Congressman Conyers Calls on the President to Publish the Hadley Memo

The Raw Story | Congressman Conyers Calls on the President to Publish the Hadley Memo: "

Dear Mr. President:

I write to ask that you release publicly an October 2002 memorandum that informed you that the Energy Department and State Department disagreed with assessments that Iraq was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons materials. The memorandum was submitted to you by then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.

Throughout the past several years, you have claimed frequently that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to acquire the materials necessary to build nuclear weapons. In fact, during your 2003 State of the Union Address, you stated, 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.' "...

War deserter tells of atrocities

CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: War deserter tells of atrocities: "March 30, 2006 | By ANDREW DAVIDSON

TORONTO (CP) - A "trigger-happy" U.S. army squad leader shot the foot off an unarmed Iraqi man and soldiers kicked a severed head around like a soccer ball, a U.S. war deserter told an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Thursday.

Joshua Key, the first U.S. deserter with combat experience in Iraq to apply for refugee status in Canada, told the board he witnessed numerous atrocities committed by U.S. forces while serving eight months as a combat engineer.

Key, 27, said he was never trained on the Geneva Convention and was told in Iraq by superior officers that the international law guiding humanitarian standards was just a "guideline."

"It's shoot first, ask questions later," Key said of his squad's guiding principles. "Everything's justified."

Key is one of five members of the U.S. armed forces asking for asylum in Canada. ...

Should Scalia Recuse Himself From Gitmo Case? - comments provoked "quite an uproar,"

Should Scalia Recuse Himself From Gitmo Case? - Newsweek Periscope - MSNBC.com: "Supreme Court: Detainees' Rights—Scalia Speaks His Mind | Newsweek

April 3, 2006 issue - The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guant�namo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about some of the issues in the matter. During an unpublicized March 8 talk at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Scalia dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution or international conventions, adding he was 'astounded' at the 'hypocritical' reaction in Europe to Gitmo. 'War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts,' he says on a tape of the talk reviewed by NEWSWEEK. 'Give me a break.' Challenged by one audience member about whether the Gitmo detainees don't have protections under the Geneva or human-rights conventions, Scalia shot back: 'If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy.' Scalia was apparently referring to his son Matthew, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Scalia did say, though, that he was concerned 'there may be no end to this war.'"

The comments provoked "quite an uproar," said Samantha Besson, a member of the Freiburg law faculty who had invited Scalia to give his talk, which was mostly about his "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution. This isn't the first time Scalia has commented on matters before the court: two years ago he recused himself from a Pledge of Allegiance case after making public comments about the matter. "This is clearly grounds for recusal," said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human-rights group that has filed a brief in behalf of the Gitmo detainees. "I can't recall an instance where I've heard a judge speak so openly about a case that's in front of him—without hearing the arguments." Other experts said it was a closer call. Scalia didn't refer directly to this week's case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, though issues at stake hinge in part on whether the detainees deserve legal protections that make the military tribunals unfair. "As these things mount, a legitimate question could be asked about whether he is compromising the credibility of the court," said Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics expert. A Scalia recusal (it's entirely up to him) would create problems; Chief Justice John Roberts has already done so in Hamdan because he ruled on it as an appellate judge. A Supreme Courtspokeswoman said Scalia has no comment.

—Michael Isikoff

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement - In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement - The Boston Globe: By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers."
...
And when Congress passed a law forbidding the torture of any detainee in US custody, Bush signed the bill but issued a signing statement declaring that he could bypass the law if he believed using harsh interrogation techniques was necessary to protect national security.

Past presidents occasionally used such signing statements to describe their interpretations of laws, but Bush has expanded the practice. He has also been more assertive in claiming the authority to override provisions he thinks intrude on his power, legal scholars said.

Bush's expansive claims of the power to bypass laws have provoked increased grumbling in Congress. Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ''faithfully execute" them.

effectively remove the 4th Amendment from the U.S. Constitution: warrantless physical searches of terrorism suspects on domestic soil

Crooks and Liars: "Atrios:

'According to Countdown, 'US News and World Report will tell us tomorrow that Bush administration lawyers (Torture Yoo and Abu Gonzales presumably) after 9/11 made the case that Bush had the power to engage in warrantless physical searches of terrorism suspects on domestic soil.'

mcjoan has a transcript up...

Olbermann: (reading from a U.S. News & World Report press release) 'Soon after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, lawyers in the White House and the Justice Department argued that the same legal authority that the same legal authority that allowed warrentless electronic surveillance inside the US, could also be used to justify physical searches of terror suspects homes & businesses without court approval. Doesn't that send chills down your spine?

