Tag: Barack Obama

Recently, US State Department spokesperson, P.J. Crowley was forced to tender his resignation becuase he had the audacity to call the inhumane treatment of PFC. Bradley Manning “ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid”. He is now defending that statement and explaining how Manning’s treatment undermines our own strategic narrative, as his piece in the Guardian explains:

The US should uphold the highest standards towards its citizens, including the WikiLeaks accused. I stand by what I said

   But I understood why the question was asked. Private Manning’s family, joined by a number of human rights organisations, has  questioned the extremely restrictive conditions he has experienced at the brig at Marine Corps base Quantico, Virginia. I focused on the fact that he was forced to sleep naked, which led to a circumstance where he stood naked for morning call.

   Based on 30 years of government experience, if you have to explain why a guy is standing naked in the middle of a jail cell, you have a policy in need of urgent review. The Pentagon was quick to point out that no women were present when he did so, which is completely beside the point.

   Our strategic narrative connects our policies to our interests, values and aspirations. While what we do, day in and day out, is broadly consistent with the universal principles we espouse, individual actions can become disconnected. Every once in a while, even a top-notch symphony strikes a discordant note. So it is in this instance.

   The Pentagon has said that it is playing the Manning case by the book. The book tells us what actions we can take, but not always what we should do. Actions can be legal and still not smart. With the Manning case unfolding in a fishbowl-like environment, going strictly by the book is not good enough. Private Manning’s overly restrictive and even petty treatment undermines what is otherwise a strong legal and ethical position.

   When the United States leads by example, we are not trying to win a popularity contest. Rather, we are pursuing our long-term strategic interest. The United States cannot expect others to meet international standards if we are seen as falling short. Differences become strategic when magnified through the lens of today’s relentless 24/7 global media environment.

   So, when I was asked about the “elephant in the room,” I said the treatment of Private Manning, while well-intentioned, was “ridiculous” and “counterproductive” and, yes, “stupid”.

   I stand by what I said. The United States should set the global standard for treatment of its citizens – and then exceed it. It is what the world expects of us. It is what we should expect of ourselves.

Today, Crowley appeared on the Dylan Ratigan Shoiw and reiterated what he said in his article but hemmed and hawed when Ratigan asked him about a similar leak about classified information to the press.

Mr. Crowley, if we are going to vigorously prosecute Bradley Manning for releasing documents that even the Vice President has said have done no harm. why aren’t you supporting the ferreting out of this other “leaker”? What is the difference if information is given to the press or Wikileaks? The US can hardly be an arbiter of human rights and the rule of law when it can’t apply either to even its own citizens.

While this may not be the most important commission in the Obama administration but the significance of appointing one of the former military psychologists who had questionable involvement in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, leaves one wonder, just what is Barack Obama thinking. Concerned about “psychological well-being” of the American military family with high PTSD rates, an increase in suicides and abuse cases as they struggle to survive multiple deployment and financial strains, Obama’s response was the typical politician’s, create a commission, “Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.” and have the First Lady involved. Of all the qualified psychologists, both inside and outside the government and military, who does Obama choose? Col. (ret.) Larry C. James, PhD., who was in the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004. In e-mails circulated by James, he states that he has been selected to serve on the commission and will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials.

Note: I kept getting errors about text being corrupted while trying to post the complete diary.  This is only half the diary.  There are many more sections and editorial cartoons in this diary that I posted over at Daily Kos.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

Does anyone recognize this man?

Obama said the United States can effectively fight al-Qaida and its affiliates, “but we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process, in checks and balances and accountability.”

“We must never — ever — turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake,” he said.

Speaking in Washington’s National Archives building, where the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence are kept, Obama said the United States must continue to see those documents as the “foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity around the world.”

That was President Barack Obama less than two years ago. My how this man has shed his skin and aligned himself with all the policies he condemned.

Rights Are Curtailed for Terror Suspects

New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.

snip

A Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum reviewed by The Wall Street Journal says the policy applies to “exceptional cases” where investigators “conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.” Such action would need prior approval from FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to the memo, which was issued in December but not made public.

Some bloggers with more legal background than I have (which is not much) are questioning the authority of the DOJ to change Miranda rights without legislation or a Supreme Court ruling.

