War on Terror – Page 36

“Gagged But Not Dead.” Yet.

Published on December 16, 2005

Remember Sibel Edmonds? She’s the whistleblower who exposed Bush administration ineptitude and malfeasance inside the FBI –

When she was hired by the FBI as a translator after 9-11, Edmonds, a Turkish American born in Iran and fluent in Farsi and Turkish among other languages, discovered an odd network within the FBI where, among other things, relatives of foreign diplomats were working as interpreters. They were translating FBI wiretaps of foreign diplomats suspected of spying. As it turned out, these suspect family members were relatives of the translators–in other words moles working in the translation section.

Edmonds found her own initials forged on improper translations of documents–translations she had never seen before.

Edmonds was startled when what she considered ill-trained and incompetent interpreters were sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate detainee interviews. For example, one Turkish Kurd was dispatched to interpret Farsi, a language he did not speak.

Edmonds learned that a longtime reliable FBI asset who reported on Afghanistan, told FBI agents in April 2001 of al Qaeda?s plans to attack the U.S.

In the course of her work, Edmonds discovered Islamic terrorists might well have become entangled in ongoing international drug and money laundering. She suspects that this knowledge was one of the reasons the Justice Department classified everything in her case.

When Edmonds sought to protest these and other irregularities to her superiors in the FBI, she was called a ?whore? by her supervising agent, who told her he would next see her in jail. She was dismissed and escorted out of the FBI building. Edmonds never got a hearing before the 9-11 Commission, though she did have a chance to tell her story, sort of, on the side. A recent federal appeals court hearing on her case was made secret in the interest of national security. All in all, she was cast out as an enemy of the state. To fight back, she has launched a new organization to protect other government whistleblowers.

Copyright ? 2005 Village Voice Media, Inc.

The US government is pulling out all the stops to ensure Edmonds’ story is not made public.

In June 2002 the FBI itself acknowledged the truth of some of Edmonds’ allegations, and US Senators Grassley and Leahy wrote to the Justice Department Inspector General asking specific questions about Edmonds’ allegations – they say that the FBI has confirmed many of her allegations in unclassified briefings but that the letter stating this was later retroactively classified in May 2004. Members of congress have also published documents related to her case on their websites, only to be ordered to remove them on national security grounds.

I have often wondered why there seems to be a preponderance of women whistleblowers? Katherine Gun, Cynthia Cooper, Sherron Watkins, Colleen Rowley , Sarah Keays… it can’t be that women are more honest or fair minded than men. It’s only a personal theory, but it may be that as women tend to be kept outside the overwhelmingly male power structures within the average large organisation, they are already alienated, which might make coming forward less of a moral dilemma. Whatever the motivation, or gender, whistleblowers need support.

Edmonds has now gone online with her website, Just A Citizen. She has a petition to get rid of the gag order and requests that people link to her site to ensure the information stays out there. She is worried, and I can hardly blame her – these are not good people and they’ve shown few scruples so far. We owe it to principled whistleblowers to help, and we particularly owe it to women whistleblowers. They’re not just fighting organisational corruption alone, but as women, they have to fight doubly hard to be heard.

I urge you to link to the site and sign the petition. Let’s get the information out there. They can’t gag us all.

Defence lawyer at Guantanamo

Published on May 11, 2005

The Talking Dog has an interview with Joshua Dratel, defence lawyer for David Hicks, an Australian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay. The interview had some interesting nuggets in it:

Talking Dog: Any reason why Mr. Lindh was charged with a crime, whereas, for example, Yasir Hamdi, also a citizen, or Hicks, were denoted “enemy combatants” and not charged, while Zaccarias Moussaoui WAS charged? Has any of this ever been explained?

Joshua Dratel: It seems that the only “overt distinction” is that by original design, citizens are not eligible for the military commissions. Of course, they never made a distinction there in the case of Moussaoui– his case seemed to be the product of a debate betweeh the Departments of Justice and Defense as to which should prosecute him, and at that time, the criminal justice people prevailed. They have not, apparently, prevailed since.

