War on Terror – Page 30

US Military Lawyer: Bush’s Military Commissions Are Kangaroo Courts

Published on March 26, 20071 Comment

Yes, Virginia, there’s still some decent Americans left. Step forward US Air Force Reserve officer and military lawyer Lt, Cl. Yvonne Bradley, JAG.

Bradley is in London to research the defence of her assigned defendant, Ethiopian Binyan Muhammed, about to undergo US ‘justice’ at a Bush/Gonzales military commssion in Guantanamo Bay.

Everything we see, read and hear at the moment is rehearsed, rehashed or re-spun: it’s all stuff we know already. No one speaks off the cuff any more. So it was startling and heartening to to hear what Bradley had to say on the subject on Today Programme this morning.

[Sorry, the clip’s available only until tomorrow morning SFAIK].

This isn’t an official transcript but my own, so any errors are mine and the ellipses occur where the interviewer makes a statement or goes off to some other interviewee.

BBC: Introduction of Lt Col Bradley, brief outline of history of military commissions.

YB: I cannot compare when I stand outside the Old Bailey and consider military commissions… here I see fairness and due process..justice. In Guanatanamo none of those things will exist. There is no way, I’m convinced, that anyone would recieve a fair trial under the current rules, the current procedures…that they are all designed for one thing – to assure the government a conviction.

BBC:You think the result is already predetermined and no matter what the defence the result will be “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty”?

YB: No matter what brilliant defence anyone can present with in the commissions will result in one thing and I think you put it beautifully – guilty. guilty. guilty. I have to call it the way it is, it’s a kangaroo court.

BBC: Given your major misgivings why are you taking part in these military commissions? Should’nt you be washing your hands of them and saying “I’m having nothing to do with it”?

YB: Part of the system is having defence attorneys who will advocate for their client. In cases of this nature, which may be more political, this may take place outside the courtroom.

BBC: interviewer cuts to US officials Thomas L Hemingway and John Bellinger and Amnesty Intl re military commissions act and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘confession’

YB: I am totally convinced that in 15, 20, 40 years from now we’ll look back on these trials the same way as we look back on the McCarthy era, the same way we look back on Japanese internment, the way we look back at some of the great injustices that happen and say “What did we do, what were we thinking’?

This an an open acknowledgement by serving US military that these military commissions are political show trials and that JAG lawyers are prepared to enter the political arena to fight them. Chalk up another first for Bushco, bringing military lawyers in civilian politics.

But as it turns out what Bradley said wasn’t quite off the cuff. She’sspoken out from the outset and all the way through the process not only putting her military career in jeopardy but risking military discipline herself by continuing to speak out against their illegality even during the hearings themselves:

The issues regarding legal representation then took a surprising turn. Maj. Bradley told the commission that due to an ethical conflict, she could not proceed as Muhammad’s detailed military counsel without violating the rules of the Pennsylvania Bar (where she is licensed to practice). She did not explain what the ethical issue was, but it was clear from the proceedings that counsel and Col. Kohlmann had discussed it in a private meeting and through other communications. Col. Kohlmann ordered Maj. Bradley to fulfill her duty to zealously represent her client and told her that if she disobeyed his order, she did so at her “own peril.”

Now, there have been at least two other military commissions cases in which the Presiding Officer has had to order military defense counsel to represent his/her client: in the case of al Bahlul and yesterday in Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case. In each, in the end and under protest, military lawyers did participate in the proceedings – in some fashion – on their client’s behalf. But today, Maj. Bradley did not. Instead, when Col. Kohlmann asked her to begin voir dire – in which counsel question the Presiding Officer to ascertain potential bias – Maj. Bradley stood and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is hard for me to convey on the page the impact of Maj. Bradley’s decision not to participate in the proceedings against her client, despite Col. Kohlmann’s direct order.

Col. Kohlmann then told Maj. Bradley that if she had no questions, he would find that her client waived his rights to voir dire. Maj. Bradley responded that she wasn’t saying yes or no to voir dire, but that she couldn’t move forward as counsel given the ethical conflict she faced in this case. And so it went on:

Now that’s what I call a decent lawyer and a decent human being. If only there were more.

Another Shoe Drops

Published on March 20, 2007

Condi has a thing for Italian shoes, as is well known. she was buying Ferragamos on 5th Avenue as New Orleans drowned – and remember this 2005 picture and the way the US media salivated over those boots?

“Rice’s coat and boots speak of sex and power — such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.”

Condi had better stick to buying those Italian spike heels on the mainland US from now on, because according to the former Milan CIA Chief, now indicted in Italy, it seems that whole dominatrix thing was even truer than the slavering US media thought.

Around that time, strutting around in her Italian boots, Condi Rice was ordering the abduction and torture of an Italian resident. From today’s Der Spiegel :

CIA AGENT ON THE RUN‘I’ve Got Nothing to Lose’

By Georg Mascolo in Washington

Robert Lady, the former CIA chief in Milan, has gone into hiding. He is the subject of an extradition order from Italian authorities for the role he played in the kidnapping of radical Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan. Washington is seeking to derail the trial — perhaps because Condoleezza Rice may have given the operation the green light.