From Jeralyn Merritt at Talk Left:

The remedy for a Miranda violation is suppression of the statements, and any evidence derived from them, at the trial of the person who made them. Other defendants ordinarily wouldn’t have standing to challenge the statements at their trial, since it wasn’t their rights that were violated. But, what if there’s a policy that intentionally flouts Miranda? Is that a due process violation like outrageous government misconduct that could be raised by defendants against whom the statements were offered even if they weren’t the person whose Miranda rights were withheld?

At emptywheel, bmaz has this to say:

This type of move has been afoot for almost a year, with Eric Holder proposing it in a string of Sunday morning talk shows on May 9, 2010 and, subsequently, based on Holder’s request for Congressional action to limit Miranda in claimed terrorism cases, Representative Adam Smith proposed such legislation on July 31, 2010. Despite the howling of the usual suspects such as Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman, etc. the thought of such legislation died in the face of bi-partisan opposition from a wide range of legislators who actually understood Constitutional separation of powers and judicial authority. They knew the proposed legislation flew in the face of both concepts. And they were quite correct.

It was bad enough for the Obama Administration, headed by the supposed and so called “Constitutional scholar” Barack Obama, to propose inappropriate and unconstitutional legislation to restrict criminal suspects’ Constitution based Miranda rights, but it is an egregious step beyond to simply arrogate to themselves the unitary and unilateral power to do it by DOJ memorandum fiat.

(emphasis mine)

And the final word from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

The right here is established by the Supreme Court as guaranteed by the Constitution, and the specific right in question — not to have pre-Miranda statements admissible in court — is one the administration cannot change and does not purport to. But the guidelines long in place for reading a detainee his rights were vital to preserving the Miranda framework — for preventing abusive interrogations and coerced statements — and it is this protection which the Obama DOJ is seriously diluting with such a permissive and discretionary standard.

Worse, the administration tried but failed to convince Congress to modify it with legislation. But, as we well know, nothing deters a President’s will: so they just went ahead and did it on their own. The very same political faction that spent the last decade decrying assertions of unconstrained executive power and the ignoring of Congressional will in the area of civil liberties is now its enthusiastic champion.

When it comes to debates between Left and Right over the Constitution and due process, Miranda has always been viewed as one of the key defining issues. Richard Nixon was obsessed with demonizing the Warren Court for providing too many rights to the accused, and his attacks on Miranda were part of a decades-long war by the American Right on the constitutional liberties established over the last half-century. With a swoop of a pen — more than 9 years removed from the 9/11 attacks — Barack Obama has done more to erode Miranda than any right-wing politician could have dreamed of achieving.

What they said.

The 2nd Circuit Court ruled that a law suit (pdf) challenging the constitutionality of the FISA law which shields government eavesdropping from judicial review, or as Glen Greenwald says, “(places) secret executive surveillance above and beyond the rule of law”, can move forward in the courts. Finally, there will be a review of the law that Obama promised to vote against, then voted for promising to revise after he was elected and now wields with the same impunity as his predecessor to cover up war crimes and protect war criminals in the name of national security. The bill not only gives expanded eavesdropping powers without a warrant but also gave retroactive amnesty to the telecommunication companies which participated in Bush’s illegal spying program.

At Salon, Greenwald explains the law suit:

In the case brought by the ACLU, the plaintiffs were a variety of human rights activists, lawyers and journalists (including Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges), who argued that both they and their sources have a reasonable fear of being subjected to this expanded surveillance, and that fear– by rendering them unable to perform their jobs and exercise their Constitutional rights — constitutes sufficient harm to vest them with “standing” to challenge the new eavesdropping law.  In response, the Bush administration argued — as always — that the plaintiffs’ inability to prove that they were actually targeted by this expanded surveillance precluded their suing; their mere “fear” of being targeted, argued the Bush DOJ, was insufficient to confer standing to sue.

In late 2008, a lower court judge granted the Bush argument and dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit on “standing” grounds.  On appeal, the Obama DOJ — needless to say — faithfully adopted exactly the Bush argument to demand dismissal of the ACLU’s lawsuit on procedural grounds of “standing,” i.e., without assessing the merits of whether this law violates the Fourth Amendment.

