More on the Show Trials
Two more interesting details on the upcoming show trials. First, in an interesting profile on Colonel Morris Davis, Hamdan’s lawyer reveals what Davis will testify to. Not just that Haynes told Davis no acquittals were allowed, but that the whole process is rigged.
Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer nearing retirement at 49, said that he would never argue that Mr. Hamdan was innocent, but that he was ready to try to put the commission system itself on trial by questioning its fairness. He said that there “is a potential for rigged outcomes” and that he had “significant doubts about whether it will deliver full, fair and open hearings.”
“I’m in a unique position where I can raise the flag and aggravate the Pentagon and try to get this fixed,” he said, acknowledging that he is enjoying some aspects of his new role. He was replaced as chief Guantánamo prosecutor after he stepped down but is still a senior legal official for the Air Force.
Among detainees’ advocates, there has been something of a gasp since it was announced last week that Colonel Davis would be taking the witness stand in April.
Mr. Hamdan’s chief military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, said he would offer Colonel Davis to argue that charges against Mr. Hamdan should be dismissed because of improper influence by Pentagon officials over the commission process. Prosecutors may object, and it is unclear how military judges may rule.
This suggests Thomas Hartmann’s role will be exposed as well as the departing Haynes’ role. Will Hartmann stick around for the show trials?
Then, in a perhaps related development, the Attorney General decided to make his first visit to America’s gulag yesterday.
The attorney general was expected to spend only about six hours at the Naval station during his previously unannounced first trip there, said Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.
Mukasey "is meeting with military personnel and other officials involved in the military commissions proceedings," Carr said. He said Justice Department prosecutors "have been involved in the investigation since the high value detainees were moved to Guantanamo Bay."
The Bush Administration always likes to have momentous discussions face to face. I wonder what Mukasey had to say to the show trial lawyers that he couldn’t say over a secure line?
I’ll take this to mean that the Ickles hiring question that I raised in the past thread exceeds your ability ???
anyway, back to the topic at hand:
here’s a guess
WHAT THE FUCK DID GEORGE BUSH GET ME INVOLVED IN HERE ???
Mukasy knows about the wire taps, so you know he ain’t gonna criticize george over the phone lines
probably had to see for himself what a fucking disaster bush created
mukasy actually understands how laws work, so he was probably surprised how badly bush and his minions fucked this up
Or are secure lines a thing of the past?
off topic, but funny:
things fall apart
the bush doctrine
do as I say, not as I do
IOKIYAR has gone mainstream
I meant to do a post drawing a parallel between Gates’ request that the Turks finish their business within days or weeks and Condi’s similar request that the Israelis finish their business in Lebanon in 2006 in one week.
Ran out of time. But I’m sure you can imagine.
“prolonged, bloody and-ultimately-ineffective”. Motes and beams eh? Has anyone at the Lake yet commented on Joseph Stiglitz’s estimate of 13 trillion dollars cost of the war?
Well, I think the Gate’s argument is interesting. He’s basically saying that if your country is attacked across its borders by militants from Iraq, then (1) you have a right to defend yourself to stop those attacks but (2) you don’t have a right to occupy the country or overthrow it’s government. Hence, you need to finish your business and get out.
If we apply the same principles to the US, then how does Gates explain our continued presence in Iraq?
Condi Rice, did not have the same principle. She argued that if you believe all the fault is on the side of the Hezbollah, and you ignore Israel’s occupation of Palestine, then you have the right to invade another country (Lebanon) and the right to remain there as long as you want (and leave deadly cluster bombs there for the Lebanese to find one at a time) to completely destroy Hezbollah, not just take out those who fired rockets into Israel.
Ah, I see your point.
Me, I was just wondering whether Gates’ words doomed the Turkish incursion to the same kind of failure as Condi’s statement seemed to doom the Israelis.
A head’s up, folks…
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmsp…..0002678676
Maybe Mukasey is taking a personal negotiating interest in the Canadian bar’s recent request concerning one of its citizens held without trial at that offshore facility.
That is a noble letter, but it speaks as much to the shame of three Canadian prime ministers (two Libs, one Con), and I guess to the shame of the people who kept them in office, as it does to the shame of Guantanamo. The only citizen of a Western country whose government has not negotiated his transfer out of Guantanamo is a Canadian who was taken there as a boy of fifteen.
Mukasey in Guantanamo: stepping into war crimes territory here.
“The Bush Administration always likes to have momentous discussions face to face. I wonder what Mukasey had to say to the show trial lawyers that he couldn’t say over a secure line?”
Probably similar to whatever he has said to the Justice Department prosecutors who presided over the Siegelman show trial – you don’t have to be in Guantanamo for there to be Darkness at Noon, it can happen in Alabama too.
What has happened to our Country?
