Torture Cover-up Continued By Obama Admin

Yesterday in the 9th circuit appeals court the DoJ asserted "state secrets" as the reason to dismiss Binyam et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, meaning they just flip-flopped 180 degrees on Obama's campaign promise to end Dubya's reliance on “state secrets” as a way to prevent judicial oversight and accountability of the executive branch decisions (in this case involving kidnapping, torturing and illegal detention). From BarackObama.com:

Apparently the operative words above describing the problem is “The Bush administration,” since the Obama administration is now doing the exact same thing.

Nobody (not even the ACLU) argues the state secrets privilege is invalid but the DoJ isn't claiming certain facts or documents need to be withheld. Their reasoning is that the entire case must be dismissed. Because they say so. Yet the (very gruesome) evidence in this case is already public knowledge and the legal basis for invoking the privilege is to prevent damage to programs that no longer exist. Very disappointing..

 

Interesting. Am presently watching 'Taxi to the Dark Side'...

Chilling.

 

Transparency.....

 

It's amazing once you are privvy to all of the info on the how & why we do/did things they way we do things become clearer. Perhaps Obama opened his eyes once everything was laid out in front of him - or maybe every elected President just simply looks for ways to hide info and screw the little guy... hmmm I wonder which is more plausible?

 

I will take the high ground for once.























































Ahh the hell with it.....

 

You. told. me. so. D'oh!

The details about torture are enough to make even me vomit but that aside, from a constitutional point of view if you want to be ruled by a monarch that really is your own business. But the state secrets privilege is hardly new. IIRC, it was first invoked during the Jefferson administration. Yet 90% of all invocations have occurred in the last eight years. Maybe there is cause for some concern here?

The realpolitik downside is that between this and Obama's total silence while the Gazan's were getting massacred, he has pretty much eliminated any credibility he had built up with Muslims about being fairer and more objective. And that could have been tremendously valuable! I can see him reneging on his promise to give a speech in his first 100 days from a major Muslim capital. It won't look good if they all are throwing shoes.

The other twist is the case of one of the defendants, Binyam Mohamed, who is British, already has been before the London courts. The judges there ruled evidence of his torture was “necessary and essential” to his defense. But then the US gov't threatened to blackmail the Brits by withholding counter-terrorism-intelligence if they allowed that evidence to be released. So the UK gov't denied everything and shut down the case.

 

what i think is funny is the reported reactions by a few of the judges. you know where they wanted this to go.

But a government lawyer, Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.”

 

I think once oversight is eliminated any gov't will abuse the powers available. They would be stupid not to. If you have a grenade launcher, why keep using your bb gun?

The most charitable explanation I can imagine is that as a Dem president with two wars on the go Obama desperately does not want to alienate his admin from the CIA and military rank and file (by allowing the people who followed orders to be unfairly scapegoated here) and that he also he thinks a truth and reconciliation-type commission is needed to lay out the facts before it is possible to go after the true culprits responsible. But, I would not bet $5 on that.

 

No he's not. He is Ethiopian, with British residency.

 

Funny one R_ACREE!!! LOL

 

That would be the obvious assumption. But the issue here is that they are arguing entire lawsuits must be dismissed in advance based solely on the gov'ts say-so and cannot even be looked at by the judges on the grounds that doing so would harm national security.

And yet if you wade through the ACLU court brief and the UK papers trial coverage, pretty much all of this evidence “that cannot even be considered” has been disclosed and established already. Hell, so much of it is public knowledge that even Boeing's shareholders were complaining about it at the annual shareholders meeting (Boeing owns Jeppesen Dataplan).

Also, it is worth noting the only “oversight” is supposed to be the gang of eight on the senate intelligence committee. But, as we learned after the run up to the Iraq invasion and once the wiretapping program was exposed, there is little or nothing they can do if they object. They write a letter of dissent to King Barry and it promptly gets classified top secret. Meanwhile the rest of congress gets kept in the dark and fed bs.

 

Words cannot describe how much I am enjoying the indignation expressed by our Canadian friend.

 

I am happy to provide enjoyment.

Marc Ambinder cheerleads for Obama. Basically: “We know all that stuff we said before but we just got on the job and are waffling.”

Assuming they are waffling sincerely (which seems doubtful), it still may be bad news for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft/Gonzales, Addington and Yoo:

 

Seems like announcing there will be oversight is a bad thing too.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51O3TB20090225?sp=true

Over-force feeding, beatings and dislocated limbs. 14 of 20 allegations were substantiated but guards “appeared unconcerned about potential repercussions.” Dang. Putting pepper spray on the toilet paper of those detainees who have hemorrhoids is just plain sick.

 

Oh, I don't know. Having some pepper spray get onto your hemorrhoids is a hell of a lot better than having your head sawed off. Huh?

As I have previously stated, I suspect that Obama's eyes flew wide open when he received his first security briefing after he was elected. He started changing his plans immediately after that meeting. There are a lot of details involved in national security that the public isn't aware of and should never be aware of. Basically, the general public doesn't have the stomach to be told everything. They can't handle it. :up:

 

same here.

must be nice to have Canada's problems and place in the world.

 

Wait...what hasn't he changed his mind on?

 

Here are the first words spoken by the messiah after his first full military and intelligence briefings. "Oh fuck.....for real?"