Take Action:
Demand Justice for Torturers


Dear Stacie,

It has been the massive pressure from the people that has put the prosecution of Bush-era officials on the agenda. As expected, there is a countervailing campaign from the neo-cons and their apologists. Now, the Obama administration has opted to try to shield Bush administration officials who are guilty of torture and war crimes. We cannot and will not let up.

Tens of thousands of you have flooded government officials with the demand for criminal prosecution. The people of this country and the world are standing up to demand justice. We reject the idea that Bush administration officials who ordered torture and crafted legal justification for the most barbaric and inhumane practices should escape criminal prosecution.

With the popular will of the people growing in support of prosecution, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder just assured officials in the CIA that those agents who carried out torture will not be prosecuted by Justice Department lawyers, but rather will be defended by them. This announcement does not stop legal actions against torturers from going forward, or stop Congressional investigation, however, as the Justice Department does not have the authority to do so.

President Obama said: "This is a time for reflection, not retribution. ... nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." By this logic, the Justice Department should prosecute no one, ever. This flies in the face of internationally and nationally recognized human rights laws that prohibit torture. The International Red Cross has issued a report insisting on prosecution of Bush administration officials.

The Red Cross report provides in graphic detail the shocking and sickening methods of torture executed by U.S. officials. These methods are also described in legal papers authored by Bush administration officials and lawyers who sadisticly wrote up and authorized details of torture - papers that are being revealed today at the same time as the White House attempts to stop prosecution of torturers.

As they are exonerating CIA torturers, the administration is also putting intense pressure on the Spanish Government not to proceed with the criminal prosecution of former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other officials of the Bush administration, including those who wrote the torture authorizations.

This battle is just opening up. There were also attempts by various governments to shield Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet at first - attempts that ultimately crumbled.

We must take action right now:
* Click here to send a letter to your elected official
* Send a letter to your local newspaper
* Call the White House at 202-456-1111 (or TTY/TDD: 202-456-6213)

Tell them that in order to uphold and defend the Constitution the criminal prosecution of officials - high and low - is an absolutely necessity. Prosecution of Bush-era officials is not retribution, it is the maintenance of law, and the repudiation of torture and other illegal acts.

This is an international grassroots movement. We can't do it without the generous donations of you and thousands of others who believe in justice. Please make a donation by clicking this link now to support this critical effort.

Please take action today,
-- All of us at IndictBushNow.org

http://www.worldcantwait.org/
Stacie
In December, I asked whether there will be an anti-war movement in the United States after George Bush's departure. Many of you said, yes. But there has been a lot of "wait and see" going on among people who had opposed Bush's program, but who expected major change from Barack Obama.
So, now we're seeing, and we can't wait.
Obama announced Tuesday that 17,000 troops will be surged into Afghanistan. The US military admits that the increase in civilians killed by US forces is destabilizing the Karzai puppet government, and driving people to support the Taliban. But the U.S. will push its war for empire further into the Middle East.
Days after the inaugural, Obama ordered the continuation of pilotless "drone" missile attacks on Pakistan, which even mainstream news reports show are killing civilians. 40 such attacks have been made since August into Pakistan, creating such chaos that refugees are now leaving Pakistan to go into Afghanistan.