Yes, the Obama DOJ is now using the very same argument that was used by the Bush DOJ. But now a three judge panel ruled unanimously that the plaintiffs do have standing:

(click on image to enlarge)

War, endless war.  Evidently, Iraq and Afghanistan, even taken together, cannot sate the US’s taste for armed combat and blood. No. Not a chance. Those are insufficient. Today we learned that the US was going to get involved in yet another war, a third one, this time in Libya, again complete with ill defined purpose, the possibility of massive and uncontrolled escalation, and no exit plans.  Yes, I know.  No ground troops are being committed. Yet. Right now. But this intervention is a lot more than just imposing a “no fly zone”.  Let’s call it what it is: it’s an open invitation for the US to get embroiled in yet a third, simultaneous, distant ground war.

At his Balkinization site, Jack Balkin discusses how he had predicted the current state of increased national surveillance that were put in place by George W. Bush during the “war on terrorism”. It would not matter if the president was a Democrat or a Republican because it has little to do with 9/11 but more about the National Security State that was created after World War II and it would be expected that these policies would be expanded.

Barack Obama has largely confirmed these expectations, much to the dismay of many liberals who supported him. After issuing a series of publicly lauded executive orders on assuming office (including a ban on torture), he has more or less systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the George W. Bush Administration, employing the new powers granted to the President by Congress in the Authorization of the Use of Military Force of 2001, the Patriot Act of 2001 (as amended), the Protect America Act of 2007, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and the Military Commissions Acts of 2006 and 2009. These statutory authorizations have created a basic framework for the National Surveillance State, and have made Obama the most powerful president in history in these policy areas.

In spite of all the flowery rhetoric in public, behind the curtain Barack Obama is an extension of what is turning into an Imperial Presidency. This issue goes hand in hand with the expansion of the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address. David Swanson, author, blogger, and activist, and Bruce Fein, a constitutional and international lawyer discuss the current state of the growing surveillance state that is is making an end run Bill of Rights protections and expectations about procedure. The following four videos that were made on March 17 and moderated by attorney and author, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute are well worth the time.

Barack now not only owns two wars, a failing economic policy but torture policy as well. After saying that the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid”, State Department Spokesperson, P.J. Crowley, was forced to reign early this morning. Some may not remember Richard M. Nixon’s firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Coxand the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20, 1973 during the Watergate scandal but it precipitated a firestorm in Congress and the eventual resignation of Nixon from office. I doubt that either the Republicans or the Democrats are that principled these days, this does, however speak volumes about Barack and his loyal supporters who have the audacity to call themselves progressive and liberals.

Glen Greenwald also reminds of the Bush administration “firings” and what Barack had asked us to do:

Remember when the Bush administration punished Gen. Eric Shinseki for his public (and prescient) dissent on the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz plan for Iraq, and all good Democrats thought that was so awful, such a terrible sign of the administration’s refusal to tolerate any open debate? And then there was that time when Bush fired his White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for publicly suggesting that the Iraq War might cost $100 billion, prompting similar cries of outrage from Democrats about how the GOP crushes internal debate and dissent. Obama’s conduct seems quite far from the time during the campaign when Obama-fawning journalists like Time‘s Joe Klein were hailing him for wanting a “team of rivals”, and Obama was saying things like this: “I don’t want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.”

He further makes the point that Barack has now embraced the policies of of those who instituted world wide torture and illegal eavesdropping. He has refused to prosecute them and given them cover of full presidential immunity and given cover to Manning’s abusers. Yet from the apologists, we get lockstep support of the very same policies that they said they would not tolerate and tell those of us who dare call out Barack, to STFU because he’s a Democrat.

Besides embracing Reagan and his economic, anti-worker policies, he’s now taken a page from Nixon’s playbook. Where is Barack’s sense of justice? His sense of morality? His support of the law and the Constitution? Nixon would be proud.

(Up Date below)

Barack says it’s OK to torture an American soldier who is being held in isolation on an American military base on American soil just miles from the White House. Why? Because the Pentagon said it is. Sound familiar? It should because, just a very short 26 months ago, the other guy who said torture was OK left the White House. It appears he was replaced with his ideological clone, and now, fellow war criminal, Barack who has taken torture, detention and rendition even further than Dick even could have imagined.

