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Prez-Elect May Ratify Bush’s Torture Trials
The accused terrorist appeared before the military tribunal, charged with conspiracy in a plot against national security. Because state secrets were involved and because harsh interrogation techniques were used to extract information, the defendant was deprived of a look at the evidence. Also denied were the defendant’s traditional right to a lawyer, to face accusers, even to see the judges–they wore hoods.
No, this wasn’t at Gitmo. This “court” met in the military dictatorship of Peru. And the defendant wasn’t an Afghan or Arab turned over to U.S. troops by a warlord out for the $10,000 bounty. She was Lori Berenson, a 31-year-old American citizen accused of aiding the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, members of whom she befriended.
The Washington Post and New York Times condemned Berenson’s 1996 trial, calling the tribunal and the brutal circumstances of her detention a mockery of justice. In the U.S., most American liberals agreed.
Now President-Elect Barack Obama–a self-identified liberal Democrat who campaigned as a champion of human rights–wants to use the same kind of kangaroo court to try victims of the notorious Guantánamo torture camp.
Obama’s advisers confirm that the incoming president wants to close Gitmo. It’s long overdue. But they deny that they’ve made a final decision about what to do with the detainees. (There’s no word about the secret prisons, Navy prison ships or CIA black sites where thousands of Muslim men kidnapped by the U.S. have been “disappeared.”) However, there’s troubling evidence that Obama is reneging on his promise to do the right thing by the long-suffering detainees.
Insiders say that Obama is leaning toward the creation of “national security courts”–secret military tribunals where detainees would be tried without basic due process rights. They wouldn’t get the right to review evidence against them, cross-examine prosecution witnesses, or—obviously, at this point–a speedy trial. Moreover, Obama hasn’t ruled out subjecting future detainees to “preventive detention”–i.e., holding them without charges, like Bush.
“The legal team advising Mr. Obama on Guantánamo believes that prosecuting the ‘high value’ terror suspects such as [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed–a group of about 30–will require the creation of a court designed to handle highly sensitive intelligence material, a cross between a military tribunal and a federal court,” reports The Times of London.
“What a national security court is designed for is to hide the use of torture and allow the consideration of evidence that is not reliable,” says J. Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some of the detainees.
Of the 255 prisoners, about 60 have been cleared for release but remain at the base because their home countries, including China, view them as political enemies and might execute them. Of the remaining 195, the Pentagon admits that there’s no evidence whatsoever against 135. Obama’s team doesn’t know what to do about these 195 misérables.
That leaves 80 men, including the 30 “stars” like KSM, the alleged 9/11 mastermind. “If Obama wanted to move as swiftly as possible to close Guantánamo,” reports Time magazine, “the strongest step he could take as president would be to simply shutter the camp by executive order and transfer all of the detainees to prison sites inside the U.S. At that point, in theory, the detainees would face four possible fates: being charged with offenses that could be tried in federal courts; court-marshaled according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; turned over to the governments of their native countries; or simply released.”
Courts-marshal of the detainees, who were dumped in Gitmo’s supposed legal limbo specifically in order to deny them POW status and Geneva Conventions rights, would be bizarre. As discussed above, many can’t go home. Moreover most, if not all, of the high-profile detainees were tortured–a fact that would almost certainly destroy any chance of obtaining a conviction in a fair trial.
You can’t hold a fair trial after holding a suspect for years while depriving them of access to a lawyer, family visits, or the ability to prepare for trial. The Founding Fathers understood this fact, which is why they ratified the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,” reads the Sixth. A secret “national security court” held six years after “arrest” doesn’t come anywhere close to satisfying this requirement.
Municipalities’ interpretation of the Sixth Amendment varies. In New York City, cops have to bring you before a judge for arraignment within 24 hours of your arrest, or let you go. Other places allow a few days. Six years? Not even in Texas.
There’s only one valid legal and moral option for rectifying the human rights nightmare at Guantánamo. On January 20, President Obama should fly to Gitmo, address its inmates and personally apologize to each one for the abuses and indignities they have suffered, and which have brought shame and contempt upon the United States.
The detainees should be set free. They should be paid enough money that they should never want for anything again, then offered the right to fly home or, if they prefer, anywhere in the U.S. Finally, Obama should walk out the camp’s main entrance to Palma Point, where he should sign over control of the base to Cuban President Raoul Castro.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
On Tuesday night, Obama opined:
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.
What a maroon. The election results were still being tabulated, and he had already swallowed the right-wing Kool Aid.
Newsflash: The wars against the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq are not designed to keep us safe. They are designed to keep us afraid. You can’t keep people nervous without recruiting new enemies.
Anyone who thinks Obama is a progressive has only to read that idiotic quote.
