by TChris

Khaled el-Masri was a victim of the CIA's rendition program. TalkLeft described him as "a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged. He was released five months later without being charged with a crime." It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. eventually admitted its mistake to Germany. But Germany may not have clean hands in Masri's kidnapping and detention.

[O]n Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of ... Khaled el-Masri ....

by TChris

Another Republican senator has publicly disagreed with the president's insistence that he's entitled to unreviewable power to spy on Americans. Lindsey Graham:

"I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."

While the president maintains he has the authority to bypass courts when he orders the government to engage in domestic surveillance, he's no longer so adamant that the law doesn't need to be changed. His new, improved, flip-flopped position: Congress should retroactively approve everything he's done. Gosh, Mr. President, if you already had the legal authority to engage in domestic surveillance, why do you need retroactive congressional approval?

At least the president is consistent about one thing: he doesn't want Congress to investigate his abusive circumvention of FISA.

by TChris

A number of military lawyers have objected to the Bush administration's aggressive use of coercive techniques to interrogate detainees. The administration, of course, refused to listen. It continued a policy of cruel mistreatment while assuring the public that detainees were all treated humanely.

Writing in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer tells the story of Alberto Mora's effort to persuade the Pentagon to obey the law. As general counsel of the Navy, Mora challenged the administration's "disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects." Crucial to the story is a 22 page memo (pdf) marked "secret."

It reveals that Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful," "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse.

by TChris

As noted here, Pat Roberts, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, isn't particularly interested in protecting Americans from unwarranted surveillance, and seems to think that the best way to protect the president from criticism is to broaden FISA to give the executive branch greater power to intercept domestic communications. Even that isn't good enough for the Bush administration, which must have admonished Roberts for trying to think independently.

Yesterday the NY Times reported that Roberts isn't sure exactly how to reform FISA, but believes that NSA spying requests should still "come before the FISA court." That isn't what the White House thinks, so the Senate Intelligence Committee's majority staff director, Bill Duhnke, had to tell the Times that its reporting "didn't reflect 'the tenor and status' of the negotiations between Congress and the White House." Duhnke assured the press today that Roberts is open to allowing the administration to continue bypassing the FISA court, while preferring that "the entire (intelligence) committee be briefed and involved in oversight issues." In other words, business as usual, with perhaps a few more senators hearing classified information that they won't be able to share with the public. This is oversight?

by TChris

It's left to Harry Reid to accomplish a task that should be done routinely by the corporate media: fact-checking a presidential speech. The results are posted at Raw Story. The theme:

In his latest appearance before handpicked supporters, the president today called on the American people to just trust him with our nation's security. Trust him on Iraq. Trust him on domestic spying. And trust him on preparing and protecting America for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Unfortunately, more than five years of incompetence have failed to protect the American people and have eroded the president's credibility.

by TChris

The United Nations Human Rights Commission advocated the closure of the Guantánamo prison in a report issued this week. Today, a NY Times editorial blasts the Bush administration's refusal to recognize the damage that Guantánamo does to the nation's credibility as a protector of human rights.

The Bush administration offered its usual weak response, that President Bush has decided there is a permanent state of war that puts him above the law. And that is exactly the problem: by creating Guantánamo outside the legal system for prisoners who, according to Mr. Bush, have no rights, the United States is stuck holding these 500 men in perpetuity. The handful who may be guilty of heinous crimes can never be tried in a real court because of their illegal detentions. A vast majority did nothing or were guilty only of fighting on a battlefield, but the administration refuses to sort them out.

And the editorial reminds us that accountability has been erased from this administration's vocabulary.

by TChris

It's time to close Guantanamo. The prisoners detained there should be released or placed on trial. So says a report (pdf) issued by inspectors for the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

It focused in particular on the force-feeding of inmates on conducting hunger strikes, which is said was both a violation of human rights and of medical ethics, and of the use of interrogation techniques that go beyond what international law permits.

"The confusion with regard to authorized and unauthorized interrogation techniques is particularly alarming," it said.

Guantanamo is an embarrassment to the United States, a stain on the country's reputation as a guardian of human rights. It should be closed for that reason, if no other.

In responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the National Security Archives and the ACLU, the Justice Department announced to the court that it could begin releasing the internal documents the Bush Administration used to justify its warrantless surveillance program by March 3.

Officials now say the LA Library Tower attack that Bush discussed yesterday never got beyond the planning stage because one of the participant pilots backed out. (link fixed) We didn't foil the plan, they 86'd it.

But why did Bush bring it up yesterday? Why did he pick this particular threat? Particularly, if as he said, he wasn't intending to link it to his warrantless monitoring program.

Here's my speculation: He knew we're going to hear all about it in the Zacarias Moussaoui death penalty trial. Bush is telling the story his way. If the prosecution doesn't introduce the evidence concerning this threat and its purported participants, the defense may to show Moussaoui had no part in the 9/11 attacks.

The White House is pulling another fast one, this time with the Patriot Act. The Republican senators who joined the filibuster of the renewal legislation in December, John Sununu (NH), Larry Craig (ID), Lisa Murkowski (AL) and Chuck Hagel (NE) have made a deal with the White House. They will now vote for the revised Patriot Act, based upon insignificant and insufficient revisions agreed to by the White House.

Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. John Conyers are blasting the deal. From their press releases (no link yet, received by e-mail.)

Raw Story reports that Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has written Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a letter (pdf) asking him to answer 51 questions about the NSA warrantless electronic surveillance program by March 2. Among the questions:

• "Do you agree that FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) 'expressly prohibits' the specific activities under this program?"

• "What is the rationale for authorizing a program to conduct surveillance in a manner that does not require prior judicial review by the FISA court?"

The nuns of the Holy Name Monastery provide yet another reason we don't need to give the Government more power under the Patriot Act:

The sisters say the monastery's main bank account was frozen without explanation in November, creating financial headaches and making the Benedictine nuns hopping mad. They were told the Patriot Act was the cause.

"I think the Patriot Act is unwise, let's say, and that if it happened to us, it can happen to anybody," said Sister Jean Abbott, the monastery's business manager. "I think people need to know that nobody is safe from, in some cases, really ridiculous scrutiny."

Sen. Russ Feinglod provides a Patriot Act update in his Daily Kos diary.