Check Out ACLU’s Relaunched Blog

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As some of you have noted, the ACLU relaunched its blog this week in fine fashion–by hosting a symposium on torture with a bunch of bloggers and experts. They had posts from Glenn, Christy, McJoan, Nicole Belle, Jeralyn, and Digby.

Oh, and me! Here’s a bit of my post from yesterday:

On May 9, the Convening Authority for the Gitmo military commissions signed charges against five detainees alleged to be responsible for 9/11.  Yet, in spite of the fact that George Bush named Abu Zubaydah in a September 2006 speech in which he promised to "bring these people to justice," Zubaydah was not included among those charged. Zubaydah remains, more than six years after he was first detained, uncharged.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think the military commissions are in any way adequate vehicles to try Gitmo detainees alleged be terrorists (a problem the ACLU has tried to address). But it seems that Zubaydah remains in limbo precisely because he embodies the failures of the nation’s embrace of torture.

[snip]

Now, perhaps the Administration plans to charge Zubaydah with something else. Perhaps they will justify their excuse for torturing him, that he was a high level operative. But thus far, the Administration seems more interested in hiding the real evidence on Zubaydah: that they tortured a man, and that torture proved useless.

Go read the rest. 

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34 replies
  2. skdadl says:

    Groovy. You all are creating such resources for so many people — you can’t know how many, or how valuable these sources will be. Thanks always.

  3. MrWhy says:

    OT – From the Globe and Mail:

    [T]he Supreme Court [of Canada] specifically instructed the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “produce to a judge … unredacted copies of all documents, records and other materials in their possession which might be relevant to the charges against Mr. Khadr.”

    Here’s the Supreme Court judgment.

    • skdadl says:

      Yes! Yes! Goddamn, and thank you so much, MrWhy. Those documents are to be handed over not just to a judge but to Khadr’s attorneys, after the judge assesses them … Oh, we need Ishmael to tell us how conservative a judge would dare to be after this ruling.

      Oh, I am so happy.

      • Petrocelli says:

        Harper’s Neocons keep getting smacked hard by our Judges & Laws and this one has to smart … Go Canada !

        I don’t know too many attorneys willing to risk their reputation by defending the subversion of democracy, I would assume the Judges feel the same way. However, I too await Ishmael’s sage insight.

        PS: Do you think we can arrange a “drinking liberally” meetup in Toronto and coerce ET, Bmaz
        and the rest to ‘drop by’ ?

        • skdadl says:

          ET? ET is here? Oh, I’m always ready to drink liberally, and I would love to meet y’all.

          I don’t quite get the thing about passing all of these docs past yet another judge. That’s my remaining bit of nervousness. As far as I can tell, the only “national security” concerns about any docs they might have would in fact be CYA concerns — ie, a lot of people would be embarrassed, as they were in the Arar inquiry. But I mean, really: this sort of thing has to stop. I am so hoping that all the judges are getting the message. I also wonder whether a few members of the current government are getting the message.

        • Petrocelli says:

          LOL … sorry, ‘EW’ … although ET would also be welcome … I love aliens, unlike Lou Dobbs …

        • Petrocelli says:

          I’ve been badgering the real ‘ET’ – Edward Teller – to visit Toronto for some time now.

          He has his hands full with the Benson campaign, among many other duties but I hope he comes down afterward.

        • Petrocelli says:

          I think the compromise is to show that the SC cares about “national security” … although they could really show they cared about Canada by exempting our best Hockey Players from working south of the border … *g*

          The Judge who looks over these documents will note the 9-0 ruling, I’m sure … they are part of a small club and would not want to be seen as subverting our laws when the Supremes are so clear on the matter …

          As for the current Gov’t, I hope Dion & Co. grow a backbone and campaign strategy to oust them this fall.

        • Petrocelli says:

          Excellent, we’ll get Ishmael’s input but if we hold a “drinking liberally” meetup in ‘Liberal Canada’, we might have to rent the SkyDome … *g*

      • phred says:

        Yet another reason to find our friends to the north so admirable : ) Maybe our own Supreme Court will take a page out of their book…

        • skdadl says:

          phred, if you’d listened to a couple of our MPs after Lt-Cmdr Kuebler’s (very fine) testimony to the Commons subcommittee (Kuebler is Khadr’s U.S. military lawyer), you would not be complimenting us. Some of our guys have drunk deep of the Kool-Aid, and they are in power at the moment. One of the things they really don’t like is “activist judges” — I won’t have to explain that syndrome to you.

          We’re all really on our knees praying that those guys don’t come back with a majority after the next election. Yes, we have good judges … for the time being.

        • phred says:

          Fair enough skdadl, but it was a 9-0 decision. That chance of that happening with our current Supreme Court is zero. Nonetheless I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for you that such judicial quality is maintained over many many election cycles to come…

    • Petrocelli says:

      For those who did not read the article, the ruling was unanimous … 9-0.

      Let’s get our Supreme Court justices to talk to yours …

  4. phred says:

    EW, I read your post over there yesterday — very nice job of summarizing why Zubaydah is the poster child of everything wrong with torture.

    I’m delighted to see the ACLU bring in the best writers the blogosphere has to offer for their torture symposium. I’ve added their blog to my daily list of sites to visit.