State Department spokesperson, P. J. Crowley, who was speaking to a small group at MIT discussing “the new media and the foreign policy”, he let was queried by a young man about Wikileaks:

Charlie deTar: There’s an elephant in the room during this discussion: Wikileaks. The US government is torturing a whistleblower in prison right now. How do we resolve a conversation about the future of new media in diplomacy with the government’s actions regarding Wikileaks?

PJC: “I spent 26 years in the air force. What is happening to Manning is ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid, and I don’t know why the DoD is doing it.

Then today at a press conference on the disaster in Japan, ABC News White House correspondent pulled his cajones out of the lock box in his boss’s office, asking Barack about P.J.’s condemnation of Bradley’s treatment. Barack’s response:

With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well. [my emphasis]

So, let me get this straight, the basic standard of treatment of an innocent man who has yet to be formerly charges for eight months is to apply the standards that were condemned at Abu Grab and Guantanamo in 2002?

As Glen Greenwald at Salon so precisely stated in his article today on Amnesty International’s call for protests of Manning’s treatment:

Oh, that’s very reassuring — and such a very thorough and diligent effort by the President to ensure that detainees under his command aren’t being abused.  He asked the Pentagon and they said everything was great — what more is there to know?  Everyone knows that on questions of whether the military is abusing detainees, the authoritative source is . . . the military.  You just ask them if they’re doing anything improper, and once they tell you that they’re not, that’s the end of the matter.  

I have no doubt that George Bush asked the DoD whether everything was being run professionally at Guantanamo and they assured him that they were.  Perhaps the reason there haven’t been any Wall Street prosecutions is because Obama asked Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein if there was any fraud and those banking executives assured the President that there wasn’t.

Glen also highlighted, Dylan Ratigan, MSNBC host, condemnation of Democrats and the so-called left wing, progressive, pragmatic apologists for

remaining silent in the face of civil liberties and other abuses by Obama which would provoke, vociferous and constant objections if carried out by George Bush.  At the end of the segment, Ratigan acknowledges that some have been consistent and have vocally objected to Obama’s civil liberties abuses generally and the treatment of Manning specifically — he refers to me and FDL as examples — and then clarifies that his criticisms are aimed at Democratic politicians and their loyalists, who opportunistically pretended to care about such things when doing so produced partisan advantage (when there was a GOP President), but now ignore them because they no longer do (because there’s a Democratic President).

This is being  done in our names as it was under Bush. It was not acceptable then it is not acceptable now. Not in my name.

Up Date 3.13.11 1428 EDT: P.J. Crowley Resigning As State Department Spokesman: Report

P.J. Crowley is resigning as spokesman for the State Department, CNN reports.

Michael van Poppel at BNO News noted on Twitter after the story broke, “Crowley released a statement on Yemen just 2 hours ago. Seems really abrupt.” Shortly after he added, “Clinton: It is with regret that I have accepted the resignation of Philip J. Crowley as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.”

Politico confirmed reports of Crowley’s resignation on Sunday.

I expected this. You cannot work  for the man if you tell the truth.

Two years and two months ago the American people hailed a new President and an end to our national nightmare of the Bush reign of eight years of trampling the Constitution, the laws that govern  and the economy. Since then the reality that nothing has changed comes down with crashing reality. This President, Barack Hussein Obama, is as complicit as the last President in the war on the US Constitution, International laws and treaties and human rights. Today it became evidently clear that Obama is not Bush, he’s Cheney.

Today Obama issued an Executive Order (pdf) that not only will restart the Military Commissions at Guantanamo but also orders indefinite detention for forty seven detainees without any of them ever being charged with a crime. Why? Because Obama is covering up the war crimes of the previous administration which, according to the Nuremberg Principles, is a war crime. Claims that the evidence against these men would harm national security just rings hollow.

Marcy Wheeler at FDL explains that “the new and improved Military Detention Regime has two parts”. The first part relates to the indefinite detention polices without anything other than a claim of “because I say it’s justified”:

“Continued law of war detention is warranted for a detainee subject to the periodic review in section 3 of this order if it is necessary to protect against a significant threat to the security of the United States.“

. . . .this doesn’t appear to tie to any wrong-doing on the detainee’s part. “It” here appears to refer to “continued law of war detention,” suggesting that “it” may be necessary regardless of any threat posed by the detainee himself.