Turley: Well it does. It's horrific, because what that would constitute is to effectively remove the 4th Amendment from the U.S. Constitution and the fact that it was so quick as a suggestion shows the inclinations, unfortunately, of this administration. It treats the Constitution as some legal technicality instead of the thing were trying to fight to protect. Notably, the U.S. News & World Report story says the FBI officals, or some of them apparently, objected... [W]e're seeing a lot of people in the administration with the courage to say 'Hold it, this is not what we're supposed to be about. If we're fighting a war, it's a war of self definition and if we start to take whole amendments out of the Constitution in the name of the war on terror-we have to wonder what's left at the end, except victory.'...read on" ...

Retired Justice O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms

The Raw Story | Retired Supreme Court Justice hits attacks on courts and warns of dictatorship: "RAW STORY | Published: March 10, 2006

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn’t help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn’t name him, but it was Texas senator John Cornyn
...
I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. ...

They Came for the Chicken Farmer - New York Times

They Came for the Chicken Farmer - New York Times: "Published: March 8, 2006

This has been our nightmare since the Bush administration began stashing prisoners it did not want to account for in Guantánamo Bay: An ordinary man with a name something like a Taliban bigwig's is swept up in the dragnet and imprisoned without any hope of proving his innocence.

A case of mistaken identity's turning an innocent person into a prisoner-for-life was supposed to be impossible. President Bush told Americans to trust in his judgment after he arrogated the right to arrest anyone, anywhere in the world, and toss people into indefinite detention. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld infamously proclaimed that the men at Guantánamo Bay were "the worst of the worst."
...
... The transcripts quote Mr. Rahman as saying he was arrested in his Pakistani village in January 2002, flown to Afghanistan, accused of being the Taliban's deputy foreign minister and then thrown into a cell in Guantánamo Bay. "I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he said, adding that the Taliban official was named Abdur Zahid Rahman.

Other cases included prisoners who owned a particular kind of cheap watch supposedly favored by Al Qaeda. An Afghan was accused of being the former Taliban governor of a province and subjected to a pretzel logic that would make Joseph Heller cringe. He said he was a different person entirely and asked the tribunal to contact the current governor and verify his story. The presiding officer refused, saying it was up to the prisoner to produce the evidence. The incarcerated Afghan then pointed out that he was being held virtually incommunicado in a United States prison in a remote corner of Cuba and not allowed to make calls. The presiding officer assured the prisoner that he would have plenty of time to write a letter — during the year of continued detention before his case might be reviewed again. ...

Justice Dept. Report Cites F.B.I. Violations - "significant," including wiretaps that were much broader in scope than approved by a court

Justice Dept. Report Cites F.B.I. Violations - New York Times: "By ERIC LICHTBLAU | Published: March 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 8 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation found apparent violations of its own wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures more than 100 times in the last two years, and problems appear to have grown more frequent in some crucial respects, a Justice Department report released Wednesday said.

While some of these instances were considered technical glitches, the report, from the department's inspector general, characterized others as "significant," including wiretaps that were much broader in scope than approved by a court and others that were allowed to continue for weeks or sometimes months longer than was authorized.

In one instance, the F.B.I. received the full content of 181 telephone calls as part of an intelligence investigation, instead of merely the billing and toll records as authorized, the report found. In a handful of cases, it said, the bureau conducted physical searches that had not been properly authorized. ..

G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants - sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping

G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants - New York Times: "G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants | By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK | Published: March 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 8 — The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday.

Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.

The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, emphasized in an interview on Wednesday the White House's resistance to any limits on what President Bush considers his inherent power to order surveillance of potential terrorists on American soil.

"There was a lot of pushback," Mr. Roberts said. "So we kept saying, I am sorry, that is not acceptable, and the reality is such that you will either do this or you will face bigger obstacles and we will get into confrontation."

The negotiations that produced a deal on the eavesdropping program left Senate Democrats fuming on the sidelines, adding to the partisan squabbling on the Intelligence Committee that longtime observers of Congress say is unprecedented. ..

Archbishop of Canterbury: [head of Anglican church] attacks Guantanamo camp: "extraordinary legal anomaly".

BBC NEWS | UK | Williams attacks Guantanamo camp: "Sunday, 5 March 2006,

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a scathing attack on Guantanamo Bay, branding the US prison camp an "extraordinary legal anomaly".

