Spintested: 06/26/10

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Saturday, June 26, 2010

==Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. One of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- & then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole." In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the MilitaryCommissionsAct, but in 2008, the SupremeCourt, in BoumedieneVsBush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

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Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

==The Obama administration has refused to release Odaini for the past 16 months, & fought vehemently in this habeas proceeding to keep him imprisoned. As the court put it, the Obama DOJ argued "vehemently" that there was evidence that Odaini was part of AlQaeda. In fact, the ObamaAdministration knew this was false. This WashingtonPost article this weekend quotes an "administration official" as saying: "The bottom line is: We don't have anything on this kid." But after Obama decreed in January that no Yemeni detainees would be released -- even completely innocent ones, and even though the Yemeni government wants their innocent prisoners returned -- Obama DOJ lawyers basically lied to the court by claiming there was substantial evidence to prove that Odaini was part of AlQaeda even though they know that is false. In other words, the ObamaAdministration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last 8 years, since he's 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong.

It really is hard to imagine many things worse, more criminal, than imprisoning people for years whom you know are innocent, while fighting in court to keep them imprisoned. But that's exactly what the ObamaAdministration is doing. ==

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/pundits
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Offshore Drilling Companies Sue To Attempt To Get Drilling Ban Lifted

I have thirty years in the industry and know a hell of a lot on the subject

=================================

You have nothing. You're an anonymous person, just like everyone else here.

Apparently you are that ig.no.rant for you believe that if we stopped offshore drilling, there would be no oil. Or that alternative products exist for those we are currently using which are manufactured with oil. Or that we can't conserve.

We're going to have to get off oil sooner or later (they're not making any more dinosaurs); now is a perfect time, as it's the source of just about every one of our problems, and why we're broke. Think of all the money we'd save if we eliminated the only reason that the Pentagon exists (to plunder oil), and why we spend more than the top 20 military spending nations of the world.
About Gulf Oil Spill
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Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

As a side note, isn't it interesting how much energy and zeal Obama exerts in 'judge-shopping' when it's something he wants (the ability to abduct and imprison anyone in the world without charges, evidence judicial review and oversight), as opposed to how he's dragging his feet on challenging the ruling overturning the drilling moratorium?
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Apparently, what Obama called "a legal black hole at Guantanamo" is a heinous injustice, but "a legal black hole at Bagram" is the Embodiment of Hope. Evidently, Obama would only feel "terror" if his child were abducted & taken to Guantanamo & imprisoned "without even getting one chance to ask why & prove their innocence." But if the very same child were instead taken to Bagram & treated exactly the same way, that would be called Justice -- or, to use his jargon, Pragmatism. And what kind of person hails a SupremeCourt decision as "protecting our core values" -- as Obama said of Boumediene -- only to then turn around & make a complete mockery of that ruling by insisting that the CherishedSacredRights it recognized are purely a function of where the President orders a detainee-carrying military plane to land?

Independently, what happened to Obama's eloquent insistence that "restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely isn't going to make us safer; in fact, recent evidence shows it's probably making us less safe"? How does our policy of invading Afghanistan & then putting people at Bagram with no charges of any kind dispose people in that country, & the broader Muslim world, to the UnitedStates? If a country invaded the US & set up prisons where Americans from around the world were detained indefinitely & denied all rights to have their detention reviewed, how would it dispose you to the country doing that?==

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/21/bagram/index.html
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Even worse, when Obama went to the Senate floor in September, 2006, to speak against the habeas-denying provisions of the MilitaryCommissionsAct, this is what he melodramatically intoned:

"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. . . .

By giving suspects a chance -- even one chance -- to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit. . . .

Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe."

KEEP READING
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

But the Obama administration was undeterred by this loss. They quickly appealed JudgeBates' ruling. As the NYT put it about that appeal: "The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight." Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. CircuitCourt of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan & then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a US federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

So congratulations to the UnitedStates & BarackObama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world & then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind. When the Boumediene decision was issued in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign, JohnMcCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." But Obama hailed it as "a rejection of the BushAdministration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo," & he praised the Court for "rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism & respecting habeas corpus."

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About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Immediately following Boumediene, the BushAdministration argued that the decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram -- including even those detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned. Amazingly, the Bush DOJ -- in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention -- contended that if they abduct someone & ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind. In other words, the detainee's Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged. One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as TheNewYorkTimes put it, Obama lawyers "told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former PresidentBush’s legal team."

But last April, JohnBates, the Bush-43-appointed, rightwing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan & then shipped to Bagram.

JudgeBates explained that the Bagram detainees are "virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene," & that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same: namely, "the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely."

KEEP READING
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Consider that with this, Virginia Jeff:

==Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. One of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- & then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole." In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the MilitaryCommissionsAct, but in 2008, the SupremeCourt, in BoumedieneVsBush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

KEEP READING
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

But even to Senator Carl Levin, the real reason Guantanamo won't close:

=="There's a lot of inertia" against closing the prison, "& the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see," said SenatorCarlLevin, the MichiganDemocratic chairman of the SenateArmedServicesCommittee . . . . .

Levin portrayed the administration as unwilling to make a serious effort to exert its influence, contrasting its muted response to legislative hurdles to closing Guantánamo with "very vocal" threats to veto financing for a fighter jet engine it opposes.

