Coach Bush is 3-23 In Real Courts On Gitmo Show Trials; Katyal, The Hero Of Hamdan, To Join Obama Administration

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If your local football coach was 3 wins and 23 losses for the season, you could rest assured of two things; one, you are a Detroit Lions fan and, two, the coach is getting fired. Well, there was an interesting little article that was published in today’s New York Times, and the upshot is that 3 and 23 is exactly what the Bush/Cheney regime’s record is when their Guantanamo Detainee cases see the sunshine of a real court. Clearly we have pretty much been endlessly detaining a lot of innocuous people on unsubstantiated evidence.

Describing the release last weekend of Haji Bismullah, an Afghan detainee held at Guantánamo Bay for nearly six years, the Times notes:

The decision was part of a pattern that has emerged in the closing chapter of the administration. In the last three months, at least 24 detainees have been declared improperly held by courts or a tribunal — or nearly 10 percent of the population at the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where about 245 men remain.
…
While Mr. Bismullah’s case was decided by a military panel, the rulings for the other 23 detainees occurred in habeas corpus hearings in federal court. Since a Supreme Court decision in June gave detainees the right to have their detentions reviewed by federal judges in habeas cases, the government has won only three of them.

Get that?? 3 and 23. Not. Real. Good. Certainly puts the lie to Cheney and Bush’s promises that they were holding only the "worst of the worst" after all these years doesn’t it?

The cases provide a snapshot of the intelligence collected by the government on the suspects and suggest that there was little credible evidence behind the decision to declare some of the men enemy combatants and to hold them indefinitely.
…
“The government’s failure in case after case after case to be able to prove its case calls into question everybody who is there,” said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for 17 Uighur detainees from western China who were ordered released by a federal judge in October. The Justice Department has appealed that order from a federal district judge, Ricardo M. Urbina, and the men are still at Guantánamo.

Well, I guess, as shocking as it is, this is not exactly breaking news anymore. The brittle patina of legitimacy and credibility, to the extent there ever was any, began to crack with the first major court decision on the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld military commission process , Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, was decided. In that regard, there is excellent news to report.

Neal Katyal, Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center and lead counsel in the Supreme Court on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, has been chosen to be the Obama Administration’s Principal Deputy Solicitor General, the office’s No. 2 spot, according to the Legal Times.

Katyal’s appointment is another strong signal of President-elect Barack Obama’s intentions to depart sharply from the terrorist detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration. In Hamdan, the Supreme Court found that the Bush administration’s military commissions for trying suspected terrorists violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

Unlike the nominee for solicitor General, Elena Kagan, Katyal does have experience before the Supreme Court, but not exactly a wealth of it. Nevertheless, the fact that Obama has chosen Kagan and Katyal to lead the SG’s Office sends a clear and unmistakable message that massive change is underway, and that it is in the opposite direction from the unconscionable and immoral policies of torture set by the Bush/Cheney regime. Welcome news indeed.

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  1. Mary says:

    bmaz, I swear when I got to:

    Unlike the nominee for solicitor General, Elena Kagan… my mind read the reast as “Katyal does not have a conflict of interest if the case against Goldsmith goes to the Supreme Court”

    The power of sleep deprived wishful thinking.

  2. Funnydiva2002 says:

    Wow, bmaz, you’re on fire today.
    Hope this one goes to the Front Page.

    Georgetown? Isn’t that where Jonathan Turley is?

    FunnyD

  3. LabDancer says:

    Johnson was one extremely cool move.

    Katyal was like saying: Now watche as I demonstrate that was no fluke.

    So, bmaz: What’s your take on the message of choosing Holder given the overall context of these other picks? I’m not teasing; I already joined you in running the other way from the herd before it stampeded towards him.

  4. randiego says:

    Omg, I’m so far behind in my reading!

    I don’t know what I’m doing for the inauguration, and I’m out of tequila!