This must end! SIGN and circulate the letter to the anti-war movement. Here's an excerpt:
The U.S. war on Afghanistan is an unjust war of aggression-the supreme war crime. The Bush regime occupied Afghanistan and drove out the Taliban regime, not to bring democracy and liberation to the Afghan people, but to control Afghanistan and spread the U.S. empire, with the goal of permanent domination of the Middle East.
The "war on terror" begun after 9/11 by the U.S. was not just a campaign against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden, but a broad, global war to keep the U.S. as the unchallenged global superpower. This is not a war to free people from warlords of Islamic fundamentalism, a movement the U.S. funded and armed, and ironically, spread, when it was aligned with the U.S. against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The war in Afghanistan is and will be fought the same way the war in Iraq is being fought. Most of the people killed are civilians, with the U.S. justifying collateral damage and collective punishment, secret prisons, denial of due process and torture. It is wrong, unjust, illegitimate and immoral. And it won't be otherwise, no matter who is president. There is no such thing as a "good" war on terror. The U.S. occupiers consider any large gathering of Afghans inherently hostile, hence the repeated bombings of wedding parties. Even the U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai is warning the U.S. to stop killing civilians...
COME OUT on Thursday March 19 to protest six years of US occupation of Iraq, in the first national protests of Obama's war. List your event, or find one here.
CNN Wednesday, "Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, predicted Wednesday that the additional 17,000 U.S. military forces to be sent to Afghanistan will remain there for as long as five years. The commmander predicted the new troops will be operational before Afghan elections in August.'This is not a temporary force uplift," McKiernan said. "It will need to be sustained for some period of time, for the next three to four to five years.' McKiernan made his comments a day after President Obama approved the troop increase for Afghanistan."


PROTEST Thursday, March 19
List your event. Find one here
Come out to Protest on the 6th anniversary of "shock & awe" in Iraq
NO SURGE of troops to Afghanistan!
STOP Occupations & Torture for Empire!
The election of the first black president is effectively re-branding preemptive and illegal wars of aggression to make us feel good about them, enlisting us to "serve and sacrifice" for horrors we have no good reason to support. Obama says he will:
leave 80,000 troops, thousands of private contractors, and 17 permanent bases in Iraq;
send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan , leading to more killings of civilians;
keep sending robot drones over Pakistan, killing more civilians;
deploy nuclear carriers with enough firepower to annihilate any country in the Mideast;
support the Israeli siege on Gaza;
keep in place the "secret rendition" program which Bush used to torture detainees;
keep the government spying on citizens and continue Bush's "state secrets" justification;
increase the U.S. military by 92,000 troops, sending more to die for empire;
refuse to investigate & prosecute the war and torture crimes of the Bush regime.
Also -- March on the Pentagon Saturday March 21 & in SF and LA

Follow Up With Your Local D.A. Now That They Have The Bugliosi Book On Prosecuting Dick & W

We want you to know that we are gearing up for actions on many critical and substantive issues, health care, mass media issues, real food safety and more, and we will have much more on all these soon.

However, this week there is a special priority. We told you that another activist group was sending copies of the Vince Bugliosi Book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" to each and every local county district attorney in the country, nearly 3,000 books in the mail which were due to arrive at their destinations on or about Feb. 21.

To follow up we are asking all our participants to make it their mission to confirm with your local prosecutor that they got their copy of the book, and make sure to tell them that Vince Bugliosi himself wrote them a cover letter with the book, offering his help in any way, and highlighting the essentials of the case. There is a link to the actual text of this cover letter on the page below, where you can all instantly look up the contact info for your own local D.A.

Local D.A. Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net

Remember, unless we demand and achieve true accountability, there is absolutely no meaningful constraint on the potential war criminals of the future. So please read the Bugliosi cover letter yourself, and the words will come to you so you will know exactly what to say when you ask your own prosecutor to accept Vince's help in bring the criminals from the last White House to real justice. And if you have not requested one of the new "Convict Dick & W" caps already, you can get yours from the same page above.

At the same time, we are also keeping the pressure on the appointment of real special prosecutor at the federal level. We will not settle for a so-called "truth" commission that's just an immunity fest for the worst of international criminals. The following is the text of a joint letter drafted and released by our activist friends at After Downing Street, which many major progressive groups have already signed on to.

*Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials *

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or "truth" commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.