Bob in HI
The better question, or at a minimum, equally germane corollary question, is what is being said to the individuals that will be sitting as judges/juries “that he couldn’t say over a secure line”? And without the presence of either defense attorney, or their representatives, or a tape or transcript, why are we not to assume that there isn’t undue command influence from the convening authority being exerted? Because you know those discussions are going to happen.
Well as long as we are naming names, let us not forget Susan Crawford the Convening Authority and Cheney crony. Hartmann is her flunky.
That is exactly what I was referring to. But let a better informed and more experienced tribunal expert make the argument. Here is Col. Morris Davis himself:
So, anyone here think Cheney/Bush didn’t send their boy Mukas down to set Crawford and the judges and prosecutors straight on what needs to happen? The United States has become everything it was created and founded to avoid and eliminate.
bmaz, EW
Did you read Jonathan Turley’s opinion piece in Wednesday’s USA Today(McPaper)? I was happy to see it in such a “pop” publication. Perhaps the larger McPublic will start to get a clue on torture…your know, on our DoJ approved version of waterboarding – “McTorture” , the kind that our legal system denies the president the power to order such criminal acts…?
One can hope some readers were finally “clued in”.
It’s worth the read…
Here’s the link to Turley’s piece.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped…..-defe.html
O/T: Conrad Black’s appeal has been denied; he goes to jail on Monday.
Goldsmith was certainly affected by the torture tour he was given in October 2003 before he went to work for DoJ in November 2003. He saw Gitmo first and was astounded by the looks of hatred he got from the inmates (this was before torture was well known and congress critters were talking about how inmates got 3 squares (including lemon chicken), a bed and a roof over their head). Then Padilla. Then Hamdi, viewed via video cam in the fetal position. Goldsmith’s reaction was ,’This is what habeas corpus is for.’ Yet he still went to work for the DoJ, IMO because he believed that he could change things from the inside. He didn’t anticipate Addington.
Anyway, maybe a day, scratch that, a third of a day at Gitmo will add some humanity to Mukasey. I hope Col. Davis has great things to say to the commissioners, and wouldn’t it be a hoot if somehow Jess Radack could help (lawyer to John Walker Linde, American Taliban who insisted Linde be interrogated with council present, who was subsequently fired from DoJ, intimidated from her next job, disbarred in DC and MD yet was never charged with anything).
ya don’t suppose that mukasey was just checking to see if waterboarding is torture, do ya?
oh sorry, blame the meds.
I’m guessing; is Susan Crawford a thirty-something blond?
The admin loves them some show trials don’t they?
Poor Haynes, he was only cutting to the post-Kabuki chase to follow up on Goldsmith’s suggestion – i.e., just travel the world, kidnapping and disappearing people W doesn’t like (or, like el-Masri, mostly for the thrill of it and to have a dog to throw in the ring), then just keep them in a blackhole for as long as the sociopaths you put in charge of that kind of depravity can hold out before they get bored with repeated anal assault, hooded nudity while forcing screams and excrement out of their victims and the “detainees” either kill themselves or become so mentally destroyed the pervsions just aren’t that much fun for the “patriots” anymore, and ignore things like whether or not you have the *right* person.
This plan is aka, in more toney, ivy league circles, as A Better Way on Detainees is really what Haynes was trying to get to, with just a little intermediary showy step, like in the Andy Rooney movies, where The Torture Kids get to go put on a show, dress up and set the stage, in order to spread goodness and light.
I think it’s premature to mock the proceedings before you’ve seen the Springtime for Hitler finale, with the chorus line jigging by, arms linked, in front of a row of orange jumpsuited detainee, forced in a stress kneeling position. The high kicks are really just something.
It’s hard to imagine why, back in 06, Goldsmith would have been so worried that anyone would view trials based on “evidence [that] is in a foreign language (1), or classified (2), or hearsay (3) — in many cases all of these things” with a jaundiced eye.
I think he was too hasty to say that: “skeptics will still regard them as kangaroo courts” After all, there is a world of difference between the rigged trials based on torture that Haynes had in mind and kangaroo courts. For one thing, the costumes.
As to Mukasey in GITMO, he’s there to coordinate handing out condoms and penicillin to the working members of the [court]house crew. After all, when they hood and noose America before the climactic final thrusts of their arguments, he doesn’t want to have anyone claim they dirtied up the proceedings with the diseased byproducts of wanton hedonism run amok.
They already have Dolly Parton booked to play his role in the movie; Best Little Courthouse In GITMO.
Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel and Max Bialystock would be proud of your analogy. Me too. Perfect. Since it is a Friday, I give you this.
Springtime For Hitler And Mukasey!
16 –
I very much believe that he put that kind of thing in his book, but it isn’t borne out by his actions on any front. Look at the 06 op piece – he did a similar pre-Valentines day one this year for Salon. He over and over says no habeas, treat them like battlefield combatant detainees, hold them forever in depraved conditions, disappeared from the world without application of the Geneva Conventions, torture conventions, and now under a UCMJ that specifically allows for ongoing and “authorized” abuse and coercion, and just, in the future, maybe have slightly less laughable CSRTs.