The first animation has been tightened up. Check out the new and improved version here. It’s also a little more relevant than prescient now:
There were a few glitches in “Death Cab for Sarah,” which have been fixed here:
Purists will want to check it out. All others may skip to the next post.
Comédiens et humoristes affûtent leurs flèches en vue de la présidence Obama
(Comedians and humorists unleash their arrows on the Obama presidency)
by Sebastian Smith
Le Point, France
November 7, 2008
Obama Win More Hysterical Than Historical
There is less here than meets the eye.
Yes, the election results are notable. But they don’t mean as much as people think.
First, the important stuff: The first black president has been elected. And not just elected by a majority of voters, many of whom were black and/or first-time voters, but by nearly half of white voters. Twenty-eight years after the Reagan Revolution, the electorate has repudiated Republican inaction—on Iraq, in New Orleans, most of all on the economy—to an extent not seen since Watergate. Americans delivered a proxy impeachment of George W. Bush, holding McCain less to account for his policies than his association with a (cough) leader they blamed for their troubles.
It isn’t quite fair. George W. Bush, lest we forget, had a 90 percent approval rating during the fall of 2001. Now that Bush’s support is down to a Carrot Top-like 22 percent, it’s only fair to remember that he’s the same guy in 2008 that he was in 2001. And, for that matter, when a majority of Americans thought he was doing such a good job that they voted for another four years in 2004
Nothing much has changed. The economy sucks, but that’s been true since 2000. It’s been one continuous meltdown since the dot-com crash. We lost Afghanistan the day we invaded it; ditto Iraq. Doing nothing to help New Orleans during Katrina—well, that was just Republicans being Republicans. The difference now? There is no difference.
Don’t be fooled by the electoral college rout. The popular vote reveals that United States remains a deeply divided country. Bush got 51 percent of the vote in 2004; Kerry drew 48 percent. Obama defeated McCain 51-48. A surge of newly registered voters, including many African-Americans energized by Obama’s candidacy, accounts for the three percent difference.
No one’s mind has changed. People who voted for Bush in 2004 voted for McCain. If everyone who voted for Obama had shown up at the polls four years ago, John Kerry would be president. Obama’s victory is the triumph of retail fundraising, computer metrics, and a team of smart, focused advisors who knew how to exploit them.
It helped to have a weak opponent. McCain ran as the new Bob Dole—cranky, out of touch, and untelegenic. “That one” was a terrible speaker. Every aspect of his campaign, from his fascism-influenced slogan (“Country First”), to a Silver Star logo that riffed on his POW experience to a public tired of war, to picking a vice presidential running mate with whom he’d spent 15 minutes (less than you’d need to get hired at Wendy’s), was tone deaf. As so many American elections do, this one came down to fear. People were scared of losing their jobs, their homes, and their 401(k)s. McCain, his mindset stuck in the ’60s, thought they were more worried about the Weathermen and the SDS.
All things considered, McCain did well.
If he follows his win by closing Bush’s gulag archipelago of black sites, secret prisons and concentration camps at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantánamo (and don’t forget Diego Garcia and the prison ships), if he quickly orders a withdrawal from Iraq and reconsiders his foolish campaign pledge to double down against Afghanistan, Obama will be good for the United States’ international image.
If he acts to restore economic confidence with two vast infusions of federal money into people’s pockets—first, with a new WPA-type national infrastructure program to create jobs and, second, with a bailout of homeowners and renters in danger of foreclosure and eviction, he will still have something of a country left to run four years from now.
But no one should delude themselves into believing that racism or its kissing cousin conservatism are dead. Barack Obama, after all, is only half-black, and not even half-African-American at that. Jeremiah Wright aside, Obama had a white upbringing. A product of the elite, he went to an Ivy League college (the same as mine, at the same time). If we were looking at President-Elect Sharpton, I’d believe in this change. (Too scary? Exactly.) As things stand, the rich white people who own and run the country have little to fear.
Meanwhile, very nearly half of the American electorate voted Republican. After seven years of not finding (or looking for) Osama. After five years of horror in Iraq. After eight years of shrinking paychecks. After everything that’s happened, nearly half of voters wanted more of the same.
If the Republicans had picked a better candidate, they would have won. If Obama had presented a truly distinct alternative to conservatism—socialized healthcare, say, or opposing both stupid wars rather than the least popular stupid one—he would have lost. Conservatism? Dead? Not a chance.
A change is gonna come. But this ain’t it.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and animator David Essman have released a hilarious, vicious parody of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to celebrate Election Day 2008.
Distributed for free on YouTube and at tedrall.com, “Death Cab for Palin” is an animated political cartoon that lampoons Sarah Palin’s presidential ambitions. Noting that vice presidents frequently become presidents, “Death Cab” depicts a rabid Vice President Palin trying to poison and bomb President McCain in the style of the classic “Road Runner” cartoon series.