Drafted by The Robert Jackson Steering Committee

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/robertjackson

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

nvestigating Bush: Leahy's "Truth Commission" Sounds Great, but...
posted by: Aaron Pendell 1 day ago





Momentum is building for the formation of a "Truth Commission," charged with investigating the extra-constitutional behavior of the George W. Bush administration.  At issue for proponents of this measure are violations of Americans' civil rights and the detention, treatment, and transfer of post 9-11 detainees by the U.S. under Bush's leadership.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D. - VT) personally took his case for a "Truth Commission" to the Obama White House two weeks ago.  The administration indicated to Leahy that it would remain focused on the economy for the time being.  He then suggested that The Senator followed up on the matter, making his argument for this method of investigating the Bush administration in the current issue of Time:
We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair-minded and without an ax to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments but to assemble the facts. If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecution in order to get to the whole truth.
Leahy acknowledged that a "Truth Commission" would likely cause controversy but that, "We need to get to the bottom of what went wrong after a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American law and values."  However, his path of discovery comes with an important caveat:  granting immunity to Bush officials in order to assure cooperation with the commission. Immunity is offered as a "middle ground" approach by which progressives would have to forgo their fervent desire for prosecutions, and Bush supporters would need to consent to the commission in the first place.
Leahy's middle path, ideally, would expedite the process of bringing the numerous complaints of unconstitutional behavior into the light of day, and there is at least one good reason for doing so.  History has shown that, should matters of presidential misbehavior go unexamined, Americans tend to forget about them.
In a recent article at The Huffington Post, Will Bunch, author of Tear Down This Myth — a chronicle of the historical makeover of Ronald Reagan — noted the fickle nature of the American collective memory.  He imparts the Reagan era example of the Iran-Contra scandal:
Few imagined that the Iran-Contra scandal would fade from the American consciousness, but it did, to the extent that the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., gets away with no mention at all in any of its expansive exhibit spaces. The thing is, it was one easy step from the non-impeachment to the decision by Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush, who had some links to the scandal as the Gipper's vice president, to pardon some key figures like former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. By now, the modern template was beginning to take shape, that it was a bad idea to go after White House officials including the president on "policy matters," even if a policy was in clear violation of the law — as would be the case with torture directives a generation down the road.
Bunch's assessment is apt.  Would we have to endure the controversy of bringing Bush officials to justice if Congress and the Justice Department had done what it was supposed to in the 1980s?  I imagine not.  In fact, what is more likely is that the numerous offenses of George W. Bush wouldn't have occurred in the first place.  To be sure, Reagan's legacy certainly wouldn't carry the connotation of reverence that it does today.
Tell me what you think.  Does Patrick Leahy's plan appeal to you, or would you prefer to let it drift for the sake of not having the inevitable arguments that will arise over its inception?  For me, the prosecutorial immunity contained within Leahy's "Truth Commission" proposal leaves a dreadful taste in my mouth, but having to bear witness to a Bush legacy makeover would make me physically ill.  At the very least, his pragmatic proposal could serve to crystallize Bush in our historical memory as a president who acted in violation his oath. Is that good enough?
Whatever your feelings on the matter, the "Truth Commission" that the Senator is suggesting is gathering momentum.  Just last week, The Constitution Project issued a plea for such an investigative body to president Obama.  Signatories of the statement(.pdf) are reputable and ideologically diverse.  Here's an excerpt:
We urge President Obama to appoint a non-partisan commission of distinguished Americans to examine, and provide a comprehensive report on, policies and actions related to the detention, treatment, and transfer of detainees after 9/11 and the consequences of those actions, and to make recommendations for future policy in this area.
It sounds great, in theory.  However, until more details are available I'll have to remain on the fence.

From: The Man Common
Date: Feb 3, 2009 9:53 AM

Call to Try Bush

Julio Godoy Go To OriginalNow that former U.S. president George W. Bush is an ordinary citizen again, many legal and human rights activists in Europe are demanding that he and high-ranking members of his government be brought before justice for crimes against humanity committed in the so-called war on terror."Judicial clarification of the crimes against international law the former U.S. government committed is one of the most delicate issues that the new U.S. president Barack Obama will have to deal with," Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Centre for Human and Constitutional Rights told IPS.

U.S. justice will have to "deal with the turpitudes committed by the Bush government," says Kaleck, who has already tried unsuccessfully to sue the former U.S. authorities in European courts. "And, furthermore, the U.S. government will have to pay compensation to the innocent people who were victims of these crimes."