The down side of which he doesn’t dare mention – which is that if anyone, even one person, kidnapped out of country and subjected to the years of abuse and coercion and terror of GITMO, was ever held to have NOT been an enemy combatant at a CSRT – not an enemy combatant at the time they were taken – then what?
It’s pretty clear what – the shipment to GITMO, even without all the other disgusting overlays, is a clear Article 49 violation – a clear grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and therefore an absolute clear and prima facie war crime. He’s trying to be like Rove, trying to make his weakspot into his strong point – trying to sell myopia as a special kind of vision.
23 – Good piec by Turley.
Captain Jack, He of the Law of the Sea, is a self serving who wants to be and feel heroic while at the same time being a fully functioning torture lackey. He wants to be straddle both sides of the fence. Personally, I hope he gets his tiny privates hung up and strung up on the fence in the process.
Oops, should read “self serving puke”.
I’m trying to get too many things done at one time – I meant to drops some footnote on 24
I don’t have time to go dig up links (I need to start keeping some of this stuff in a way I can find it I guess), but
1. Foreign language. Let’s see, one of the few things they did let “out of the bag” from the Sibel Edmonds inital complaints was that we were sending “translators” to GITMO who not only flunked testing in the language they were supposed to be translating, but who ALSO flunked testing in English. We have trials here in the US where DOJ submitted “translations” of the “classified” (see 2) wiretap info, with highly prejudicial statements made by the defendants, only to find out when a court FINALLY required that defense counsel and REAL translators get a look, that the prejudicial statements were just made up and not in the conversation at all. One of the saddest GITMO stories on translations has to do with the excitement over the discovery that one of the young, child (under 16) detainees was a lynchpin in the underground financing of al-Qaeda. In responses to questions about whether or not al-Qaeda members sent him to get money, he responded yes, and when asked about where he went to get the money, he revealed a dizzying list of marketplaces. As they were putting the finishing touches on the theories of al-Qaeda’s market financing, it probably was a tough pill to swallow to discover that the word for money/cash in the translator’s dialect, was the same as the word for tomatoes in the kid’s dialect. Somehow having “al-Qaeda” send a kid all around to get them tomatoes just doesn’t have the same “war crimes” ring to it.
2. Classified. See the Kurnaz case. Then shake your head in disbelief. Then realize that WITH this case in the record, Carl Levin co-sponsored the DTA to take away habeas for future detainees at GITMO, and Carl Leven and Harry Reid did nothing other than covertly grease the skids for the MCA, to take away ALL habeas for anyone, anywhere in the world, detained by the US at any time for any reason. When W wants something from Congress, it’s like Willy Wonka giving an order to the oompa loompas. In any event, Kurnaz was basically sold off to us and a file of a couple hundred pages from 3 or four domestic and foreign intelligence agencies was put together. All exculpatory. There was one memo from a Haynesboy that said Kurnaz must be a terrorist bc he prayed during the playing of our anthem – or some kind of nonsense like that. All the exculpatory evidence was classified, held back from defense counself for a long time, then when they saw it they couldn’t discuss it with their client bc it was classified, they weren’t supposed to be able to use it in court filings, etc. – then there was a “mistake” and it was briefly declassified, a horrified judge ordered his release, then it was all reclassified and Kurnaz lawyers threatened with not being able to talk about the fact that he had a file full of only exculpatory evidence, bec it was “classified”
3. Hearsay. Ah yes, and not only hearsay, but also, as he omits, often hearsay from the same warlord/criminal who is selling the person to the US for money (aka human trafficking). So, for example, the man who hands off a London chef in Pakistan, says of the chef that the chef is a general in al-Qaeda and ran a training camp there from X to Y. On this, a bipolar man is paid for, kidnapped to GITMO, stuck in solitary for three years, etc. Once lawyers are finally allowed to see the foreign language translated, classified, hearsay, they look for something known as evidence and lo and behold, the London chef was working in Mayfair, collecting checks and serving souffles, throughout the time he was supposedly the “general” of an al-Qaeda training camp. On this, he was disappaeared from his family and abused for years.
Golly – it’s hard to imagine an America where anyone is such a hardened “skeptic” that they would question a system that promotes such criminal behavior.
28 – I thought maybe it was an imagination exercise – fill in the blank? I have to take off, but every time I get calmed down a little and less resentful over what someone like Goldsmith has knowingly and willingly done, to this country, all our institutions and to the other Americans he leaves to get their hands dirty implementing his policies or the policies he won’t fight, he does something like his piping up op piece for Salon this Feb, saying again that trials are StupiT and it makes me less calm.
Bye bmaz
Calmness is overrated. Unless you have high blood pressure.