    I have to work tomorrow!

    aggghh!

  5. jdmckay says:

    Subject of your post reminds of recent accompaniment by various folks, including DOD spokesperson, stating “recidivism” (eg: returning to battlefield/terrorist activities) of released GITMO ex-enemy-combatants has been on the rise.

    Kevin Drum adds some details. From 6/’08 this Boston Globe article by Sabin Willett. (Willet is a partner at Bingham McCutchen, which represents nine prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay.):

    WHEN THE Supreme Court issued its recent Guantanamo ruling (eg: Boumediene) , hysteria overcame some administration supporters. “One of the worst decisions in the history of the country,” declared Senator John McCain. Americans will “almost certainly” die as prisoners “return to the kill,” wrote a furious Justice Antonin Scalia. A Wall Street Journal editor darkly warned that the Constitution is “not a suicide pact.”

    (…)

    So why, after six years, is it “one of the worst decisions in the history of the country” that federal judges should consider the facts at Guantanamo? Why is that so frightening a prospect for the president and McCain?

    Frightened they surely are, for they have redeployed the “weapons-of-mass-destruction” marketing team. This time we are told that 30 former Guantanamo prisoners have “returned to the fight.” (If that is true, why did President Bush release them? No judge released them. But let that pass.)

    It is a serious allegation, so the lawyers looked into it. It turns out that clients of our firm, who were sent to Albania in 2006, were two of the 30. What fight had they returned to? Abu Bakker Qassim had published an op-ed in The New York Times. Adel Abdul Hakim had given an interview. These press statements were deemed hostile by the Department of Defense.

    And from Drum:

    (…)the last time the Pentagon released figures like these, Mark Denbeaux at the Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research examined their claims (pdf). At that point, the Pentagon claimed that thirty detainees had “returned to the fight”. Based on the DoD’s own evidence, he concluded (p. 5) that “There appears to be a single individual who is alleged to have both been detained in Guantanamo and later killed or captured on some battlefield.”

    Among the people the Pentagon counted as having “returned to the fight” were the Tipton Three — three British citizens who were thought, wrongly, to have belonged to al Qaeda. They were subsequently cleared by British intelligence (one of them was working at an electronics store in Birmingham when he was supposed to have been at an al Qaeda rally in Afghanistan), and released to the UK. Since they were not in “the fight” to begin with, they can hardly be said to have “returned” to it. But even if they had, their “return” consisted in participating in a documentary about their experiences.

    The Uighurs in Afghanistan were also supposed to have also “returned to the fight”. Since the DoD found that they were not enemy combatants, it is, again, hard to see how anything they did could count as “returning”. What the DoD actually counted as their “return to the fight” was– I hope you’re sitting down — the fact that one of them published an op-ed in the New York Times. Here is part of his act of war column: (…)

    Almost all of these incidents, as Bismullah you cite, are holographic… eg. nomatter from what angle you look there’s a common consistent thread: BushCo LIES.

    The ambiguity & mixed signals from Obama leave me very uneasy. The notion that, given implications for long term health (or lack of) for USA if this stuff is allowed to pass… depressing.

  6. nextstopchicago says:

    I don’t have much to say – just thought I’d post to say thanks, because this thread deserved more than 7 comments. I think 90% of your readership is sleeping in a Metro station floor in DC tonight, hoping their sheer joy can keep them warm till morning.

    I’m glad to hear about Katyal.

    • bobschacht says:

      Well, I’m still here in Hawaii. Wifey’s coming home tonight, and tomorrow I gotta go to work. “Normal” work day. I wonder if Ms. Boss will mind if I listen to the inaug on headphones?

      or– golly, if the inaug is at noon EST, I might be able to catch the festivities at breakfast here!

      Bob in HI

    • JohnJ says:

      I am wondering about the same subject…the only thing I can find Googling news is shrub commuted the sentence of 2 border guards that shot unarmed “drug smugglers”.

