Friday Night News Dump: FORGET HABEAS CORPUS at Bagram

[polichick]

Rachel Maddow covered this last night ~ here's that video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30199691

And from HuffPost:

Yet on Friday, the Obama Justice Department did just that, filing documents with the federal court indicating that it plans to appeal the judge's ruling, because allowing these three men to challenge their detention would "impose serious practical burdens on, and potential harm to, the Government and its efforts to prosecute the war in Afghanistan."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/13/obamas-bagram-detainees-d_n_186224.html


Something's way wrong here. As Michael Isikoff said to Rachel, there's nothing to keep prisoners from being taken from Guantanamo to Bagram and being held there without habeas rights.

[mix]

1. This is a travesty.

How have these policies been effective? Why retain them when they only fuel more terrorism? Obama is too much a creature of the establishment, it seems, to be trusted to do the right thing.

[polichick]

3. I'm glad Rachel included that clip of Obama on the campaign trail talking about...

...habeas corpus ~ it was the first thing that came to mind when she started in on the story. I don't get Obama's change of heart.

[Overseas]

24. And his stance on restoring habeas corpus gave me lots of hope.

So this does make me sad to hear.

[biopowertoday]

29. Something is hitting his soul on

these issues.

[pleah]

2. All the good things Obama has done will mean nothing if

this is allowed to continue. Not to mention failure to prosecute war crimes.

[polichick]

4. It's really crazy - on the one hand, great changes; on the other, same ol' creepy stuff.

[acmavm]

6. What 'great changes'? Just curious because I still see the same

people making out like bandits, on all the laws, and on the government, AND the taxpayers, that were getting by during the last admin.

Have we stopped losing jobs? Is Wall Street done picking our pockets? Is the Patriot Act still intact and in place? Are we going to investigate the bush** admin? Are we gonna get affordable single-payer health care? Are we out of Iraq and Afganistan? Are we investigating the criminal in the bush** admin?

Like I said, just curious.

It's the BIG things that matter.

[polichick]

7. I've worked on behalf of the environment for over thirty years - big changes in policy there...

...and also in our relationship with other countries around the world.

As important as the things you mention certainly are, imo there's nothing bigger than cleaning up our planet.

Still, I won't make excuses for the president on these other things and I'm glad Rachel Maddow covers them.

[Overseas]

26. I agree with you.

Some of the moves fill me with hope-- like closing Guantanamo and trying to release the torture memos

and serious moves on critical environmental issues and investing more in education and stimulus funding to address the wanton neglect of our infrastructure by the Bush Cheney Gang.

While others make me quite sad. Like having Summers on the close team and continuing the Bush Bailouts

and increasing the forces in Afghanistan

and hearing single payer being shut out of healthcare discussions while allowing Republican appeasing talk about "entitlement reform"-- which sounds like cutting more holes into our social safety nets.

[polichick]

5. Does habeas corpus no longer matter, now that Obama has dropped it??

[polichick]

8. Remember this guy???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl3RPSw_450

What's changed??

[CoffeeCat]

9. Barack Obama told me he would reinstate Habeas Corpus...

...when he was in Iowa during the caucuses. He called me, because I was an undecided voter.

We talked about my issues, and I said that all traditional Democratic social issues were off the table for me---because
we first needed to repair our democracy. If we don't follow the Constitution--then our entire government is a house of
cards and we have nothing.

I mentioned many things--and one of them was Habeas Corpus. I wanted to know what he was going to do about it. He
said that he would not allow Habeas to be ignored and that national policy must not sweep aside Habeas.

He said that. He also directed me to his "Blueprint for America", Obama's lengthy booklet that laid out his ideas and
positions on important subjects. He touted the fact that he mentioned Habeas in this book, and in the book he laid out
how it should be followed. I looked it up. Sure enough, it was in there. I was pretty impressed, because most politicians
lay out their views on healthcare, education, taxes, etc. Habeas is a pretty obscure subject. Not many voters base
their votes on how a politician stands on Habeas Corpus and reinstating it after Bush ignored it.

Since Obama cared enough to include it in his "Blueprint" and because he TOLD ME that he would reinstate it--I was impressed.

We talked about how he taught Constitutional Law and how that meant he respected and would follow the Constitution.

He asked me to be a precinct captain, and based on what he promised me and had written in his "Blueprint" I agreed. I
wrote a speech, lobbied hard for him during the caucus and swung many people to our side. "Newsweek" wrote about
his phone call to me, in an article about how well-oiled and strategic the Obama campaign was.

