War on Terrorism

Obama’s Betrayals

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2009

After President Obama announced he would fight the release of photographs showing American soldiers abusing “war on terror” detainees, Richard Haass, president of the quintessentially mainstream Council on Foreign Relations, said that Obama had learned the difference between campaigning and governing. He wasn’t being ironic. It was said during the presidential campaign that one of the candidates was running for ...

Shades of Operation Condor

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 29, 2009

The CIA’s assassination plan, which it chose to keep secret from Congress, brings to mind Operation Condor, a similar plan run by DINA, which was Chile’s counterpart to the CIA under the dictatorial regime of military strongman Augusto Pinochet. After Pinochet took power in a coup, his agents proceeded to round up communists and ...

Martial Law and the War on Terrorism

by James Bovard July 28, 2009

The New York Times reported last week that the Bush administration considered sending in the U.S. military to arrest the so-called Lackawanna Six in 2002. Ironically, one of the worst prosecutorial overreaches by the Justice Department in the war on terror almost resulted in a temporary period of martial law. The Lackawanna Six was a group of half-a-dozen Yemeni-Americans from a ...

Obama and the Guantánamo Deadline: It’s Worse than You Think

by Andy Worthington July 27, 2009

When the Obama administration’s Detention Policy Task Force, established by executive order on the president’s second day in office, conceded last week that it would miss its six-month deadline to issue its recommendations about how to close Guantánamo, many observers focused on whether this meant that Obama would fail to meet his deadline of Jan 21, 2010, for ...

Obama’s Failure to Deliver Justice to the Last Tajik in Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington July 21, 2009

Two weeks ago, the indefatigable Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, Guantánamo’s most dedicated reporter, outlined the story of Umar Abdulayev, the last Tajik prisoner in Guantánamo, who has been cleared for release from the prison on two occasions — once by a military review board under the Bush administration, and six weeks ago by the Obama administration’s ...

Guantánamo and the Courts, Part 1: Exposing the Bush Administration’s Lies

by Andy Worthington July 13, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In recent months, those who have been studying Guantánamo closely have come to the disturbing conclusion that the biggest obstacle to President Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo by January 2010 comes not from the fear-mongering and opportunistic politicians who recently voted to prohibit the use of any funds to ...

Judge Rules that Afghan “Rendered” to Bagram in 2002 Has No Rights

by Andy Worthington July 6, 2009

In a depressing if predictable decision last Monday, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates ruled that Haji Wazir, an Afghan businessman seized in the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and rendered to the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase, can continue to be held as a prisoner without rights, even though he has never had an adequate opportunity to ...

Guantánamo: Charge or Release Prisoners, Say No To Indefinite Detention

by Andy Worthington June 30, 2009

So what’s happening now? According to a joint Washington Post/ProPublica article on Friday, “The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantánamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely,” according to “three senior government officials.” The administration moved swiftly to refute the story, with the Justice ...

Celebrate Torture Day by Punishing Torturers

by James Bovard June 23, 2009

Since 1997, every June 26 has been formally recognized as the International Day of Support for Victims of Torture. Political leaders around the globe take the occasion to proclaim their opposition to barbarism. On June 26, 2003, President George W. Bush proudly declared: “The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture, and ...

The Lies Told about the Saudi Hunger Striker Released from Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington June 22, 2009

As part of a series of recent releases from Guantánamo, three Saudi prisoners were repatriated, along with Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, an Iraqi refugee, and four Uighurs who were sent to Bermuda. As I explained in a recent article, “Empty Evidence: The Stories Of The Saudis Released From Guantánamo,” all three men had been ...

The Last Iraqi in Guantánamo, Cleared Six Years Ago, Returns Home

by Andy Worthington June 15, 2009

Last Thursday, while all eyes were focused on the arrival of four Uighurs from Guantánamo on Bermuda’s balmy shores — and while a few other commentators, myself included, noted that Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani, had been released to his family’s home country of Chad — only one journalist, James Warren of the Atlantic, noticed that ...

The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam

by James Bovard June 10, 2009

The Obama administration appears increasingly devoted to covering up the worst crimes of the Bush era. On Monday, CIA chief Leon Panetta formally objected to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein, who was considering releasing detailed information on 92 videotaped CIA torture sessions of detainees. Panetta asserted that releasing the written information “could be expected to result ...