      Ether Yoo wrote an opinion that shrub can pardon in secret or he’s leaving the lot out to dry! Or maybe he’ll just dump huge load tomorrow morning.

      It must be nice to have time to go to the party in DC. I just finished a 68 hour week and started a new one with 10 hours today. Building tactical systems is, for some reason, booming (no weapons!).

  9. freepatriot says:

    best anaology of the transition that I’ve seen yet:

    Obama was compared to US Airways pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger

    george was compared to the flock of geese

  13. freepatriot says:

    I’m never gonna look at a pair of old shoes the same again

    (damn, i wonder where george is today)

    history could be kinder to george

    history is gonna have to be pretty rough to judge george harsher than we judge him now

  16. skdadl says:

    ‘Morning, freepatriot, and a good inauguration day to all.

    I’m trying not to snicker over the misfortunes of others. (See Attaturk: Cheney has put his back out moving “some boxes,” and will be in a wheelchair today.)

  17. freepatriot says:

    why is rudy “noun-verb-9/11″ ghooliani on camera at chicken noodle network

    we got a Democratic President Elect, we got a Democratically controlled congress

    and the best the chicken noodle network can find to interview is rudy ghooliani ???

    what the fuck is wrong with these people ???

  21. hs3144 says:

    To be honest, I think they probably use the lions record as a measure of success and I don’t think the lions have won 3 games in the last 26…..so by this standard they are doing great.

  24. egregious says:

    thinkprogress

    Georgetown Law Professor Marty Lederman will serve as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, working under Dawn Johnsen, who will head the office. Over the past few years, Lederman’s legal blogging at Balkanization has provided invaluable insight and strength to critics of key Bush policies, including torture and warrantless wiretapping. Lederman wrote passionately against the Bush administration’s efforts to legalize the use of torture:

    I am increasingly confident that when the history of the Bush Administration is written, this systematic violation of statutory and treaty-based law concerning fundamental war crimes and other horrific offenses will be seen as the blackest mark in our nation’s recent history — not only because of what was done, but because the programs were routinely sanctioned, on an ongoing basis, by numerous esteemed professionals — lawyers, doctors, psychologists and government officers — without whose approval such a systematized torture regime could not be sustained.

  25. Mary says:

    6 – Thanks for including that summary. It was disappointing to see Holder just let that pass without correction in his hearings when it was used. Willet, who has been at the center of a lot of the successes for the for innocent detainees at GITMO, was a commerrical bankruptcy lawyer – not a criminal defense lawyer – when he got involved.

    29 – that’s interesting – the AAG in OLC with a pro-prosecution position (although no ability to initiate) and her DAAG confident that the OLC opinions insulate from consequences.

    bmaz, when you think that someone like Leon is responsible for a chunk of those decisions to release as well, that really puts the punctuation in the numbers.

    • bmaz says:

      bmaz, when you think that someone like Leon is responsible for a chunk of those decisions to release as well, that really puts the punctuation in the numbers.

      Man, you got that right. Should have mentioned that.

    • behindthefall says:

      “Nay-sayers” is so-o-o-o Twentieth Century. I thought that went out with Agnew. Get yourself a new crib sheet.

    • perris says:

      At least George W. Bush kept the terrorists away from us despite the words of the nay-sayers.

      excuse me?

      there have been MORE terrorist attacks against Americans, EXPONENTIALLY more and it’s surprising there are still people who believe that ridiculous propaganda

      first, there HAVE been terrorist attacks in this country, (see anthrax) and second, having no terrorist attacks against Americans here in the states, but increase those attacks against Americans exponentially and then claiming that as some kind of success is a shell game that works on very few people, I see you are among that group

      let me fix your quote for you so it’s serviceable;

      “At least George W. Bush [edit]tricked SOME people into actually believing[/edit] he kept the terrorists away from us despite the words of the nay-sayers.”

