In More on the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and the Supreme Court, Eric Muller is asking the right questions about whether the Justice Dept. misled the Supreme Court, either on purpose or (more likely) due to incompetence or manipulation.
Two months ago I would have been confident that of course no one in the SG's office would knowingly lie to the Supreme Court. I still think that's more likely than not. But when your government will torture people, everything has to be on the table.
Just another Internet identity mystery story? But this is an unusually good one: The Search for Isabella V. Here's “her” blog, she's a flight risk.
Back in a more innocent age — that would be about two months ago — I wrote a post (UK's Released Detainees Allege Torture) quoting but doubting claims of bizzare forms of abuse reported by recently releasted Gitmo detainees. I said then:
I do not believe the US would starve detainees or feed them spoiled food. Would it? And the stuff the Mirror repeats about the use of prostitutes to shock sensitive Muslims with naked bodies and menstral blood sounds just too weird — more like the propaganda of a person who has been held illegally in hard conditions for two years and wants his revenge.
My conclusion then was that,
Outside independent review — ideally judicial review — is essential either to rebut these claims convincingly or to root out and punish those responsbile if the uglier charges are at all true.
Have to say that those charges seem less impossible today. And I'm still not exactly clear on who's going to be doing that independent review…
The Observer reports that US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp:
Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.
The press, and most blogs, are playing this DoD News: Statement from DoD Spokesperson Mr. Lawrence Di Rita as a categorical denial of the latest Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker.
That's odd, because at least to a lawyer's eye it seems awfully cagey. Let's parse all five paragraphs of it to see if it's a real denial, or just a non-denial denial.
Update (5/17/04): DoD changed the original press release if you follow the link it will have additional text now. Plus they issued another denial
Here's William Safire defending Donald Rumsfeld last week as the Cabinet member soooo concerned with civil rights:
Shortly after 9/11, with the nation gripped by fear and fury, the Bush White House issued a sweeping and popular order to crack down on suspected terrorists. The liberal establishment largely fell cravenly mute. A few lonely civil libertarians spoke out. When I used the word “dictatorial,” conservatives, both neo- and paleo-, derided my condemnation as “hysterical.”
One Bush cabinet member paid attention. Rumsfeld appointed a bipartisan panel of attorneys to re-examine that draconian edict. As a result, basic protections for the accused Qaeda combatants were included in the proposed military tribunals.
Perhaps because of those protections, the tribunals never got off the ground. (The Supreme Court will soon, I hope, provide similar legal rights to suspected terrorists who are U.S. citizens.) But in the panic of the winter of 2001, Rumsfeld was one of the few in power concerned about prisoners' rights.
It smelled like fiction back then, since I recalled that the Pentagon had written rules for Gitmo trials that were so harsh that even administration lawyers rebelled against the first draft. Now here's Seymore Hersch in the New Yorker, with a different set of facts about how Rumsfeld is soooo sensitive to prisoner rights:
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.”
1. Who you gonna believe?
2. Looks like that search for the persons responsible that Rumsfeld promised us may not take too long.
3. When did Bush first learn of this order?
3A. If Bush knew in advance, is that why he said Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense ever? (Version (i) Bush knew in advance and supported Rumsfeld in order to ensure Rumsfeld's silence; version (ii) Bush knew in advance, agreed with the policy and still does, and that's why he thinks Rumsfeld is so great.)
3B. If Bush didn't know of this order at all when he ranked Rumsfeld above George Marshall, would he like a mulligan?
4. Was Safire lying on purpose, tactically, the way he usually does, or did his friend play him for a patsy?
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