I'm going to reserve judgment until more information is available. However, if this administration does not follow
Habeas, it will be a big blow to me--and to our country. If a President who promised change, and who is also a
Constitutional Scholar won't follow the Constitution--then who will?

[polichick]

12. imo it's disturbing that this news was dumped on a Friday night, when few are...

...paying attention ~ what happened to transparency??

[Senator]

10. But They'll Still Get Those Swell "Former Enemy Combatant" T-Shirts

Obama has had literally years to substantively oppose torture and war crimes -- and more importantly, satisfy his treat-bound duty to ACT to stop it as a US Gov't official.

It is his "http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Senator/17">Steroids Problem" and it's not going away.

Regardless of his rosy rhetoric, he continues to drive the Torture Getaway Car.

---

[polichick]

16. But WHY?? I just don't get his change in tune.

[Senator]

30. Because to him it is just a "tune."

On the campaign trail it's better to whistle the "outsider" tune, but once safely back inside the beltway it's back to the tune of the immunity-granting, impeachophic, Mighty Insider Wurlitzer.

He's really whistling past the torture graveyard -- while driving the Torture Getaway Car.

--

[polichick]

31. "Mighty Insider Wurlitzer" - I've always found that sound a little scary...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06zSBqVWDXw&feature=related

[slipslidingaway]

11. Obama and habeas corpus -- then and now - Glen Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/index.html


"...Back in February, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue -- the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Times's Charlie Savage put it, "that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team." Remember: these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield. Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country -- abducted from their homes and workplaces -- and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned. Indeed, the Bagram detainees in the particular case in which the Obama DOJ filed its brief were Yemenis and Tunisians captured outside of Afghanistan (in Thailand or the UAE, for instance) and then flown to Bagram and locked away there as much as six years without any charges. That is what the Obama DOJ defended, and they argued that those individuals can be imprisoned indefinitely with no rights of any kind -- as long as they are kept in Bagram rather than Guantanamo...


So that Barack Obama -- the one trying to convince Democrats to make him their nominee and then their President -- said that abducting people and imprisoning them without charges was (a) un-American; (b) tyrannical; (c) unnecessary to fight Terrorism; (d) a potent means for stoking anti-Americanism and fueling Terrorism; (e) a means of endangering captured American troops, Americans traveling abroad and Americans generally; and (f) a violent betrayal of core, centuries-old Western principles of justice. But today's Barack Obama, safely ensconced in the White House, fights tooth and nail to preserve his power to do exactly that.

I'm not searching for ways to criticize Obama. I wish I could be writing paeans celebrating the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law. But these actions -- these contradictions between what he said and what he is doing, the embrace of the very powers that caused so much anger towards Bush/Cheney -- are so blatant, so transparent, so extreme, that the only way to avoid noticing them is to purposely shut your eyes as tightly as possible and resolve that you don't want to see it, or that you're so convinced of his intrinsic Goodness that you'll just believe that even when it seems like he's doing bad things, he must really be doing them for the Good. If there was any unanimous progressive consensus over the last eight years, it was that the President does not have the power to kidnap people, ship them far away, and then imprison them indefinitely in a cage without due process. Has that progressive consensus changed as of January 20, 2009? I think we're going to find out...


UPDATE: One of the things I always found so striking about debates over Bush/Cheney executive power abuses was that Bush followers who admittedly had no substantive arguments to justify those actions would nonetheless still find reasons to defend their admired leader: Bush knows more than we do and probably has secret reasons for doing it. Bush is a good person and well-motivated and there's no reason to think he's doing bad or abusive things. Rights for Terrorists pale in comparsion to other more important issues. Republican critics of Bush are hysterics and paranoids who are only criticizing him because they want to get on TV and sell books..."

[chill_wind]

13. And this sentence really jumps out for me:

"If there was any unanimous progressive consensus over the last eight years, it was that the President does not have the power to kidnap people, ship them far away, and then imprison them indefinitely in a cage without due process. Has that progressive consensus changed as of January 20, 2009? I think we're going to find out..."

[slipslidingaway]

14. He's right IMO...

should we change our principles after an election.

:(

[polichick]

15. According to Isikoff, "a key test" will come this Thursday...

...when Obama will announce his decision on whether to declassify a set of Bush era memos on interrogation techniques and torture, which Holder and Craig have already signed off on.

That will be pretty telling imo.

