Monday 23rd of December 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

a lawless universe .....

‘The fight over the Hamdan ruling heats up - as fears about its reach escalate.

David Bowker vividly remembers the first time he heard the phrase. A lawyer in the State Department, Bowker was part of a Bush administration "working group" assembled in the panicked aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Its task: figuring out what rights captured foreign fighters and terror suspects were entitled to while in U.S. custody. White House hard-liners, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and his uncompromising lawyer, David Addington, made it clear that there was only one acceptable answer. One day, Bowker recalls, a colleague explained the goal: to "find the legal equivalent of outer space" - a "lawless" universe. As Bowker understood it, the idea was to create a system where detainees would have no legal rights and US courts would have no power to intervene.

The "outer space" line became something of a joke around the office, but Bowker and a handful of his colleagues didn't find it all that funny. The White House was already planning to fly terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or other secret U.S. prisons overseas, where they would have no way to challenge their detention. In January 2002, Bowker and other State Department lawyers pushed back.

After seeing a Justice Department memo arguing that Qaeda and Taliban prisoners did not even deserve basic protections under the Geneva Conventions, they warned that the administration was inviting an enormous backlash, both from U.S. courts and foreign allies. It would also, they feared, jeopardize President George W. Bush's plans to try such prisoners in specially created military courts. "Even those terrorists captured in Afghanistan ... are entitled to the fundamental humane treatment standards of ... the Geneva Conventions," William Howard Taft IV, the State Department legal counselor and Bowker's boss, wrote in a Jan. 23, 2002, memo obtained by NEWSWEEK. In particular, Taft argued, the United States has always followed one provision of the Geneva Conventions - known as Common Article 3 -which "provides the minimal standards" of treatment that even "terrorists captured in Afghanistan" deserve.’

The Gitmo Fallout

whilst, in the heart of the land of the free …..

‘To the government, he is an al-Qaeda “sleeper” agent sent to the United States by Osama bin Laden to help sow more terror after the Sept 11 attacks.

As his lawyers and human rights groups see it, however, Ali Saleh Mohamed Kahlah al-Marri is just one more victim of the many indefinite and seemingly arbitrary detentions carried out in the name of the US war on terrorism. Marri is the sole remaining “enemy combatant”-the term the administration of President George W Bush has used to brand some terrorism suspects-held on US soil without charges or a trial. The others have been deported or transferred into the criminal justice system as legal challenges to their status emerged.’

Alleged Terrorist Held Years In US Without Charges

Meeshun accumpleeched

From The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 16 — As sectarian violence soars, many Sunni Arab political and religious leaders once staunchly opposed to the American presence here are now saying they need American troops to protect them from the rampages of Shiite militias and Shiite-run government forces.
----------------------

Mission accomplished... part #248701

cretinous "race warriors."

From the Moscow Times

Global Eye

Serpent's Egg

By Chris Floyd
Published: July 14, 2006

Over and over, the Bush regime and its media apologists have peddled the same mendacious line in defense of their war crime in Iraq: "We're fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." But in fact the occupation is breeding a cadre of vicious terrorists intent on bringing death and destruction back home to America's streets, using the deadly skills they've learned -- in the U.S. military.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of neo-Nazis and "white power" extremists have infiltrated U.S. forces in a deliberate strategy to get training in weapons, urban warfare and covert operations, the Pentagon's own investigators report. These homegrown terrorists -- avowed enemies of democracy, committed to sparking the same kind of horrific civil war in America that President George W. Bush has spawned in Iraq -- have wormed their way into some of most elite military units, as well as filling up the ordinary ranks with cretinous "race warriors."

read more of Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times

winning hearts & minds .....

‘Last week, President Bush nominated U.S. Army Gen. Bantz Craddock to be NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Craddock, the former chief military assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, currently oversees activity at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The general has been a fierce defender of the administration's interrogation policies and refused to follow the recommendation of independent inspectors to reprimand Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was accused of torturing inmate Mohammad al-Qahtani.

In Mar. 2005, Craddock claimed a "significant number" of detainees at Guantanamo were members of al-Qaeda. But in reality, detainees who fought for al-Qaeda made up only around eight percent of the prisoners. A year later in Feb. 2006, Craddock made light of detainees' hunger strikes, joking that "at least hunger strikers got to choose the color of their feeding tube (yellow was a favorite), and the flavor of the lozenges used to soothe throats irritated by the feeding tubes. 'Look, they get choices,'' Craddock said at the time. 'And that's part of the problem.'”’

The great Zion has lost the plot

From the BBC

Last Updated: Wednesday, 19 July 2006, 23:20 GMT 00:20 UK

The Lebanese prime minister has called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah militants, saying his country "has been torn to shreds".
Fouad Siniora said more than 300 people had been killed and 500,000 others displaced in a week of Israeli attacks.
More than 60 civilians in Lebanon and two children in Israel were killed on Wednesday as violence continued.
Hezbollah denied Israeli claims that a bunker housing its leaders in south Beirut had been bombed overnight.
Israel said a wave of aircraft dropped 23 tonnes of explosives on a bunker in south Beirut where Hezbollah leaders, possibly including senior leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, where believed to hiding.
But Hezbollah issued a statement saying the building targeted was a mosque under construction and "no Hezbollah leaders or personnel were killed in the strike.

read more at the BBC
------------

23 TONNES of explosive? Shoooo....

Blackmail

The bloody Israeli government is blackmailing the world. If Australia and other countries with citizens in Lebanon will send troops to help Israel, then a cease fire might be arranged in a few days to allow people to get out. The people of Israel are not being told that thousands of other countries nationals are trapped, or about the civilian children killed.

Lebanon is calling Israel a terrorist nation, Shrub is talking like Koffe will do what ever he tells him to do. Do you suppose Howard could be so stupid as to send troops to die for Israel? Would he dare do such a thing?

Do YOU know where Armageddon is? Not what, where. The Plains of Miggido is located in Syria, and is where the most hated enemy of Israel, Hezbollah, has their primary  training camps.

I tell you, the Christian Zionist Fanatics WANT this war because they believe in the rapture, they believe the prophecies, as they interpret them. Worst thing about Prophecy is there is always zealots who will do what ever it takes to make it come true.

3 things.

1: The Jew believes the Messiah is yet to come, and that He will enter Jerusalem via the so called "Golden Gate", the same gate Jesus entered. First thing the Zionists did when they took over Jerusalem is brick up that gate. Every year at least one nut case is caught trying to blow it open to let in the Messiah.

2: Jews and fundamentalist Christians believe the "Holy of Holies" is to be opened and revealed and returned after a "great shaking of the earth" that will destroy the Mosque of Omar (Dome of the Rock), which just happens to sit directly on top of that particular landmark. Not content to wait for an earthquake, every year at least one nut case is caught trying to plant a bomb to blow up the mosque. In all cases these nuts are "born again" Waco style Christians.

3: Picture the Arab/Muslim response around the world should a missile hit that particular Mosque? Can you see the smug looks on the faces of the nut cases around the world as they watch the world go up in flames? Even corporate big bucks could not save their own oh so highly paid arses then.


You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. ~~ Marian Wright Edelman

surprise, surprise .....

After promising to make its unconstitutional military commissions comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the White House yesterday took a harder line & announced it would propose "only minor changes" to the tribunals.