Rall, a syndicated cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is no stranger to controversy. His “Terror Widows” and “FDNY 2011” cartoons after 9/11 were some of the most controversial cartoons in U.S. history. Will “Death Cab for Sarah” join their ranks? “I don’t know,” says Rall, “but it was such a fun idea I just couldn’t resist going with it.”
Permission for reproduction and broadcast are freely given under the condition that the piece not be altered in any form without express permission. To contact Ted Rall, please email ted@rall.com.
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TED RALL’s editorial cartoons and columns are syndicated to more than 100 newspapers around the U.S. Twice the winner of the RFK Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Finalist, he is President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
DAVID ESSMAN is an animator currently at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His animated films have been screened across the country, including Animation Block Party, The Chicago Underground Film Festival, and the St. Louis International Film Festival.
posted by Susan Stark
It’s a little too close to the election for me to be writing a post like this one, or at least it’s too late to serve as a warning. But the New York Post took it upon themselves to write a piece of speculative fiction on Obama. So I’m taking it upon myself to write a similar piece on McCain. Or more precisely, on Palin:
Date: November 4, 2012
It is dangerous to write this, so I will keep my identity a secret. But it must be written. It must.
I am in a basement right now, and I am using a hand-crank emergency light in order to see. There is no electricity to speak of. There hasn’t been any for a while here in New York. Ordinarily I would not use my hand-crank at all unless absolutely necessary, but I need to write. It’s my last stab at a legacy. I could be dead tomorrow.
Four years ago this started. Four fucking years ago. It seems like a fucking lifetime. Several lifetimes. That was the day the Palin regime started. The decrepit old fart that everyone thought they were voting for did not last long. And his death, I might add, was under suspicious circumstances. It is treason to write this. An execution-able offense.
After McCain’s death. That’s when it all started. Abortion clinics where shut down. Their locks changed in the middle of the night. People found out about this pretty quickly, because back then, we still had the Internet to find out things that quickly. Protests began. People took to the streets.
However, emboldened by their new-found messiah in the form of a prom queen, pro-Palin supporters used brutal violence against the protesters. Many were clubbed and beaten to death. None of the attackers was ever charged or held accountable for their actions. Instead, the violence was blamed on the protesters. It became too dangerous to openly protest.
But that was only a first taste of what was to come. On foreign policy, Palin surrounded herself with christian fundamentalists and rabid Israeli lobbyists as advisers. Under their direction, Palin bombed two operational nuclear power plants in Iran, claiming that the Iranians were building nuclear weapons there. Tehran was turned into a radioactive wasteland.
Most of the world rose up in horror of this action, and even what was left of our allies cringed. In protest, tourists no longer came to the United States, and many countries and their citizens boycotted our products and services, causing massive economic damage to the country. Here in New York, there was a massive exodus of people due to widespread unemployment. Sarah Palin called it God’s judgment on “liberals”.
After the economic meltdown, it wasn’t just liberals who were protesting and rioting. Anybody who didn’t know where their next meal might come from were joining the club. Sarah Palin retaliated by cutting off food stamps and welfare, calling the protesters “lazy”, who “didn’t want to work”.
In place government checks, Palin handed out government cheese. Food distribution centers existed, but that food came at a price. Loyalty to Palin and her regime was that price. These re-educational centers were run by her hired goons, goons who had earlier beaten up the pro-choice protesters.
What else can I say now? Every day is like any other day. I wonder where my next meal will come from, because I refuse to be re-educated. I wonder when the goddamn electricity will come back on. Nobody has either the money or the will to get it back on. Sometimes food is smuggled in from Canada, through the black market or through charity or through Leftist supporters overseas, so I eat.
There are, however, a few things that keep me going. I listen to my shortwave radio, to clandestine and pirate stations beaming into the country, which gives me a shred of hope. I meet with my friends and allies, and we plan and act.
And one more thing gives me hope. When I venture outside, I see them. Words of defiance sprayed on the wall. Cartoons sprayed on the walls. Some of the cartoons are terribly familiar to me, because I’ve seen their style before. They are unmistakably Ted Rall’s. Ted does not draw on paper anymore, he paints on the wall. They are images of anger and defiance, of fists pumped in the air. One image has become iconic, so much so that even the shortwave talks about it. That image is of Sarah Palin hanging from a noose. The image gives me hope, but it also makes me pray to God every day that nothing ever happens to Ted.
The light is running out of charge. I must stop writing now, but I will write again tomorrow. I’m going now to curl up with my friends for warmth, because there is no heat and it’s autumn, soon to be winter. Good night.