[slipslidingaway]

18. Yes, here is the ACLU statement....

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/39276prs20090402.html?s_src=RSS

"ACLU Agrees To Extension Of Torture Memo Deadline Based On DOJ Pledge To Consider Releasing Bybee Memo (4/2/2009)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: [phone]; [e-mail]

NEW YORK – The Justice Department has sought an extension of the government's deadline to decide whether to disclose three legal memoranda authored in May 2005 by Steven Bradbury, then a lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The memos authorized the CIA to subject prisoners to torture methods including waterboarding. In ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, a federal judge had given the Justice Department until today to disclose the memos or explain its refusal to do so. The ACLU has consented to extend the production deadline to April 16 in return for the government's representation that high-level officials will consider the release not only of the Bradbury memos but also a memo authored in August 2002 by Jay S. Bybee, who was then the head of the OLC. The Bush administration had previously withheld the Bybee memo.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

"We reluctantly consented to this extension based on the government's representation that within two weeks it will re-review not only the May 2005 Bradbury memos included in today's deadline but also the August 2002 Bybee memo that was one of the cornerstones of the CIA's torture program. Collectively, these memos supplied the framework for an interrogation program that permitted the most barbaric forms of abuse, violated domestic and international law, alienated America's allies and yielded information that was both unreliable and unusable in court. Using national security as a pretext, the Bush administration managed to suppress these memos for years, denying the public crucial information about government policy and shielding government officials from accountability. While we are disappointed that the Bradbury memos were not released today, we are optimistic that the extension will result in the release of information that would not otherwise have been available to the public."

The Justice Department's letter seeking an extension is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/39274lgl20090402.html

[slipslidingaway]

22. More in this new post from Greenwald...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/14/torture/index.html

"...This Thursday will be a very significant test for how much influence the anti-accountability camp exerts within the Obama administration and for how serious Obama's pledges of transparency were, as that day is the latest deadline for the Obama DOJ either to release the three key OLC torture-authorizing memos, release them in heavily redacted form, or refuse to release them at all. It has been widely reported that a "war" has broken out within the Obama administration over their release, with key Bush-era intelligence officials -- such as Obama's top counter-terrorism aide John Brennan and ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden -- demanding the ongoing concealment of the memos. Those torture memos are reputed to be among the most vivid torture documents of the Bush era, and thus will almost certainly fuel the flames of investigations and prosecution -- both here and internationally. That is what has prompted the "war" over their disclosure. It's hardly a surprise that if you empower the very people most connected to the Bush CIA, there will be substantial forces blocking any attempt to bring accountability under the rule of law for the crimes that were committed.

Just think about what all this means: not only are we failing to investigate or indict those who authorized torture, but we haven't even reached the point yet where we've decided that these crimes are bad enough that those implicated ought to be barred from serving in the highest positions in our Government....


UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan says that Obama, by not prosecuting Bush officials, is playing "a long game" which will eventually result in accountability for the war criminals, whereby Obama "hangs back a little, allows the evidence to slowly filter out, releases memos that help prove to Americans that what was done was unequivocally torture and indisputably illegal."

It's going to be quite some time before one can definitively prove or disprove that theory, but if, on Thursday, Obama does anything other than release the three OLC torture memos more or less in fully unredacted form, that will be rather compelling evidence negating Sullivan's speculation. Conversely, as I said earlier this week, if those memos are released essentially in full over the vehement objections of key intelligence officials, Obama will deserve some substantial credit for doing that."

[polichick]

23. Thanks! I'm crossing my fingers that the president will do the right thing...

This sentence is really interesting:

"Just think about what all this means: not only are we failing to investigate or indict those who authorized torture, but we haven't even reached the point yet where we've decided that these crimes are bad enough that those implicated ought to be barred from serving in the highest positions in our Government...."

[slipslidingaway]

27. YW, a sad sentence indeed. n/t

[progressoid]

17. shhhh...not so loud

you'll become an Obama hater if you talk like that. :hide:

[polichick]

20. Lol - if Rachel didn't go over all the Friday night dumps, I would have missed it...

...looks like many at DU take their silencing orders from the WH.

[uponit7771]

19. I don't like Obama's defense of Bush admin policies regard HC but I'm willing to give him the...

...benefit of the doubt

[polichick]

21. During the campaign, Obama had no doubt about habeas rights...

I still have no doubt.

[SpartanDem]

25. Let's see how this plays out

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd told the newspaper that because the administration is still reviewing its detainee policies, "we concluded that it was necessary to appeal this ruling," but he did not rule out a change of heart once the review is complete.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/11/Obama-sticks-to-Bush-detainee-policy/UPI-16001239474561/

The WaPo article on this from this weekend mentioned that the review would be done in July.

[polichick]

28. We'll get some helpful news this Thursday (see post #15).

[Political Heretic]

32. Totally unacceptable.