“The Exponential Growth” of Show Trials
Thomas Hartmann, the "legal advisor" to the Gitmo show trials who has already been forbidden from involvement with two Gitmo cases because of his bias, just failed upwards: he has been named Director of Operations for the show trials (h/t scribe).
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann was named to the newly created position of director of operations, planning and development for military commissions, as the trials are called.
The new job takes Hartmann away from direct supervision of the prosecution. The former chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, and others had accused the general of pushing for prosecutions that would captivate the public for political gain, even before the detainees were ready to be charged.
The AP cites Davis, Deputy Chief Defense Counsel Michael Berrigan, and a Human Rights Watch lawyer, all saying the move of promoting Hartmann up isn’t enough–he’ll still be around to "monkey around" and taint the already tainted military commissions.
Those doubts are well-founded. Hartmann sounds like this move has only made him more determined to build a nice little show trial industry down at Gitmo.
In an interview, Hartmann put his transfer in a positive light.
"I feel like it’s an elevation, a promotion, because it recognizes … the exponential growth of the commissions," Hartmann said.
[snip]
Hartmann said he is proud of the way he has helped move the trials forward and intends to keep doing so in his new role.
"We are not going to wilt under pressure," he said.
Goodie. After destroying our credibility overseas and ensuring the exponential collapse of our economic system, about the only growth industry coming from the Bush Administration is in show trials.
What are the regulations for importing kangaroos into Cuba?
EW, thanks for this. Today is Omar Khadr’s twenty-second birthday. He has been in custody since he was fifteen, the charges against him suspect, his treatment in custody at both Bagram and GTMO suspect, everything about his case suspect.
If I’d read you earlier, I would have tossed the square-jawed Hartmann into the note about our (Canadian) national shame that I wrote earlier this afternoon. One day … one day …
The most hopeful note I can strike is to pay tribute to your military lawyers who are defending the detainees. Lt-Cmr Kuebler, who is Khadr’s U.S. military attorney, is a hero, just such an exceptionally principled guy. A lot of people here know that, even if we’re still outnumbered.
It was interesting that Omar Khadr’s show trial was postponed during the Canadian election – I don’t know if this was a favour to Harper from the Bushies, so it wouldn’t cause any difficult questions in the event (certainty?) of a conviction, or if the Bushies would actually like Khadr to be repatriated to Canada and are hoping that Harper post-election will be likely to do so, assuming a Harper victory. Lt. Cdr. Kuebler has shown himself to be an uncommonly dogged advocate, and perhaps the Bushies are afraid of what may ultimately come out at the trial – maybe even an acquittal!
Trying for the Sec. DoJ under Palin/McBush, no doubt, unless they keep Mukasey of course.
Hi, sorry for OT. but there is a PBS online poll being freeped. Palin, of course. please help?
I couldn’t use your link but could use this one.
Well of course there’s been exponential growth. Before, they weren’t going to do shit.
Classic Cheney. When the law or doing the right thing closes a door, he smashes through windows. By creating the new post as “director of operations”, he takes Hayden out of the “straight jacket” of restrictions that bind him via his obligations as a lawyer, and moves him up the chain of command.
From Cheney’s perspective, a win-win: he protects his acolyte from substantive and procedural challenge, while further empowering him to do harm.
The “Bush” presidency’s history cannot be written, nor its harm identified and corrected, without full and complete access to the records of the Barnacle Branch. Cheney is protecting, sanitizing and destroying these as we speak. Congress had better get a move on.
Preview is my friend… I meant to refer to Hartmann, not “Hayden”.
Director of Operations?
WTF is this? GITMO, Inc.?
Well, sure. Because running the rest of the government like a business is going so swimmingly.
Oh goodie indeed. Yes, turning prisons into an industry has worked out so well in California, where the prison industry now runs the State. And Hartmann, a clear graduate with dishonors from the Palin/Fiorina/Kenny Boy Lay School of Executive Success, well, he is just perfect. Lets make sure he has got a great golden parachute provision too.