      • eCAHNomics says:

        Oh, perris, don’t be so picky. You know that the Rs regard U.S. troops as toys that they can play with all around the world. The troops’ deaths and disabilities don’t count in the R math. /s

        • bluebutterfly says:

          Another of the patrician Kissinger’s famous opinions was that soldiers are stupid, almost sub-human cannon fodder, appropriate for sacrificing to the war gods: �military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.�

          One hardly imagines that his neocon chickenhawk successors have a much better opinion of the men and women they are sending to die for no good reason in Iraq. So why not stay and participate in the country’s descent into hell? Hey, it’s creative destruction, right?

          http://www.antiwar.com/blog/20…..all-along/

        • eCAHNomics says:

          You can tell in how low repute troops are held by W admin by the way they are treated, especially after they’re injured. Actions speak louder than words.

          Since you mentioned creative destruction, completely OT, here is the relevant passage from Schumpeter:

          . . the contents of the laborer’s budget, say from 1760 to 1940, did not simply grow on unchanging lines but they underwent a process of qualitative change. Similarly, the history of the productive apparatus of a typical farm, from the beginnings of the rationalization of crop rotation, plowing and fattening to the mechanized thing of today—linking up with elevators and railroads—is a history of revolutions. So is the history of the productive apparatus of the iron and steel industry from the charcoal furnace to our own type of furnace, or the history of the apparatus of power production from the undershot water wheel to the modern power plant, or the history of transportation from the mailcoach to the airplane. The opening up of new mar-kets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational develop-ment from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial muta-tion—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes* the economic structure from within, inces-santly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.
          —Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and
          Democracy, Harper & Row (New York: 1942), p 83.

          *Those revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occur in discrete rushes which are sepa-rated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works inces-santly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are know as business cycles.

        • bluebutterfly says:

          Not OT at all because his ‘revolution’ still happens today.
          ****************

          Business cycles..taking away jobs is rampant irregardless of the cost to people’s lives..outsourcing, etc. and it is just a business cycle to those in power. WTO, IMF, World Bank, NAFTA, CAFTA..and all damn ‘aftas’ to come, Federal Reserve, CFR, DOHA, MIC, the conspiracies of the rich and powerful who intend to stay that way are rampant in our world. There are more of us in this world than there is of them. Who is going to win? Better to go down fighting than to not fight them at all. It is time for a revolution of a type different than what he was referring to in his book.

      • FreedomNow says:

        NO attacks on the Homeland since 9/11? Pretty good record. He safeguarded the homeland. The Bamster has yet to prove he can save a single job.

        • bmaz says:

          I am not in the mood to screw around with with fuckery today. Back off, shut up or get thrown out. Today is not your day; have some respect for once. To the victors belong the spoils of this day, and that is not your sour spew.

        • perris says:

          how wrong can you be, of course there have been attacks on what I call America but you use the Nazi term “the homeland”

          anthrax being one, and as I said, even if your claim was true, (it’s not), there are those people who actually think a shell game of making believe there haven’t been attacks in America by increasing attacks against Americans abroad exponentially is some kind of success

          bizarre what some people think is success but there you are

          and you’re right about there being some people who think treason shouldn’t be prosecuted and would revolt against that prosecution, I see you are among that group of people

          here I am feeding the trolls, sorry all, that was my last feed tube

        • bluebutterfly says:

          Hard not to, isn’t it? The question is..are all trolls of the past two weeks really as uneducated as they seem, or do they all just have a chain rattling fetish?

    • bmaz says:

      At least George W. Bush kept the terrorists away from us despite the words of the nay-sayers

      Hey mental midget. Last time I checked Bush was the asshole that blew off the warnings about 9/11 and let us get attacked. Also, you might remember the anthrax attack; just another attack on Bush’s watch. Go away little troll, today is not your day day to spew crap and stick your finger in our bright eyes.