Kaleck and other legal experts consider Bush and his highest-ranking officials responsible for crimes against humanity, such as torture.

Many agree that the evidence against the U.S. government is overwhelming. U.S. officials have admitted some crimes such as waterboarding, where a victim is tied up and water is poured into the air passages. Also, human rights activists have gathered testimonies by innocent victims of torture, especially some prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

In an interview with the German public television network ZDF, Austrian human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, said that numerous cases of torture ordered by U.S. officials and perpetrated by U.S. authorities are well documented.

"We possess all the evidence which proves that the torture methods used in interrogation by the U.S. government were explicitly ordered by former U.S. defence minister Donald Rumsfeld," Nowak told ZDF. "Obviously, these orders were given with the highest U.S. authorities' knowledge."

"George W. Bush is without doubt responsible for crimes such as torture," says Dietmar Herz, professor of political science at the university of Erfurt, 235 km southwest of Berlin.

"According to the U.S. constitution, the U.S. president is responsible for all actions carried out by the executive," Herz told IPS. "Therefore, George W. Bush is responsible for the torture methods used by U.S. authorities, such as waterboarding."

International justice against crimes against humanity began in 1945, with the Nuremberg trials against Nazi criminals, says Kaleck. Leading prosecutor Robert Jackson said at the opening of the trials in October 1945 that "we are able to do away with...tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of (the) people...only when we make all men answerable to the law."

But since then this promise has been fulfilled only in exceptional cases, Kaleck said.

"Crimes against humanity have been repeatedly committed ever since, but very few people have been brought before international courts for these crimes," he said, adding that this impunity is particularly obvious for leaders of the Allied countries (such as the U.S., France and Britain), who had organised the Nuremberg trials.

Nobody was ever judged for crimes against humanity committed in Algeria by France, in Vietnam and Latin America by the U.S., in Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and in Chechnya by Russia.

Only in the 1990s, after the Yugoslav wars of secession, the Rwanda genocide, and civil wars in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone were state criminals captured, judged and convicted.

"The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 in The Hague in the Netherlands marks a turning point in the prosecution of state officials accused of crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity or of war," Kaleck added.

But prosecution for crimes of war or for crimes against humanity continues to be highly selective. So far, only perpetrators from weak or failed states from south-eastern Europe, or from the south, especially Africa, have been brought to court. In a case such as that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Britain acted as an accomplice to protect him.

Over the last couple of years, human rights activists and some national courts in Europe have been fighting these arbitrary ways. They are appealing for, and in some cases even applying, a universal jurisdiction of national courts.

The Spanish judiciary has opened cases against Latin American dictators such as Guatemalan general Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled the Central American country between 1982 and 1983, and Argentinean military officers involved in kidnapping and killing civilians.

From: The Man Common
Date: Feb 2, 2009 10:30 AM

Bush's War Totals

Go To Original
The human cost of Bush's war on the Iraqis: 1 million dead. 4.5 million displaced. 1 million to 2 million widows. 5 million orphans. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the US can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it, says John Tirman.
We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk. We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis -- more than half of them refugees -- or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school. The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war. This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead -- in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis. By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it. John Tirman, executive director and principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies, is co-author and editor of The Maze of Fear: Security and Migration After 9/11 (New Press).

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool
By Greg Miller | Washington Bureau
January 31, 2009
WASHINGTON — The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact. 

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
he rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as an "illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. "The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

One provision in one of Obama's orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."

Obama's decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human-rights groups. Leaders of such organizations said that reflects a sense, even among advocates, that the United States and other nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured."

