Obama Faces Familiar Divisions Over Anti-Terror Policies - No Change in Views of Torture, Warrantless Wiretaps
http://people-press.org/report/493/obama-anti-terror-policies

Excerpts, Fair Use:

By a wide margin (59% to 25%), the public says that his administration’s policies will make the chance of another major terrorist attack on the United States less likely rather than more likely. However, while majorities of Democrats (76%) and independents (62%) say that the Obama administration’s policies will make another terrorist attack less likely, just 29% of Republicans agree. Nearly half of Republicans (47%) say Obama’s policies will make another attack more likely.
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Similarly, views have remained stable about whether the use of torture is justified in order to gain important information from suspected terrorists. More than four-in-ten say such tactics are often (16%) or sometimes (28%) justified; a majority says torture is rarely (20%) or never (31%) justified. Public attitudes regarding the use of torture against suspected terrorists have been largely unchanged since 2004.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/high-level-counter-terrorism-official.html

Terrell (Terry) E. Arnold was the number 2 counter-terrorism official at the U.S. State Department, and is one of the world's leading experts on terror.

Arnold served as the Deputy Director, Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, at the U.S. State Department. He is also the former Chairman of the Department of International Studies at the National War College.

Arnold has worked as a crisis management consultant for several Federal agencies, including The State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He is the author of numerous books on terror*. Arnold is a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean war.

I spoke with Arnold by phone...

Propaganda story attempts to justify Gitmo, torture

Report: Ex-Gitmo detainee joins al-Qaida in Yemen

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jan 23, 10:56 am ET

CAIRO, Egypt – A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen's al-Qaida branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network.

The announcement, made this week on a Web site commonly used by militants, came as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year. Many of the remaining detainees are from Yemen, which has long posed a vexing terrorism problem for the U.S.

The terror group's Yemen branch — known as "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula" — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen, which is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home.

The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group's second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372.

This could be a first step toward real justice.

"Obama not ruling out prosecution of Bush officials for crimes in office."
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090111/usa/us_attacks_politics_bush_obama

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday he was not ruling out possible prosecution for abuses committed under the George Bush administration, saying no one "is above the law".

"We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth," Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's This Week program when asked about alleged abuses under Bush.

"Obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law," Obama said.

But Obama, who takes office on January 20, added that he wanted his administration to focus on tackling problems moving forward, rather than reviewing policies under his predecessor.

"My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing," he said.

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/01/cia_video_destruction.html

The destruction by Central Intelligence Agency officials of videotapes showing the interrogation of suspected terrorists is the subject of “an ongoing criminal investigation” that is expected to conclude in the near future, according to a prosecution official.

“Investigators are now in the process of scheduling interviews with the remaining witnesses to be interviewed in this investigation,” wrote John H. Durham, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in an affidavit (pdf) late last month. “Based on the investigative accomplishments to date, we anticipate that by mid-February 2009, and no later than February 28, 2009, we will have completed the interviews.”

Where was this committee when they were torturing prisoners at Abu Gharib... but it's about time somebody laid some some blame at Bush's feet.

From the AP:
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report concludes that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

By ANDREW O. SELSKY, AP

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Dec. 8) – The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants told a military judge Monday they want to immediately confess at their war-crimes tribunal, setting up likely guilty pleas and their possible executions.

The five said they decided on Nov. 4, the day President-elect Barack Obama was elected to the White House, that they were abandoning all efforts to defend themselves against the capital charges. It was as if they wanted to rush toward convictions before Obama — who has vowed to end the war-crimes trials and close Guantanamo — takes office.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and another defendant said at their arraignment in June they would welcome execution as a path to martyrdom. But word that they were giving up their defense came as a shock to some of the victims' families.

Bush Regime Declares Itself Above the Law

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bush-regime-declares-itself-above-the-law.html

Paul Craig Roberts
Lew Rockwell.com
Monday, Dec 08, 2008

The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.

It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnaped and “rendentioned,” that is, transported to third-world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.

Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a Vietnamese immigrant who somehow secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.

mainstream mention of Cheney's

A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney?

www.harpers.org/#hbc-90003846

By Scott Horton

Gene Burns is one of the nation's most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune.

Here's a transcript of his remarks:

"I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.

The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed
Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the US Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed -- that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in a US city.

For over three years, Binyam’s lawyers at Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity, have been arguing that the allegations against Binyam were extracted through the use of torture -- in Morocco, where Binyam was tortured for 18 months, after being rendered by the CIA, and at the CIA’s own “Dark Prison,” near Kabul, where he was held for four or five months from January 2004, before his transfer to the US military prison at Bagram airbase, and his eventual arrival at Guantánamo in September 2004.

Click Here To Listen -- http://noliesradio.org
Saturday & Sunday, Sept 13-14th at 6am Pacific - 9am Eastern - 13:00 GMT
Will be archived HERE after the broadcast.
LIVE 2 DAY CONFERENCE direct from Andover, Mass.

A two-day conference on obtaining prosecutions of high level American war criminals will open September 13th, in Andover, Mass. The conference will explore the legal grounds for, and plan for, obtaining prosecutions of President Bush and top officials of his Administration for war crimes.

this one suffers from overkill and i still didn't say everything that needed to be said; let me know what i left out, how to improve, if you have ideas

9/11 Truth, Part 8 of 11: 9/11 Aftermath and Anthrax; Subverted Rights, Endless War, People's Victories
http://911reports.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/911-truth-part-8-of-11-911-aftermath-and-anthrax-subverted-rights-endless-war/

This article is an overview of some of the ways in which 9/11 and the Anthrax attacks have been used; manipulating public fears and understanding, increasing military budgets and private contracts, reducing oversight and accountability, launching imperialist wars, and implementing repressive police state measures- as well as victories for the People and the Constitution.

Post 9/11 Attacks on Freedom, People, Human Rights & Nations

Jane Mayer, Author of The Dark Side joins Dave Letterman

Click Here To Listen -- http://noliesradio.org
Coming Up Friday, July 25th at: 6am Pacific - 9am Eastern - 13:00 GMT
Repeated Saturday, July 26th at 9am Pacific - 12 Noon Eastern - 16:00 GMT
Impeachment Could Be Our Last Chance for 9/11 Truth, Stopping the Iran War and Martial Law!!
Listen to the Hearing! Then Act!

http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Author_Officials_feared_wiretaps_over_opposing_0721.html

Author: Officials against torture memo feared wiretaps, physical danger
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Monday July 21, 2008

According to Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, two top lawyers in the Justice Department who attempted to push back against the authorization of torture by Vice President Cheney's staff became so paranoid that they worried they were being wiretapped and even feared they might be in physical danger.

Mayer told the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe that Cheney's staff took advantage of 9/11 to enhance presidential power and that -- in the words of Republican lawyer and former 9/11 Commission director Philip Zelikow -- "fear and anxiety were exploited by fools and zealots."

Mayer added, however, that there were also opponents of torture and other extreme powers within the administration. "Almost from the start after 9/11," she stated, "lawyers in the administration have said, 'That's not the American way, we can't do that, it's criminal, it may be a war crime.'"