Last year, for example, the administration stood aside as lawmakers restricted the transfer of detainees into the UnitedStates except for prosecution. And its response was silence several weeks ago, Levin said, as the House & Senate ArmedServicesCommittees voted to block money for renovating the Illinois prison to accommodate detainees, & to restrict transfers from Guantánamo to other countries -- including, in the Senate version, a bar on Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Somalia. About 130 of the 181 detainees are from those countries.

"They are not really putting their shoulder to the wheel on this issue," Levin said of WhiteHouse officials. "It's pretty dormant in terms of their public positions."==

That's at the heart of the critique of the ObamaAdministration which defenders refuse to address, opting instead to beat the same strawman over & over no matter how many times it's pointed out what they're doing.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/26/guantanamo/index.html
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

The primary reason why Congress has acted to impede the closing of Guantanamo is because the Obama has allowed it to, & even encouraged it to do so with his complete silence & inaction. Those who argue that it's not Obama's fault because he can't control Congress, the reality is that Congress is doing what it does because the WhiteHouse is content with or even supportive of that, while pretending in public to lament it. Numerous examples of that truth - http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/22/impotence/index.html.

KEEP READING -
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

But even if it required legislation, Obama & Democrats would love for their supporters to believe it's all the Republicans' fault.

The fact of the matter is that Democrats don't need Republicans for passing anything. Democrats enjoy a greater majority in both houses of Congress than either party has in decades. Even without 60. But Obama doesn't need 60 to pass legislation. He doesn't need Republicans to pass legislation.

All Democrats need: 50 + Biden

But they won't do that.

Democrats also won't exercise the discretion that Rule 22 allows: Making Republicans actually filibuster, instead of just threatening to do it.

Rule 22 gives the Senate Majority Leader the discretion to actually make the call. Filibustering is hard on those soft, pampered bodies. HarryReid should them do it, over every issue where they threaten to do it -- Americans love reality TV. 'Survivor - Washington, DC'.

But Obama & the DLC-controlled Democratic Party aren't doing that. Because it might actually work to get Democratic voters' legislative agenda made into the law of the land & do good for the People. And that's not what Obama&Company are there for. They are there to do the work of the transnational corporations, and preventing that are the liberals.

So Obama reaches out for Republicans, watering down the legislation that they won't vote for. Because everything that the parties do, both parties, is for the next election campaign.

Democrats could even change the supermajority rule, do it by SIMPLE majority (50 + 1)
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. One of Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- & then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.

The Bush DOJ -- in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention -- contended that if they abduct someone & ship them to Guantanamo, then that person has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind. In other words, the detainee's Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.

One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when Obama lawyers told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of Bush’s legal team.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/21/bagram/index.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

Obama has a nasty habit of conceding that which isn't his to concede. Obama cuts secret deals, out of oversight of the American people (Congress). I've yet to find one issue on which Obama shares the values or beliefs of Democratic voters' interest groups. Not environmentally, not on foreign policy, not domestically, not on healthcare, jobs, nothing -- Obama is a DINO. So for him to be negotiating on behalf of all of these different interest groups is something of a stacked deck. It would be like you playing against yourself in a game of checkers. That's not how fair negotiations take place, or how lasting contracts that all can and do abide by happen.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

"If you're someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for a$$assination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn't you support or acquiesce to? I'd really like to hear an answer to that. That's the question Al G0re asked about GeorgeBush in a 2006 speech condemning Bush's claimed powers merely to eavesdrop on and imprison American citizens without charges, let alone a$$assinate them: "If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? . . . If the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can't he do?" Can anyone defending this Obama policy answer that question?"

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/25/assassinations/index.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

"If you're someone who believes, or are at least willing to acquiesce to the claim, that the U.S. President has the power to target your fellow citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process, what unchecked presidential powers wouldn't you support or acquiesce to? I'd really like to hear an answer to that. That's the question Al Gore asked about George Bush in a 2006 speech condemning Bush's claimed powers merely to eavesdrop on and imprison American citizens without charges, let alone assassinate them: "If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? . . . If the president has th[is] inherent authority. . . . then what can't he do?" Can anyone defending this Obama policy answer that question?"

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/25/assassinations/index.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

A growing part of the Obama legacy:

When the history of the Bush era is written, the obvious question will be: what was done about the systematic war crimes, torture regime, chronic lawbreaking, and even human experimentation which that administration perpetrated on the world? And the answer is now just as obvious: nothing, because the subsequent President -- Barack Obama -- decreed that We Must Look Forward, Not Backward, and then engaged in extreme measures to carry out that imperial, Orwellian dictate by shielding those crimes from investigation, review, adjudication and accountability.

All of that would be bad enough if his generous immunity were being applied across the board. But it isn't. Numerous incidents now demonstrate that as high-level Bush lawbreakers are vested with presidential immunity, low-level whistle blowers who exposed serious wrongdoing and allowed citizens some minimal glimpse into what our government does are being persecuted by the Obama administration with a vengeance.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/08/legacy/index.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Closing Guantanamo Bay Fades As A Priority

The reason for having a prison offshore (and Obama not only has Gitmo, but he expanded Baghram, too), is to be able to deny detainees rights, including torture. Yes, it's still going on. Along with murder. No judicial oversight.

This administration is a continuation of the criminal Bush administration.

How many Americans are targeted for assassination?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/25/assassinations/index.html

Pure Kafka-

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/29/kafka/index.html
About Guantánamo Bay
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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