
Threatened with harm to his family
Forbidden from praying
Beaten and subjected to ‘frequent flyer’ tactics — awakened every few hours and moved to a new cell.

A 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo confirmed and documented the abuse of Mohamedou Ould Salahi.

Mohamedou Ould Salahi had been “captured far from any battlefield. [He] never took part in any hostilities or attack against the United States. [He] has been in U.S. custody for nine years.”

Mohamedou Ould Salahi had been arrested initially in 2001 in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al Qaeda. The U.S. government then rendered Salahi to Jordan where, for eight months, he suffered detention, interrogation, and abuse. From Jordan, the U.S. officials rendered him to Bagram, Afghanistan; then to Guantánamo, where he has languished since August 2002.

So tainted by torture were Mr. Salahi’s self-incriminating statements that one military attorney gave up, saying the statements “could not ethically be used against Salahi.” Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch told his supervisors that he [Couch] was ‘morally opposed’ to Salahi’s treatment and for that reason he would not participate in the prosecution before military commissions.

ACLU cooperating attorney, Jonathan Hafetz, says, “Mr. Salahi’s treatment presents a case study of all that is wrong with Guantánamo [and that] upholding the order directing Salahi’s release would demonstrate the vital role of the courts in remedying these wrongs and restoring the rule of law.”

We must burn neither liberty nor law

in the searing rhetoric of “security.”

We cannot allow government to yell terrorism as fire
spreading through a madding crowd,

instilling fear;

shoring up its campaign of global lawlessness.

“Like the Bush administration,” the ACLU notes in its call for a return to the rule of law, “the Obama administration has claimed the authority to hold terrorism suspects in indefinite military detention — even suspects captured far away from any battlefield who have never taken up arms against the United States.

“The so-called ‘war on terror’ is no traditional war. It has no geographic or temporal limitations. How will it end? How would we know if it did? Where is it taking place? So far, individuals have been captured in more than 50 countries and the list is sure to grow.

“This system is illegal and un-American.

“We must uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. That means treating suspected terrorists as suspected criminals, not warriors; charging them and prosecuting them in ordinary federal courts. We cannot let our government use the threat of terrorism to justify a system in which individuals picked up anywhere in the world [U.S. included] can be held indefinitely by the military without charge or trial”  [http://www.aclu.org/theworldisnotabattlefield/].

Sources and notes
The American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys are urging higher courts to uphold Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi’s successful challenge to his unlawful detention. The U.S. government is appealing the ruling.
“Lawyers For Guantánamo Prisoner in Court To Defend Successful Challenge To Detention — Appeals Court Should Uphold Ruling That Salahi Be Released, says ACLU, ”September 17, 2010, http://www.aclu.org/national-security/lawyers-guantanamo-prisoner-court-defend-successful-challenge-detention
In addition to Theresa Duncan and Jonathan Hafetz of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A., other attorneys on the case are Melissa Goodman and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU National Security Project, Nancy Hollander of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A., and Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A.

See also ACLU’s “Justice Denied — what happens when the rule of law is broken and true justice is denied?”


ACLU video series ‘JUSTICE DENIED — Voices from Guantánamo’ — features former detainees U.S. officials held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo for years without charge or trial, without any meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention.


“In the American system of justice, suspects are tried and prosecuted based on the constitutional principle of due process. People are presumed innocent (they are supposed to be) until proved guilty. Not swept up, tortured and indefinitely detained.”


The men whose stories are told in the video series ‘JUSTICE DENIED were captured, abused, held and released — without explanation or apology [http://www.aclu.org/indefinitedetention/video.html].
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]