In addition to Jose Padilla, as citizen unlawful combatants, a man named Al-Mari is still being detained in a brig in South Carolina; he’s represented by Larry Lusberg of the Gibbons firm in New Jersey. That case is completely off the radar.

[…]

Talking Dog: Can you briefly summarize what you in particular find unfair about the military commission process at Guantanimo?

Joshua Dratel: Basically, there are no rules. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs court-martials — that’s been thrown out. No standards at all. Total arbitrariness. No efforts at anything resembling fairness. Let’s start with evidence and proof. People don’t know this, of course. The government’s “proof” consists entirely of interrogators reading from reports of their interrogations– without any basis to challenge the underlying accounts of witnesses, such as the witnesses themselves (who have frequently been shipped out of Guantanamo) or their interpreters, or the conditions under which the statements were taken, which were frequently, to put it politely, “coercive.” Just statements from the detainees themselves– regardless of whether obtained from abuse, or coercion, even rising to torture. In the commissions, you simply can’t challenge them– you don’t have access to the witnesses.

Untitled

Published on January 22, 2003

Shadow of the Hegemon responds to Junius:

…

I think Chris misses the point, however, in that the pre-emption doctrine is clearly meant by its creators to be applicable solely and exclusively to the United States, not to any other regime (whether democratic or not.) In this, it’s far less of a expression of what the United States would consider to be good foreign policy and far more a simple declaration that the United States government can and will intervene whenever and wherever it sees fit, not caring about international law, international bodies, allies (who are allies only as long as they do not oppose the U.S.; witness the reaction of the Bush administration and its policy satellites to naysayers on Iraq) or even public opinion. If anybody else attempts to employ the doctrine, the U.S. can (and probably will) respond that the preemption doctrine is a privilege solely of the U.S. government, as it alone has the power and the moral authority to wield it. (Look at the “we will allow no rivals to appear” part of the Doctrine. It only makes sense if one believes that the only state with the right to hegemony or even Great Power status is the United States.)

Top Stories Thursday 28 Nov

Published on November 28, 2002

The Sideshow on the alleged differences between men and women:

It’s rubbish, of course. Despite all appearances, I would argue that women are at least as interested in sex as men are, it’s just that we’re less convinced that we’re going to get it from any old roll in the hay. Intercourse as an activity is pretty much defined in terms of what the guy does – he has to be aroused (hard) while the woman can be cold and still do it. He finishes and then it’s over. It doesn’t really have much to do with whether we’re in the mood, let alone whether we have an orgasm. It’s just physical reality: that particular act can satisfy a man without engaging a woman’s eroticism at all. But we love to be aroused and we can have orgasms that are absolutely as consuming and powerful as any man’s, and we even fall asleep afterwards all relaxed and happy. We’re interested in the thing that does that to us, but it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that intercourse is that thing. But “relationship” isn’t necessarily that thing, either. Because in our society we define “sex” as “intercourse” (yes, we still do) and we think intercourse is supposed to be That Thing, we can pretend that only men are really prioritizing sex. But women, trust me, will put up with a lot for good sex. We just don’t always realize that it is sex that’s making us be so crazy. So we think we’re “more mature” because we are looking at something that is bigger and more important than sex, while men are just focused on what we regard as shallow and trivial and “merely physical”. (And we’re wrong about that part, too.)

The Sideshow cannot believe it:

And then I read, also via Atrios, that of all people Henry Bloody Kissinger, America’s biggest war criminal, has been appointed to head the 9/11 investigation. (Hey, isn’t September 11th a big day in Kissinger’s history, too?) Even I can’t believe some of the stuff that comes out of this administration. The only reason they haven’t got all of their convicted criminals and unindicted co-conspirators in this administration is because some are too busy doing talk radio or, in Nixon’s case, in Hell, to join them.

Atrios has the report of the Kissinger Commision on
11-9 already:

Report of the Kissinger Commission

Muslims attacked us because they are bad and they hate our freedom. Our noble intelligence agencies did the best they could. Our recommendation is that we should curtail our freedoms, so that they won’t hate us so much anymore.

Love,

Henry