Dr Rowan Williams said holding people who had not been found guilty, or allowed access to proper legal channels, set a dangerous precedent. ...

President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress rewrites the laws ...

Kabuki Congress - New York Times: "Editorial |Published: March 6, 2006

Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.

It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.

In 2004, to take one particularly disturbing example, Congress learned that American troops were abusing, torturing and killing prisoners, and that the administration was illegally detaining hundreds of people at camps around the world. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, huffed and puffed about the abuse, but did nothing. And when the courts said the detention camps do fall under the laws of the land, compliant lawmakers simply changed them.

Now the response of Congress to Mr. Bush's domestic wiretapping scheme is following the same pattern, only worse. ...
...
In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law. ...

Bush lawyers argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to military prisons

U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban: "By Josh White and Carol D. Leonnig | Washington Post Staff Writers | McCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison

03/04/06 'Washington Post' -- -- Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as 'systematic torture.'

Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions." ...

RNC was apparently working with the White House to send active duty members of the military in uniform to speak on behalf of the president's policies

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall March 4, 2006 03:22 PM: "Wait a second. Doesn't this break military regulations and probably several laws?

A few weeks ago we discussed the fact that the RNC was apparently working with the White House to send active duty members of the military in uniform to speak on behalf of the president's policies at Republican political events. That's against the law and military regulations. And for good reason since that's a quick ride to making the military -- or factions or individuals in the military -- tools of one or the other political party.

Now we seem to have an example in practice.

This is exactly what appears to have happened yesterday at a political event with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO). This article in the Fort Collins Coloradoan shows a picture of Musgrave doing just that with the caption: 'Marilyn Musgrave introduces Marine Sergeant Brandon Forsyth on Friday during the Larimer County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner.'

A look at the picture shows pretty clearly that Forsyth was in uniform. Yet those regs linked above say clearly that military personnel can attend partisan events only as spectators and not in uniform. What am I missing?"

Despite the 6th Amendment's guarantee of public trials ...l records are being kept secret for 5,000+ defendants ... "pattern of this administration"

Excite News: "AP: Thousands of Federal Cases Kept Secret | Mar 5, 6:50 AM (ET) | By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and JOHN SOLOMON

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts over the last three years. Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005.

An Associated Press investigation found, and court observers agree, that most of these defendants are cooperating government witnesses, but the secrecy surrounding their records prevents the public from knowing details of their plea bargains with the government.
...
At the request of the AP, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts conducted its first tally of secrecy in federal criminal cases. The nationwide data it provided the AP showed 5,116 defendants whose cases were completed in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but the bulk of their records remain secret.

"The constitutional presumption is for openness in the courts, but we have to ask whether we are really honoring that," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and now law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "What are the reasons for so many cases remaining under seal?"
...
The data show a sharp increase in secret case files over time as the Bush administration's well-documented reliance on secrecy in the executive branch has crept into the federal courts through the war on drugs, anti-terrorism efforts and other criminal matters.

"This follows the pattern of this administration," said John Wesley Hall, an Arkansas defense attorney and second vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "I am astonished and shocked that this many criminal proceedings in federal court escape public scrutiny or become buried."

The percentage of defendants who have reached verdicts and been sentenced but still have most of their records sealed has more than doubled in the last three years, the court office's tally shows.

Of nearly 85,000 defendants whose cases were closed in 2003, the records of 952 or 1.1 percent remain mostly sealed. Of more than 82,000 defendants with cases closed in 2004, records for 1,774 or 2.2 percent remain mostly secret. And of more than 87,000 defendants closed out in 2005, court records for 2,390 or 2.7 percent remain mostly closed to the public.
...
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press found the U.S. District Court here has 469 criminal cases, from 2001-2005, that are listed by this court's electronic docket as "no such case." An AP survey over a shorter period found similar numbers here and got oral acknowledgment from the clerk's office that the missing electronic docket numbers corresponded to sealed cases. However, these figures include an unknown number of sealed indictments that will be made public if arrests are made.

"That's horrifying," said Loyola's Levenson. "When I was a prosecutor from 1981 to 1989, I never heard of secret dockets."
...
"The Supreme Court has said that criminal proceedings are public," Dalglish added. "In this country, we don't prosecute and lock up convicts and have no public track record of how we got there. That violates the defendants' rights not to mention the public's right to know what it's court system is doing." ...

The nature of the administration's criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty

The Case for Impeachment

Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush

Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006. An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.

