Bump and Update: Buzzflash reader commentary on the Rule of Law: Somebelieve in it, some don't.

Congress is concerned, to say the least. John McCain voices his doubts about the policy, and Joe Biden calls for new leadership at the Justice Department.

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Original Post 10/23/04 9:30 om

A newly revealed Department of Justice memo allowed the CIA to secretly remove detainees from Iraq for questioning in other countries. Several experts contacted by the Post said such a policy violates the Geneva conventions:

The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive."

The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft. "For these reasons," the footnote reads, "we recommend that any contemplated relocations of 'protected persons' from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis." It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain the treaty's protections, which would include humane treatment and access to international monitors.

The author of the draft opinion was Jack L. Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel. This is the same office that drafted the now infamous "torture memo." If ever there was a time to clean house in the Justice Department, this is it.

The Bush Administration has some explaining to do. How is it that after we invaded Iraq and took control, 380 tons of potent conventional explosives disappear?

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

....The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.

This is a big deal.

The good news continues. Despite increased pressure from Bush, the Senate conferees are not yielding on H.R. 10 and passage of the 9/11 Intelligence Reform bill remains doubtful. Bush wants the bill passed before election day. Urge your senators to stay resolute and keep your fingers crossed.

Update: Here is the link to the Washington Times yawn yarn. (take your pick.)

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Original Post:

Right wing blogs and Drudge have been cooing since Sunday about a spectacular revelation to come out in Monday's Washington Times about Kerry's foreign policy statements. Daily Kos has the story and it's a non-starter:

About a year ago, Kerry said in a speech that he had met with all the members of the Security Council prior to voting to authorize Bush's Iraq War.

"So I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

The Mooney Times piece is going to state that several of the ambassadors on the Security Council allege that Kerry did not, in fact, meet with them....here's nothing else to it. That's the Big Story. The one that will knock the wheels off Kerry's campaign.

Putting aside for a moment the "big deal" aspect, as in "who cares?," Kos says Kerry's statement is true--he really did meet with everyone. Sounds like desperate times for Bush, desperate measures.

One other caveat: In the days to come, beware of more articles labeled "news" written by right-wing partisan hacks. They are not news, they are opinion pieces. Google the author and you'll see what we mean.

Now the truth comes out. There was indeed an ongoing battle between the Pentagon (Rumsfeld), the State Deparment (Condi Rice) and the Justice Department (Ashcroft) over the Administration's planned military tribunals at Guantanamo. And who would have thought it was John Ashcroft complaining the planned trials were unfair?

A year later, with no trials yet in sight, some officials at the highest levels of the Bush administration began privately venting their frustration about both the slow pace of the Pentagon's new courts and the soundness of their rules. Attorney General John Ashcroft was especially vocal.

"Timothy McVeigh was one of the worst killers in U.S. history," Mr. Ashcroft said at one meeting of senior officials, according to two of those present. "But at least we had fair procedures for him."

For once, Ashcroft is right. Trials in federal courts are fair. Timothy McVeigh did not get a perfect trial, but he did get a fair one, with unlimited access to counsel, a Judge who granted almost every defense request for additional funds for lawyers and experts, access to law enforcement reports (except those not revealed by the FBI until shortly before his death,) a jury to decide his guilt and punishment and government-funded appeals.

Those detained at Guantanamo and classified by Bush as "enemy combatants" have been dealt the short end of the stick: trial by military judges, no right to appeal, severely limited access to counsel and to see the evidence against them and monitoring of attorney-client communications.

Particularly grievous is the fact that many of the detainees were not terrorists at all, but men whose guilt was assumed because they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many had been sold to the Taliban and had never raised a weapon or made a threat against the United States. Yet, they were transported across the world to Guantanamo and confined in conditons that would likely have resulted in successful habeas motions had they been in America's prisons instead of in Cuba.

The Pentagon guys were the baddies.

We provided them with only the information that we, in our arrogance - or the arrogance of our leadership - thought they needed," one former Pentagon official said.

Hunter Thompson is back with a vengeance. It's Fear and Loathing Campaign 2004, published in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. It's classic Hunter, the man doesn't miss a beat.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, felt even worse. There is angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush. The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in Coral Gables, then again in St. Louis and Tempe -- and that is Rove's problem: His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters.

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night -- except this time the false prince turned back into a frog.

Who did Hunter call for reaction after the first debate debacle? Muhammed Ali:

In an interview Monday in the Guardian, former President Jimmy Carter says that George Bush has exploited 9/11:

...our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America," Carter says. "He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know."

"When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief," he says. "And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions. The press have been cowed, because they didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved."

Carter moves on to Bush and nuclear weapons:

Bush's tendency to speak before he thinks surfaced again today.

In a television interview, Bush said it is "up in the air" whether the nation can ever be fully safe from another terror attack and suggested terrorists may still be contemplating ways to disrupt the election.

Later, realizing his gaffe, Bush reversed himself.

The president quickly backed away from the earlier remark, asserting that the war on terror could be won, even if not in a conventional sense, and that he "probably needed to be more articulate."

by TChris

"The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human rights." So says Sen. John McCain, responding to a report that "U.S. intelligence officials secretly transferred as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, possibly violating international treaties."

Sen. Joe Biden echoed McCain's concern that U.S. intelligence agencies need to be reformed, while adding a sentiment sure to bring a smile to the lips of many TalkLeft readers: "I think we ... need new leadership at the Justice Department too."

by TChris

Officials in Iraq are reporting the results of "the single deadliest ambush of the insurgency": the execution of 49 Iraqi soldiers by "guerrillas dressed as police officers."

The soldiers were pulled out of three minibuses at a fake checkpoint about 95 miles east of Baghdad, near the Iranian border, police officials said. They were told or forced to lie down on the ground in four rows, then killed mostly with bullets to their heads. The ambush, extraordinarily ambitious in scope and violence, showed a high level of organization, and the insurgents likely had inside information on the travel plans of the soldiers, who were members of the nascent Iraqi National Guard, officials said.

In another attack, a State Department security officer, Edward Seitz, was killed this morning at the inaptly named Camp Victory, the American base near Baghdad International Airport.

by TChris

The NY Times provides a detailed account of the Bush administration's secretive efforts to create "a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism."

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II. The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress.

The conspirators most deeply involved in the plot to subvert the Constitution included some of the President's favorite advisors: Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld, among others. The Times account of their arrogant desire to deny due process to any suspected supporter of terrorism is the first of an important two-part series.

by TChris

Have voters finally grown weary of the "tough on crime" rhetoric that politicians have spewed mindlessly for the last quarter century? California may provide an answer as voters consider Proposition 66, a proposal to modify the state's extreme three-strikes law by limiting the "strikes" that trigger sentences of 25-to-life. The need for change is clear.

Currently, even crimes not defined as serious or violent can count as a third strike, leading to instances in which multiple offenders have received the maximum penalty for committing crimes like shoplifting or possessing small amounts of narcotics. Last year, the United States Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to sentences of 25 years without parole for a man who stole three golf clubs from a pro shop and 50 years without parole for another man for stealing children's videotapes from a Kmart store.

Prosecutors love the existing law. They say "they need that option to lock up dangerous criminals, even those caught for relatively minor crimes." But it should be a judge, not a prosecutor, who decides that an offender committing a minor crime deserves a lengthy sentence. California's law reflects an unhealthy trend to shift power from the judicial branch to the executive branch by allowing a prosecutor rather than a judge to decide whether an offender deserves harsh punishment.