Also note that the standard “significant threat to the security of the United States” doesn’t invoke the war (ostensibly, the war against Afghanistan) itself. This seems very very wrong. It also seems designed to authorized the continued detention of the Yemeni detainees who we admit aren’t themselves a threat, but must be detained, our government says, because they come from a dangerous country.

(all emphasis mine)

The EO also restarts the Military Commissions where evidence that has been attained through torture is admissible.

Dana Milbank, in his Op-Ed, remarked that the conference call with reporters and “some top-notch lawyers from across the executive branch” with “ground rules required that the officials not be identified”, sounded very much like what the Bush lawyers used to say:

It was another important moment in the education of Barack Obama.

He began his presidency with a pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year. Within months, he realized that was impossible. And now he has essentially formalized George W. Bush’s detention policy.

Even the Tea Baggers, like newly minted Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee(R-UT), are saying indefinite detention is wrong and calling for trials in civilian courts:

Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano, subbing for Glenn Beck on his television show, hosted Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to talk about a variety of issues. At one point, Napolitano mentioned Obama’s announcement and queried the two senators about their positions on indefinite detention. Lee and Paul both broke with the standard positions of their party, slamming the policy and endorsing trials for terrorism suspects instead. Paul said that he had met with a mother of a 9/11 victim who said that what she really wanted to see was justice, and that the best way to do that was to “have trials.” Lee said that detaining someone who “has been tried and found not guilty” is “particularly problematic”

Human Rights Watch points out that 47 of these men will never be tried. Those detainees will be able to “submit documentary evidence every six months, but will only go before the full panel once every three years”. However, as the press release states, “the use by the US of indefinite detention without trial still fails to meet the most basic elements of due process under international law”.

While Obama’s EO confirms the administration’s commitment to prosecuting  some cases in civilian courts

“Is added review an improvement? Yes. Does it make US detention policies lawful? No,”

said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Signing an executive order does not suddenly make it legal to lock people up and hold them forever without proving they have committed a crime.”

HRW further notes:

. . .compared to federal courts, military commissions have moved very slowly. During the nine years since the military commissions were first announced, military prosecutors have brought only six cases to completion, four of them by plea bargain. Federal courts, in contrast, have prosecuted hundreds of terrorism-related offenses during the same period, convicting, among others, 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.

“Any trial in the military commission system carries the stigma of Guantanamo and will be tainted by a lack of due process,” Prasow said. “A verdict in the federal court system, in contrast, would be recognized internationally as legitimate.”

As I read through the executive order and news articles, all that I could think of was that surely, Dick Cheney will approve.

Up Date: As expected, Glenn Greenwald weighed in:

None of this is the slightest bit unexpected. The new Executive Order has been previewed for months and merely codifies what has long been Obama’s policy: “long” in the sense of “since he’s inaugurated”  — not, of course, “when he was a Senator and presidential candidate.” I’m writing about this merely to address the excuse from the White House and its loyalists that the fault for this policy, this inability to “close Guantanamo,” lies with Congress, which forced the President to abandon his oft-stated campaign pledge. That excuse is pure fiction.

It is true that Congress — with the overwhelming support of both parties — has enacted several measures making it much more difficult, indeed impossible, to transfer Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. But long before that ever happened, Obama made clear that he wanted to continue the twin defining pillars of the Bush detention regime: namely, (1) indefinite, charge-free detention and (2) military commissions (for those lucky enough to be charged with something). Obama never had a plan for “closing Guantanamo” in any meaningful sense; the most he sought to do was to move it a few thousand miles north to Illinois, where its defining injustices would endure.

(emphasis mine)

He also sited an article by Daphne Linzer at ProPublica:

While the order is new, most of the ideas it contains are not. This is the third time such a board has been created for nearly the same purpose. Two similar processes to review detainee cases were in place during the Bush administration. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration’s review process will operate outside the courts and will be subject to no independent review.

While the idea is recycled, Obama now owns it.