...
but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers's staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses—government officials both extant and former, journalists, military officers, politicians, diplomats domestic and foreign—the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth.[1] The result has proved tragic, but on reading through the report's corroborating testimony I sometimes could counter its inducements to mute rage with the thought that if the would-be lords of the flies weren't in the business of killing people, they would be seen as a troupe of off-Broadway comedians in a third-rate theater of the absurd. Entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,” the Conyers report examines the administration's chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration's criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.
...
That President George W. Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. Pleased with the image of himself as a military hero, and having spoken, more than once, about seeking revenge on Saddam Hussein for the tyrant's alleged attempt to “kill my Dad,” he appoints to high office in his administration a cadre of warrior intellectuals, chief among them Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, known to be eager for the glories of imperial conquest.[2] At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad.[3] In March the Pentagon circulates a document entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts”; the supporting maps indicate the properties of interest to various European governments and American corporations. Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagon's western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings (the “best info fast...go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not”) that will justify an attack on Iraq. By chance the next day in the White House basement, Richard A. Clarke, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, encounters President Bush, who tells him to “see if Saddam did this.” Nine days later, at a private dinner upstairs in the White House, the President informs his guest, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that “when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.”
...

Although Blair has told Bush, probably in the autumn of 2001, that Britain will join the American military putsch in Iraq, he needs “legal justification” for the maneuver—something noble and inspiring to say to Parliament and the British public. No justification “currently exists.” Neither Britain nor the United States is being attacked by Iraq, which eliminates the excuse of self-defense; nor is the Iraqi government currently sponsoring a program of genocide. Which leaves as the only option the “wrong-footing” of Saddam. If under the auspices of the United Nations he can be presented with an ultimatum requiring him to show that Iraq possesses weapons that don't exist, his refusal to comply can be taken as proof that he does, in fact, possess such weapons.[5]

Over the next few months, while the British government continues to look for ways to “wrong-foot” Saddam and suborn the U.N., various operatives loyal to Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld bend to the task of fixing the facts, distributing alms to dubious Iraqi informants in return for map coordinates of Saddam's monstrous weapons, proofs of stored poisons, of mobile chemical laboratories, of unmanned vehicles capable of bringing missiles to Jerusalem.[6]

By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. Instructed to come up with awesome text and shocking images, the White House Iraq Group hits upon the phrase “mushroom cloud” and prepares a White Paper describing the “grave and gathering danger” posed by Iraq's nuclear arsenal.[7] The objective is three-fold—to magnify the fear of Saddam Hussein, to present President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who never in life would lead the country into an unjust war, and to provide a platform of star-spangled patriotism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections.[8] ...

Saudi Group Alleges Wiretapping by U.S. --- surveillance of conversations between U.S. lawyers and their client

Saudi Group Alleges Wiretapping by U.S.: "Defunct Charity's Suit Details Eavesdropping | By Carol D. Leonnig and Mary Beth Sheridan | Washington Post Staff Writers | Thursday, March 2, 2006; Page A01

Documents cited in federal court by a defunct Islamic charity may provide the first detailed evidence of U.S. residents being spied upon by President Bush's secret eavesdropping program, according to the organization's lawsuit and a source familiar with the case.

The al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi organization that once operated in Portland, Ore., filed a description of classified government records in a lawsuit Tuesday and immediately asked a judge for a private review.

According to a source familiar with the case, the records indicate that the National Security Agency intercepted several conversations in March and April 2004 between al-Haramain's director, who was in Saudi Arabia, and two U.S. citizens in Washington who were working as lawyers for the organization.

The government intercepted the conversations without court permission and in violation of the law, al-Haramain asserts in its lawsuit. It contends that eavesdropping on the conversations bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that requires the government to show probable cause that a U.S. resident is an agent of a terrorist group or foreign government and to obtain a warrant from the secret FISA court before monitoring that person's calls.

Experts on FISA, while emphasizing that they are unfamiliar with the specifics of the al-Haramain case, said they question whether a FISA judge would agree to allow surveillance of conversations between U.S. lawyers and their client under the general circumstances described in the lawsuit. ...

A national disgrace: prisoners are suffering physically and mentally from isolation, lack of proper food, medical care and exercise

Chicago Tribune | A national disgrace: "Scandalous state of affairs at Gitmo | By Thomas P. Sullivan | Published March 1, 2006

'Tantamount to torture' is how an inspection committee of the International Committee of the Red Cross recently described detention practices at Guantanamo Bay. More than 400 men have been detained for more than four years in virtual solitary confinement at the military detention center in Cuba. The prisoners, whom the U.S. government has denominated 'enemy combatants,' are foreign citizens taken into custody from various countries.