    • bluebutterfly says:

      George W. Bush – Terrorist in the White House
      NSA, CIA & Spies

      Gen. Gehlen (middle) was imported along with his Gestapo by the Dulles Brothers after WWII to help setup and train the CIA (operation paperclip

      http://www.nogw.com/cia.html

        • bluebutterfly says:

          Those who protected Prescott Bush and allowed him to go from a Nazi supporter/war criminal..to a senator..are the first reason why. From then to 2009; a long pattern of those who keep the truth concealed. Ever wonder who Prescott really was..or do you already Know?

  30. perris says:

    Certainly puts the lie to Cheney and Bush’s promises that they were holding only the “worst of the worst”

    nicely done bmaz

    he will of course blame our court system and say “that’s why we couldn’t let them out, we knew our court system would release them”

    however any real journalist would be able to pounce on that kind of defense from cheney, we don’t have real journalists anymore

    • FreedomNow says:

      There will be NO prosecutions against the current Administration. If anyone should start one, it would make the last Civil War look like a picnic…Do you really think Bush defenders would permit it? THink again…

      • DWBartoo says:

        You would threaten a Civil War over Bu$h?

        Threats, no less. No more.

        Yet still, a most dangerous game.

        A pathetic meager little ‘philosophies’, so appropriate for the frightened little minds which embrace them.

  32. billybugs says:

    Looking at the people on the tee vee there are a lot of people on that mall !!
    I bet there has never been this much excitement over an inauguration,amazing absolutely amazing !!

  34. tpres2000 says:

    True, the Obama administration doesn’t meet my definition of perfect, but I’ll take an imperfect administration over a criminal administration in a heart-beat.

    • DWBartoo says:

      Just mind your tongue, and your manners.

      Civil discourse not Civil War.

      Let THAT be your watchword, FN.

  38. pokums says:

    Not to quibble (the coach still gets fired), but doesn’t the fact that “the government has won only three of the” “rulings for the other 23 detainees [that] occurred in habeas corpus hearings in federal court” mean that W’s/Dick’s record is “exactly” 3 and 20 (and not 3 and 23)?

  40. mui1 says:

    “The government’s failure in case after case after case to be able to prove its case calls into question everybody who is there,” said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for 17 Uighur detainees from western China who were ordered released by a federal judge in October. The Justice Department has appealed that order from a federal district judge, Ricardo M. Urbina, and the men are still at Guantánamo.

    What?!? The justice department is appealing the release of the Uighurs? On what grounds?

  41. mui1 says:

    Crap I just tried to find Andy Worthington’s site and found:Horror at Guantanamo: Libyan Detainee Infected with AIDS. Last year.

    Candace Gorman, lawyer for Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan detainee at Guantanamo, reports that her client has been infected with AIDS. Mr. al-Ghizzawi explained to his lawyer in a letter that he was told about his infection by a doctor at Guantanamo, adding that he believes that the infection took place in 2004, when he was given a blood test, which “resulted in alarm amongst the hospital staff,” although he was not given any explanation for the alarm at the time.

  43. JohnLopresti says:

    re prior commenter illusion association of Goldsmith, Katyal. There was a conjoint authorship, both being in the GU teaching mode in 2007 there, wherein there is discussion of G’s+K’s version of a perhaps civil forum replacement for the extant tribunals onsite at the fueling station in the Caribbean. K long had favored such an approach, as Slate reported the year before, in 2006. Obama has continued to entertain that way of sifting tainted evidence. The evidentiary matters K discussed also in a HJC hearing February 2008. I think a lot of this is why the transition went smoothly, that rule of law and normal bureaucratic function are stable zones from which to govern. It remains a charged aspect of the cleanup, but obviated Bush’s need to explore presidential pardons; the coffee cooled in the saucer of what looks to be due process. Boumediene kind of made that plain, and its repercussions continue in that court, as DC has found the chink congress thoughtfully left in MCA.