In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to re-examine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture" or otherwise circumvent human-rights laws and treaties.

gpmiller@tribune.com

Closing Gitmo is not Enough! We Need to Hold Those Responsible for the War of Terror Accountable!
By Kenneth J. Theisen

Closing Gitmo as “part of our broader National Security Strategy”
 
Guantanámo Bay, or Gitmo, has come to represent some of the worst aspects of the Bush Regime. Barack Obama plans to order the closing of the” war OF terror” prison on his first full day in office, according to two unnamed Obama transition officials who briefed reporters. It is expected that Obama will issue an executive order closing the hellhole at Gitmo and suspending the Bush administration's military commissions system for trying detainees held there. Under the Military Commission’s Act (MCA), a kangaroo system of justice was established by the Bush regime that virtually guaranteed that those tried by military tribunals would be convicted. Gitmo currently incarcerates 248 prisoners of the war of terror initiated by the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks. Less than ten percent of these have been charged, including five accused of organizing the attacks on 9/11/01.
 
On January 11th in an interview aired on ABC's "This Week", Obama stated, “I don't want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanámo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values." But he also stated that closing Gitmo, “is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize." Obama is not closing Gitmo because of his humanitarian nature, but rather because it is imperative to the needs of U.S. imperialism. It is part of the “national security strategy,” as Obama admits.
 
Closing Gitmo to advance U.S. imperialist leadership
 
Obama and his incoming administration realize that Gitmo has become a liability to U.S. domination of the world. Richard Holbrooke, a top-ranking former American diplomat and presidential campaign advisor to Hillary Clinton (the incoming Secretary of State) summed up the problem of Gitmo in an article in Foreign Affairs (“The Next President: Mastering a Daunting Agenda,” Sept/Oct. 2008http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901faessay87501/richard-holbrooke/the-next-president.html)
 
 
He wrote, “To restore the United States to its proper world leadership role, two areas of weakness must be repaired: the domestic economy and the United States' reputation in the world…And restoring respect for American values and leadership is essential -- not because it is nice to be popular but because respect is a precondition for legitimate leadership and enduring influence.” In other words, in order for U.S. imperialism to maintain it dominant role in the world it must maintain the illusion of respectability.
 
Holbrooke went on to write, “The president should address both issues as early as possible in order to strengthen his hand as he tackles pressing strategic issues, including the five neighboring countries at the center of the arc of crisis that directly threatens the United States' national security -- Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A few early actions that lie wholly within his authority can make an immediate impact. The most compelling such actions would be issuing a clear official ban on torture and closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which now holds only 260 prisoners. Because the Bush administration limited itself to punishing only those at the very bottom of the chain of command at Abu Ghraib, the damage to the United States' image has been immense and continuing -- the gift that keeps on giving to the United States' enemies. Presidential directives making clear that the U.S. government does not tolerate or condone torture are necessary in order to separate the new administration from that costly legacy. As for Guantánamo, closing it is complicated, as Bush administration apologists (and many lawyers) say. Well, a lot of things in life are complicated. Guantánamo must not become the next president's albatross, too; closing it, no matter how difficult, is not just desirable but imperative.”
 
Gitmo, and all that it represents, has become an impediment to U.S. hegemony. Throughout the world, just like Abu Ghraib, it represents torture, dehumanization, and the kangaroo justice of U.S. imperialism. It has impaired the ability of U.S. imperialist leaders to obtain the cooperation of its allies in the so-called “war on terror.” Other nations’ leaders fear the repercussions of being associated in the war of terror with a country that claims it upholds the rule of law, while practicing torture and ignoring international law.
 
Other U.S. run hellholes hold thousands while Obama is silent
 
But there will be disappointment in the coming four years for those that hope the Obama administration will halt the injustices of the Bush regime in its war of terror,. It is important to examine what Obama and his transition team state, as well as what they do not say. Obama has not made any mention of closing down the vast system of prisons set up in the war of terror. In Afghanistan and Iraq (and in secret places too) the U.S. has held, and continues to hold, tens of thousands of prisoners captured in the war of terror. In these hellholes; torture, rape, and murder are practiced by U.S. forces and their allies. Most people held in these “prisons” are never even given the kangaroo hearings promised under the MCA.
 
Moving Gitmo to another location?
 