    I did notice however, that you have a flair for attracting trolls in the comments — that one was so far off the deep end though, I doubt they have any redeeming value (like knowing where to find Beamish ; )

  5. WilliamOckham says:

    Slightly OT (but pertaining to the Torture Mess):

    Am I the one obsessing on the redactions in the DOJ OIG report? In particular, I’m fascinated by the redaction in the title of Chapter 5, Section VII:

    Proposal To [REDACTED] Al-Qahtani To Be Interrogated Using an Alternative Debriefing Model of the Sort Used on Zubaydah

    Grammatical that has to be a verb. What verb could be so toxic that it has to be redacted. The sense of the sentence almost demands that it be some equivalent of send or deliver. My first guess was ‘Render’, but it’s too short (the font is Bookman Old Style in 12 pt. Bold).

    • phred says:

      WO, you know how popular the fill-in-the-redacted-blank is in these parts, but I need more of a hint. How many letters do you estimate based on the font size?

        • WilliamOckham says:

          Here’s an alternative for that redaction.

          It could say:

          Proposal To NSC For Al-Qahtani To Be Interrogated Using an Alternative Debriefing Model of the Sort Used on Zubaydah

          I’m not clear on why they would have redacted that because they quote Nahmias as describing the proposal in that way.

        • phred says:

          Thanks for the letter count. If you are thinking of a proper name for the blank, I’m curious whether the group of high level officials (Rice, Tenet, Ashcroft, etc.) that met to discuss the treatment of each detainee had a name/acronym that would fit. I could see why that might be redacted, to hide their direct involvement.

        • WilliamOckham says:

          Best fits so far:

          Proposal To NSC For Al-Qahtani To Be Interrogated Using an Alternative Debriefing Model of the Sort Used on Zubaydah

          Proposal To Transfer Al-Qahtani To Be Interrogated Using an Alternative Debriefing Model of the Sort Used on Zubaydah

        • phred says:

          Why would FBI/DoJ need to make such a proposal to NSC? I don’t quite follow that.

          As for Ward, I can’t help hoping he was running a shell game redirecting funds to different campaigns in violation of campaign finance laws, so that he can take a bunch of corrupt Rethugs with him as he goes. But, I suspect he is just another corrupt Republican embezzling other people’s money for his own personal gain. Sigh. Such a lack of imagination.

        • WilliamOckham says:

          They were trying (so they say) to get him out of the hands of the DOD. They proposed giving him to the CIA. The NSC was actively coordinating the torture interrogation of CIA detainees. The OIG report makes it clear that the DOJ official (Nahmias) who had the draft document describing the proposal said that it was a letter for the AG to send to the NSC (see p. 92 of the report).

          As to Ward, you have to ask yourself, where did the $1-2 million dollars go?

        • phred says:

          Thanks for the explanation, now I get it.

          Yep, that is indeed the question about Ward. I can’t wait to hear the answer…

    • emptywheel says:

      No. But you’re getting through it faster than me, and I still have to make White trash potato salad today.

      I did see taht though, and thought it was Rendit or somethign (which shouldn’t be a verb, but given the crimes of this adminsitration, is the least of my worries).

      I asked CCR, which is representing al-Qahtani, whether they knew if the gov had considered removing him from Gitmo. They don’t know for sure (they’re looking at the same redactions we are), but they have not been told the gov considered it, which is itself news I ahould probably do a full post on.

      • WilliamOckham says:

        DOD wanted to send him to Egypt or some other contract torturer as Phase IV of the interrogation plan. This redaction is about a FBI/DOJ plan.

        The other semi-hidden news in the report is the OIG all but calls Alice Fisher a liar. Compare what she says with what is implied in the OLC’s torture memo for the DOD.

        Also pay close attention to who had contemporaneous notes and what those notes reveal.

    • masaccio says:

      WilliamOckham, I am obsessing too. I’m at the office, but later I will put in a comment on them as far as I have gotten, which is around page 90. They bear thinking.

  6. JohnLopresti says:

    One measure of the show trialness of the Gitmo proceedings may be whether either defense or prosecution in KSM will call Zubaydah as a witness, this in reply to ew’s ACLU article on Zubaydah’s conspicuous uncharged status. Also of interest at the renovated ACLU blogsite, to me, was the article after ew’s, in which there was some mention of the way implementation of NoChild LeftBehind brought about institutionalization of armed services access to high schools. One of the early ways Harman primaryizing MarcyWinograd’s assemblage* of educators made local news in her home state was in public demonstrations and teach-ins regarding conventions and traditions outside the US to protect minors from military recruitment at a malleable age.
    _____
    *I think the teach-in website has evanesced. Maybe I will research that.

  8. timbo says:

    OT: Marcy, check out the following quote from Yoo’s memos:

    “”Unless Congress made a clear statement in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that it sought to restrict presidential authority to conduct warrantless searches in the national security area — which it has not — then the statute must be construed to avoid [such] a reading.”"

    Um, so, looks like he thinks warrantless wiretapping is not unreasonable search? Note that he is arguing that even though it is specifically states it is the exclusive law covering this sort of wiretapping, Yoo is saying that it doesn’t cover warrantless wiretapping!

    Timbo

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