[My emphasis.]

US To Europeans: “We can Torture and Kidnap You and There’s Not A Damned Thing You Can Do About It.”

Published on March 4, 2007

Not only won’t holding an EC passport save you from being kidnapped and tortured by out of control CIA goons who won’t be disciplined for it, let alone charged, but if you then attempt to sue the criminals responsible for civil damages the American courts will just cover up for them by citing ‘national security’ –

The court said that to make his case, el-Masri “would be obliged to produce admissible evidence not only that he was detained and interrogated, but that the defendants were involved in his detention and interrogation in a manner that renders them personally liable to him.

“Such a showing could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes, staffs and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.

“The defendants could not properly defend themselves without using privileged evidence,” the decision said.

American Civil Liberties Union director Anthony Romero said the court was wrong.

“Regrettably, today’s decision allows CIA officials to disregard the law with impunity by making it virtually impossible to challenge their actions in court,” he said in a statement.

“The state secrets doctrine has become a shield that covers even the most blatant abuses of power,” he said.

With all due respect to those US expatriates who’re iving on the continent perhaps it’s time EU governments just started snatching random American students, or tourists for instance, from the crowds that throng here – to then ship them off blindfiolded, beaten and drugged, to be tortured in some hidden former Cold War hellhole. See how how you US citizens take it. Why not, this kind of behaviour is openly sanctioned by your government and courts and a large swathe of your population, what possible objection could there be?

Nothing personal, but what else is it going to take to make your country respect the law?

At The Court of The Littlest Emperor

Published on March 4, 2007

More reason to ratchet up that looming sense of unease and history spinning out of control… In an otherwise rather hagiographic piece by Irwin Stelrzer in the Sunday Times this morning

No matter how many years one spends in Washington, lunch with the president of the United States is an exciting prospect. Entering through a special door not accessible to tourist riffraff and the tight security only heighten the sense you are entering a special realm.

comes this little miniature:

[…]

And then in came the president. Bush is taller than he seems on television and chirpier. He is also refreshingly free of the pretence so common in this town. “Let’s eat,” he said and explained we were gathered to discuss Roberts’s book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples because “history informs the present”. His goals, he said, were to see what history can teach us today and to “pander to you powerful opinion-makers”. Such humour is typical of the man. In addition to Roberts and myself the group included the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, neocon Norman Podhoretz and theologian Michael Novak.

The president divulged with convincing calm that when it comes to pressure, “I just don’t feel any”. Why? His constituency, he feels, is the divine presence, to whom he must answer. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; his belief only goes so far as to inform him that there is good and evil. It is the president who must figure out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident that his policies are doing just that.

[…]

All of this led the president to turn the conversation to the old question of what exactly is “evil” and what constitutes “good”. The discussion centred on Novak’s contention that although there is indeed evil, there is no such thing as absolute good. The president didn’t buy that line. Bush’s formulation is that we are engaged in a war between absolute evil and good principles. These principles, the president said, are practised by imperfectly good men.

[My emphasis]

This was a lunch given so historian Andrew Roberts could brief Bush and Cheney on his historical ideas, one of which is:

Third lesson: don’t hesitate to intern your enemies for long periods. That policy worked in Ireland and during the second world war. Release should only follow victory.

The Decider gets to decide who his enemies are on the basis of what the invisible sky-fairy tells him and thinks that interning them indefintely is a mighty fine idea. How very reassuring.

Oh and the guest list for that lunch? A full hand of Neocon Hall of Shamers:

In addition to Roberts and myself the group included the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, neocon Norman Podhoretz and theologian Michael Novak. .

That would be this Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz and Michael Novak.

These people are what pass for the guardians of intellectual rigour at the court of the Littlest Emperor – a coterie of war criminals, wingnut welfare queens, revisionists, insane rightwing zealots and sycophantic divines, like a midwestern Rotary version of one of Mme de Pompadour’s salons. Only without the glamour or wit and armed with nuclear weapons.

UPDATE: The WaPo has this headline today:

Bush Shows New Willingness to Reverse Course

Wahahahahaha. As if.

We’ll Stop The Red Flag Nose Flying Here

Published on March 3, 2007

I’m not the world’s greatest Tim Ireland fan, but I see no reasoj why he’d make up this story. So I’d better get rid of that plastique red nose I’d been saving if it is true…

Via the The Parliamentary Protest Blog Ireland says that if you wear a red nose anywhere near the Houses of Parliament you’re risking arrest:

Tim Ireland from Bloggerheads warns about Red Nose Day on Friday 16th March 2007:

This is the first Red Nose Day to take place since the introduction of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

It is now illegal for you to wear a red nose or promote Red Nose Day in any way within the designated area surrounding Parliament if you do not first seek permission from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Simply wearing a red nose could result in a fine of £1,000.

Organising a Red Nose Day event that takes place within the designated area could result in a fine of £2,500 and/or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks.

No, I am not pulling your leg.

This ‘war on terror’ is getting silly, getting really very silly indeed.