And the closing of Gitmo may not even improve circumstances for those currently held there. What will replace Gitmo has not yet been addressed by Obama. Brooke Anderson, an Obama administration transition spokeswoman, stated, “President-elect Obama has repeatedly said that he believes that the legal framework at Guantánamo has failed to successfully and swiftly prosecute terrorists, and he shares the broad bipartisan belief that Guantánamo should be closed.”  Will those held face a different form of kangaroo justice under Obama? What is meant by successful and swift prosecution?
 
News reports state that Obama transition officials are focused on efforts to transfer many of the Gitmo detainees to other countries. Will this be a form of rendition where the U.S. outsources its torture? Will Obama stop indefinite detention? (Many of the Gitmo detainees have been held for nearly seven years without charges, including some who were children when they were initially confined there.) Will the Obama administration in effect just create a new Guantanámo in a different location?
 
According to Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, “The devil is in the details. Just like we need specifics on an economic recovery package, we need specifics on a ‘justice recovery package.’“ Specifics have not been provided by Obama or his transition team.
 
Since Gitmo was established in 2002 it has held nearly 800 men. The vast majority, after enduring inhumane conditions often for many years, have been released from Gitmo without charges ever being filed against them. (The general public is not aware of this, as they would be outraged at so many innocent men being held after being told that Gitmo holds the “worst of the worst terrorists.”) Some have been transferred to prisons in other countries. Some have died, including a number driven to suicide. Those remaining are in three categories: detainees suspected of having committed crimes against the U.S.; detainees not suspected of any criminal activity; and detainees suspected of criminal activity in third countries.
 
What justification can there be for holding detainees not suspected on any crime? Will Obama release these people on January 21st? He has not said anything about them. And what of detainees suspected of criminal activity in third countries. What right does the U.S. have to hold them or subject them to U.S. “justice?” 
 
And can the Obama administration conduct “successful” prosecutions of those accused of committing crimes against the U.S.? Can the U.S. imperialists withstand the inevitable evidence of systemic torture and abuse that will be revealed at the trials of these men? Will that not further harm U.S. imperialist interests? This is the dilemma faced by Obama and the reason “details” have not been forthcoming by his spokespeople.
 
Holding U.S. war criminals responsible
 
Obama has made it clear that he is eager to be the Commander-in-Chief in the war of terrorism. That is why he has called for escalating the war in Afghanistan, continuing the war in Iraq, and backed Israeli actions in Gaza. He is closing Gitmo in order to better conduct the war of terrorism and to achieve the goals of U.S. imperialism, but he also realizes that the closure creates additional problems for his administration and how they conduct the war of terror. The U.S. will continue to take prisoners in this war. What will an Obama administration do with them? Will it keep them imprisoned closer to the battlefields in Iraq, and Afghanistan? What about prisoners taken in other countries such as Pakistan? 
 
What will Obama do about those that should become prisoners? What will Obama do to hold those responsible for abuse, torture, murders, and rapes in these hellholes that have been run the last seven years by the Bush regime? Will they be tried and convicted of their war crimes and crimes against humanity? Will Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington, and all the other criminals in the Bush regime face justice under the Obama administration? I think Obama’s silence on this speaks for itself.
 
As Obama becomes the C-in-C on January 20th he will take over the war of terror and its vast prison gulag. While he will close Gitmo eventually, he will still maintain the prisons run around the world by the Department of War. We need to hold him not only accountable for the detainees in Gitmo, but the thousands of others held by the Pentagon and its allies. We also need to demand that thousands be released; that they be compensated for their abuse; and that those responsible for the U.S. war of terror be prosecuted. But this will not happen if left to Obama, the Congress, or the courts. Only a mass movement of the people will force real accountability. Anything less will allow the Bush regime policies in the war of terror to continue under a younger and smoother talking Commander-in-Chief.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: The Man Common
Date: Jan 30, 2009 7:01 PM

