War on Terrorism

It Costs $72 Million a Year to Hold Cleared Prisoners at Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington November 18, 2011

Last week, the exorbitant expense of maintaining the Bush administrations war on terror prison at Guantánamo was revealed in the Miami Herald, where Carol Rosenberg explained that Congress provided $139million to operate the prison last year. With 171 prisoners still held, that works out to $812,865 per prisoner nearly 30times as much as it costs to keep a ...

Trial at Guantánamo: What Shall We Do With the Torture Victim?

by Andy Worthington November 11, 2011

At Guantánamo this past Wednesday, one of the most notorious torture victims of the Bush administration Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was arraigned for his trial by military commission. He was charged with masterminding the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 39 others. Al-Nashiri is also one of three ...

No End to the Shameful Treatment of Omar Khadr

by Andy Worthington November 1, 2011

This week, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen and former child prisoner, was supposed to leave Guantánamo after nine years and three months in U.S. custody. No one thought that he would return to Canada as a free man because he has another seven years to serve in a Canadian jail as part of a plea deal he made at ...

Airport Security Is Coming to a Highway Near You

by Wendy McElroy October 24, 2011

The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d'etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or ...

Obamas Dictatorial Assassination Program

by James Bovard October 23, 2011

The Obama administration now claims the authority to kill American citizens without a trial, without notice, and without any chance for targets to legally object. The “targeted killing” program of George W. Bush’s administration has been radically expanded to include Americans far from any war zone. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified last year that the targeting-to-kill decision ...

A Call to Close Guantánamo on the 10th Anniversary of the War in Afghanistan

by Andy Worthington October 13, 2011

As the war in Afghanistan begins its second decade, the reasons for it to be brought to an end are compelling: the ruinous financial cost ($460 billion and counting), the ruinous human cost (over 1,400 U.S. military deaths , and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians killed), and the utter pointlessness of the occupation itself. Having driven ...

The Al-Awlaki Murder and the Rule of Law

by Tim Kelly October 6, 2011

There is no mention in the U.S. Constitution of a presidential power to order the summary execution of any person. In fact, that power is expressly denied to the government by the Fifth Amendment, which states: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. What that means in layman's terms is the government ...

Is This Any Way to Run a Republic?

by Sheldon Richman October 6, 2011

The assassination by drone of American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen raises questions that should disturb anyone who holds the rule of law as essential to protecting individual rights and limiting the arbitrary power of government. The Obama administration alleges that al-Awlaki committed a variety of bad acts, but the key word is “alleges.” We are taught that ...

Death from Afar: The Unaccountable Killing of Anwar al-Awlaqi

by Andy Worthington October 4, 2011

What a strange and alarming place we’re in when the U.S. government, under a Democratic president, kills two U.S. citizens it dislikes for their thoughts and their words, without formally charging them with any crime or trying or convicting them, using an unmanned drone directed by U.S. personnel many thousands of miles away. And yet, that is what happened on ...

Guantánamo: Military Commissions and the Illusion of Justice

by Andy Worthington September 30, 2011

When something is irredeemably broken, the sensible course of action is to get rid of it. However, when it comes to military trials for terror suspects in the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” however broken the system is, government officials and lawmakers have repeatedly gathered round to put it back together again, and continue to do so, even though, ...

U.S. Injustice Laid Bare, As Afghan in Guantánamo Loses His Habeas Appeal

by Andy Worthington September 23, 2011

Ten years after the “War on Terror” began, the distressing misconceptions and exaggerations on which it was founded continue to plague its victims — and also to corrode America’s belief that it is a nation founded on justice and the law. Ten years ago, Congress launched this “war,” approving the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a ...

9/11 and the Cost of Empire

by Tim Kelly September 19, 2011

According to the American media and politicians commemorating the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a diabolical surprise attack perpetrated by Islamist terrorists against a peaceful and unsuspecting country. While many of the victims of those attacks were no doubt peaceful and unsuspecting, the same cannot be said of the ...