They have been interrogated repeatedly. With few exceptions, they have insisted they have done nothing wrong and took no action against the U.S. government. " ...
...
I recently traveled to Guantanamo to interview a client, a man from Saudi Arabia. He is in his 30s, married, father of several children, who has been incarcerated since late 2001. ... Armed soldiers searched us and escorted us to and from a small cubicle. One of my client's legs was shackled to the floor.

Many of the cells--more appropriately described as cages--were made from shipping containers, 6-by-9-feet, with a raised cement slab and mattress for a bed, a metal floor, a toilet and a wash basin. That's it. Heat and rain enter freely, often making it alternately extremely hot or cold. The walls are mesh or undulating horizontal bars, causing damage to prisoners' eyesight. Prisoners see and converse only with detainees in cells adjacent or directly across from their cells. Prison guards escort them individually to a shower twice a week and to exercise twice a week in an enclosure consisting of a cement floor about 15 yards square surrounded by a chain-link fence. They have no access to radio, TV, magazines, newspapers or telephone. Reading materials are sparse--everything sent, including letters from families, is screened, a process that often takes many months. The lunch I saw served appeared hardly fit to eat.

Many prisoners are suffering physically and mentally from isolation, lack of proper food, medical care and exercise. Some have been driven to hunger strikes and attempts at suicide.

held naked in isolation under bright lights for months, threatened by dogs, subjected to unbearable noise volumes and otherwise abused

Chicago Tribune | What to do when the emperor has no clothes: "Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services | Published March 1, 2006

These are troubling times for all of us who love this country, as surely we all do, even the satirists. You may poke fun at your mother, but if she is belittled by others it burns your bacon. A blowhard French journalist writes a book about America that is full of arrogant stupidity, and you want to let the air out of him and mail him home flat. And then you read the paper and realize the country is led by a man who isn't paying attention, and you hope that somebody will poke him. Or put a sign on his desk that says, 'Try much harder.'

Do we need to impeach him to bring some focus to this man's life? The Feb. 27 issue of The New Yorker carries an article by Jane Mayer about a loyal conservative Republican and U.S. Navy lawyer, Albert Mora, and his resistance to the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. From within the Pentagon bureaucracy, he did battle against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo, who then was at the Justice Department, and shadowy figures taking orders from Vice President Dick 'Gunner' Cheney, arguing America had ratified the Geneva Convention that forbids cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, and so it has the force of law. They seemed to be arguing that President Bush has the right to order prisoners to be tortured.

One such prisoner, Mohamed al-Qahtani, was held naked in isolation under bright lights for months, threatened by dogs, subjected to unbearable noise volumes and otherwise abused, so that he begged to be allowed to kill himself. When the Senate approved the Torture Convention in 1994, it defined torture as an act 'specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.'

Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?"

[Retro-legalization?] GOP Has No Fast Answers on Eavesdropping

GOP Has No Fast Answers on Eavesdropping - Yahoo! News: " By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Tue Feb 28, 9:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A group of Republican senators failed to reach an agreement Tuesday on legislation that would write the Bush administration's controversial eavesdropping program into law.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he formed the "informal working group" to craft legislation that will strengthen its legal basis. More than a half dozen senators left an hourlong meeting offering few details about progress. ...
...
Taking a middle ground, former CIA Director James Woolsey said the warrantless eavesdropping is appropriate when U.S. intelligence officials are trying to identify terrorists based on their phone calls or other communications. But he said once suspects are identified, then court-approved surveillance is appropriate.

Doug Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, said claims by lawmakers that Bush acted illegally by authorizing the warrantless surveillance were "partisan, unnecessary, unfortunate and unwise."

"There is a genuine argument on both sides," Kmiec said, adding that he generally supports Specter's legislation imposing modest limits on such surveillance.

Bruce Fein, a constitutional expert, was far more critical of Bush's executive order. He said the legal theory justifying the eavesdropping "would equally justify mail-openings, burglaries, torture or internment camps — all in the name of gathering foreign intelligence."

"Unless rebuked, it will lie around like a loaded weapon, ready to be used by an incumbent who claims an urgent need," Fein said.

Fein urged Congress to wield its power to set budgets to prevent such eavesdropping by the NSA, and said the president should more broadly explain why existing powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were inadequate.