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Archive for the 'Bush Blowback' Category

Jul

With Unexpected Iraqi Withdrawal Demand, Bush Has Lost the War

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: Bush Blowback and Iraq

New Iraqi resistance to U.S. demands reflects Iran’s influence as well as Sadr’s belief that he could succeed in driving U.S. forces out.

The official Iraqi demand for U.S. withdrawal confirms what was becoming increasingly clear in recent months — that the Iraqi regime has decided to shed its military dependence on the United States.

The two strongly pro-Iranian Shiite factions supporting the regime in Baghdad, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and al-Maliki’s own Dawa Party, were under strong pressure from both Iran and their own Shiite population and from Shiite clerics, including Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to demand U.S. withdrawal.

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May

Ex-Guantanamo inmate finds distracted audience at US Congress

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Bagram, Bush Blowback, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Guantanamo, Murat Kurnaz and Torture

This story makes me furious. Has this country become so callous, so heartless that we can simply ignore an ex-detainees accounts of the extreme torture he went through? How can these “lawmakers” go home, eat a nice warm dinner, and sleep soundly? They should be deeply ashamed. I am writing letters, I hope you will too. Go here to find your congressperson, let them know what you think. Remember they are supposed to represent US, the people. Let’s let them know that they did NOT do that, and they can be fired!

by Fanny Carrier

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A handful of US lawmakers gave only half an ear to the testimony on Tuesday of a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who spent nearly five years in prison before being released without charge.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turk who was born in Germany, was arrested during a trip to Pakistan in autumn 2001 and delivered to US authorities in exchange for a payment of 3,000 dollars.

Kurnaz spent several nightmarish weeks at the US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan before being transferred to the US “war on terror” camp at Guantanamo.

US authorities determined in 2002 that Kurnaz had no terror links, but claimed that he remained a danger because one of his friends had committed a suicide attack — even though the friend in question is alive, and has never been found to have terror ties.

Kurnaz was not released until mid-2006, and only after pressure on Washington from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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May

US ’stuck’ with Guantanamo Bay prisoners

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: Bush Blowback and Detainee

The United States is “stuck” with its Guantanamo Bay prison and cannot decide what to do with inmates who cannot be charged or set loose, the American defence secretary admitted.

Robert Gates told the Senate he believed the prison should be closed, but had not found a way to do it.

“I think the brutally frank answer is we’re stuck. And we’re stuck in several ways,” he told Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.
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May

Lawyers seek dismissal of 9/11 charges

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: Bush Blowback, Detainee, Kangaroo Kourt, Military Commission, Military Tribunal and human rights

The Associated Press

Military lawyers for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four alleged coconspirators are arguing that charges against their clients should be dropped following illegal meddling by a Pentagon official.

A motion filed late last week before a U.S. war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo argues that the case has been tainted by the involvement of the tribunals’ legal adviser, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who was removed from another case because he lacked the required neutrality.

The defendants are to be arraigned June 5 at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in Cuba on charges including conspiracy, hijacking an aircraft and murder. The U.S. is seeking the death penalty for all five men.

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May

Betrayals, Backsliding and Boycotts

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: Boycott Trial, Bush Blowback and boycott military commision

The Ongoing Collapse of the Gitmo Military Commissions

By Andy Worthington

Anyone who has kept half an eye on the proceedings at the Military Commissions in Guant?namo — the unique system of trials for ?terror suspects? that was conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisers — will be aware that their progress has been faltering at best. After six and a half years, in which they have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, derailed by their own military judges, relentlessly savaged by their own military defense lawyers, and condemned as politically motivated by their own former chief prosecutor, they have only secured one contentious result: a plea bargain negotiated by the Australian David Hicks, who admitted to providing ?material support for terrorism,? and dropped his well-chronicled claims of torture and abuse by US forces, in order to secure his return to Australia to serve out the remainder of a meager nine-month sentence last March.

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May

FBI assists with detainee cases, differs with CIA

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: Abuse, Bush Blowback, C.I.A., Death Penalty, Detainee, Detainee Abuse and F.B.I.

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is helping to get information from detainees and prepare terrorism cases against suspects at Guantanamo Bay, despite differences with the CIA over harsh interrogation techniques, the bureau’s director said on Friday.

But, in an appearance at the National Press Club, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller declined to say whether a single U. S. interrogation standard was needed to prohibit coercive tactics like waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely criticized as torture.
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May

U.S. military lawyers want September 11 charges dropped

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Bush Blowback, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Guantanamo and Kangaroo Kourt

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - Charges against five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks should be thrown out because they were improperly influenced by a Pentagon legal adviser, U. S. military lawyers said in documents filed on Friday.

Also on Friday, a U. S. military judge postponed the Guantanamo trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, until July 21, to allow time to assess his mental competency.
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May

Torture Policies Undermine 9/11 Case

By Dazeylin 0 Comments

Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Bush Blowback, Bush Lies, Detainee Abuse, Guantanamo and Torture

The Pentagon?s decision to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged ?20th hijacker? in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores the consequences of the Bush administration?s descent into torture and other abusive treatment of ?war on terror? detainees.

If al-Qahtani?s case had gone forward, the U. S. government would have been forced to reveal its own violations of the Geneva Convention, anti- torture statutes and the laws of war, according to lawyers representing al-Qahtani.

?All of the [incriminating] statements Mohammad al-Qahtani made or is alleged to have made were the result of torture or made under the threat of torture and that is in my view why the government decided to dismiss his case at this point,? said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York.
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