Let's Rethink Military Escalation in Afghanistan Before It's Too Late

By ZP HellerGo To Original
Why is our government sending an additional 30,000 US soldiers to Afghanistan? So far, not even members of the Obama administration seem able to answer this question. Last week, The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss had a chance to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen why they're pushing to double our troop presence in Afghanistan. Both Gates and Mullen said that while they're thinking about the war in Afghanistan in terms of a 3-5 year time frame, their immediate goals are unclear. What's more, a final decision has not been made yet to commit those additional brigades. Like Dreyfuss says, the fact that a final decision hasn't been made is key, because it opens the door slightly for a much-needed public debate about what 30,000 more soldiers can possibly achieve. Some of the big questions that must be addressed include whether those extra troops alone will be able to secure a lasting peace for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States? That seems highly unlikely, considering each military operation targeting insurgents--like the one yesterday that killed 15 militants and 16 innocent civilians (including two women and three children)--only fans the flame of Afghan fury toward the United States. Just as important, we must ask how are we planning to pay for this escalation, considering our economic crisis at home and the fact that so much of this war has been paid with borrowed money. And is committing tens of thousands more troops really the best way to help a war-torn nation with 40 percent unemployment and some 5 million people living below the poverty line? Proponents of escalation like Karin von Hippel, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggest that 30,000 more troops will make a psychological impact. But wouldn't a more profound psychological impact come from to sending humanitarian aid, creating jobs, and getting Afghanistan away from what Secretary of State Clinton recently called a "narco state?" Perhaps Andrew Bacevich, an international relations professor at Boston University, and author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, put it best in yesterday's NY Times when he said,
"There's clearly a consensus that things are heading in the wrong direction. What's not clear to me is why sending 30,000 more troops is the essential step to changing that. My understanding of the larger objective of the allied enterprise in Afghanistan is to bring into existence something that looks like a modern cohesive Afghan state. Well, it could be that that's an unrealistic objective. It could be that sending 30,000 more troops is throwing money and lives down a rat hole." Throwing money and lives down a rat hole is exactly what Derrick Crowe found on Daily Kos recently, when he did the math to figure out how many troops might actually be called for in Afghanistan. Crowe points out that by the military's own standards, a successful counterinsurgency could require 655,000 troops throughout Afghanistan, or, if the military simply wants to go after surge proponents like the 14 million Pashtuns, we're still talking 230,000 troops. If that's the case, then why send 30,000 soldiers at all? Is it to get us used to the idea that this is just the beginning of a long, drawn out, unwinnable quagmire of Vietnam proportions? Vice President Biden has grimly assessed there will be "an uptick" in casualties from the initial military escalation in Afghanistan. Already we have lost over 600 US soldiers--155 of which died in 2008 alone--to say nothing of the thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Imagine how many more will die in this "uptick." Imagine what escalation will cost on every level, and then let the debate begin to rethink a solution.

Statue Erected in Iraq for Bush Shoeting Journalist


Iraq unveils statue dedicated to man who threw shoe at President Bush

By DAVE GOLDINER, Daily News


A statue dedicated to the man who threw his shoes at President Bush has been erected in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown.
Many Iraqis considered it poetic justice when a journalist tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush last month.
Now the bizarre attack has spawned a real life work of art.
A sofa-sized statue of the shoe was unveiled Thursday in Tikrit, the hometown of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Baghdad-based artist Laith al-Amari described the fiberglass-and-copper work as a tribute to the pride of the Iraqi people.
The statue is inscribed with a poem honoring Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who stunned the world when he whipped off his loafers and hurled them at Bush during a press conference on Dec. 14.

In the Arab world, even showing someone the sole of a shoe is considered a sign of disrespect.
Al-Zeidi was charged with assaulting a foreign leader, but his lawyer is asking prosecutors to reduce the charges. The trial has been delayed.
The shoe attack spawned a flood of Web quips, satire and even street rallies across the Arab world, where Bush is widely reviled for starting the war in Iraq and backing Israel against the Palestinians.
A Turkish shoemaking company also claimed its sales skyrocketed after some reports said it made the shoes that al-Zeidi tossed at Bush.

From:​ Peace​ & Freed​om Are Achie​ved Throu​gh Under​stand​ing
Date:​ 29 Jan 2009,​