The hilarious thing about the Bush Administration is that Mike “Brownie” Brown was actually nominally competent in their spectrum of successful managers.
And now Hartmann will be able to get more cover for his
crimeswork directly from his boss:(My Bold)
Thanks for this post EW. No doubt Hartmann is next in line for a Medal of Freedom.
Followed, of course, by the BushCo Pardon of Merit with Poison Ivy Clusters.
The Regent University School of Law placement office will be in touch with the General shortly.
OT – Scientific American on the anthrax analysis technique that led them
astrayto Ivins. Sigh.Hmm, that is interesting.
The FBI was quick to thank Prof. Meselson for bringing up the fact that the scientific literature showed “B. cereus”, a cousin to anthrax, incorporated silica into its cell naturally. The presence of silica in these anthrax samples could explain away findings of “silicon” fingerprints in the anthrax samplees.
In retrospect, Meselson’s mention of B. cereus was a Godsend to the FBI wanting to deflect attention to the fact that the US was creating bioweapons (if the US sites were). I find it curious that the scientists hadn’t published articles that anthrax itself incorporated silica. Why resort to anthrax’s cousin? Unless the FBI was looking for an ex post facto explanation of the presence of silicon (as opposed to silica).
That title, “director of operations, planning and development”, is a classic in bureaucracy. “Operations” means day to day activities. “Planning” means work directed at achieving organizational goals. “Development” means setting those goals. What is left for somebody else?
Maybe there should be a show trial for Mcain and Kerry for debunking investigations into the pows left behind in Vietnam
Mass of Evidence
The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What’s more, the Pentagon’s POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of “debunking” POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.
Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general’s briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war’s end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington.
http://www.nationinstitute.org…..9182008pt1
Last night in Late Late we were talking about the closely related fact patterns that Vietnam Veterans Against McCain are asserting and that The Nation has picked up on. If any significant part of this stuff proves true, bang goes Mc’s POW Get Foot Out Of Mouth Free card. If none of it checks out, then The Nation has walked into a trap. Personally I think VVAMcC smells a little funny — too extreme for all of it to be true, and if some of it’s not, then…
Thanks I’ll chek it out as soon as I stop throwing up
FWIW, we’re getting near to a look at what I’d conjectured was the trading zone over the AG who turned out to be Mukasey.
There are really no words for slime this bad, or for the people who expect us to take it and still keep them in fine tailoring.
This is what it takes to be pres
I don’t have enough adjectives to describe this
McCain’s Role
The Truth Bill
(click image to download)An early and critical McCain secrecy move involved 1990 legislation that started in the House of Representatives. A brief and simple document, it was called “the Truth Bill” and would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men. Its core sentence reads: “[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, shall make available to the public all such records held or received by that department or agency.”
The McCain Bill
(click image to download) DOD cites the McCain Bill in denying a FOIA request
(click image to download)Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon (and thus McCain), the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared. But a few months later, a new measure, known as “the McCain Bill,” suddenly appeared. By creating a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emerge—only records that revealed no POW secrets—it turned the Truth Bill on its head. (See one example, at left, when the Pentagon cited McCain’s bill in rejecting a FOIA request.) The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today. So crushing to transparency are its provisions that it actually spells out for the Pentagon and other agencies several rationales, scenarios and justifications for not releasing any information at all—even about prisoners discovered alive in captivity. Later that year, the Senate Select Committee was created, where Kerry and McCain ultimately worked together to bury evidence.
Hartmann is what is real scary about the Air Force I worked for for many years. He is a wingnut from the biblical side. He is an Academy grad who left active duty and went into the reserves. Now he has wormed himself into a somewhat senior position where he can do some damage. I wonder who his sponsor is that got him promoted? Hopefully the Air Force can expunge him onto the retirement rolls soon.