Oddly, Boumediene said no one at Gitmo ever asked him about the alleged plot to blow up the embassies in Sarajevo [the original charges against him]. They wanted to know what he knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, he recounted, which was nothing.

Boumediene: "If I tell my interrogator, I am from Al Qaeda, I saw Osama bin Laden, he was my boss, I help him, they will tell me, 'Oh you are a good man,'" he said. "But if I refuse ? I tell them I'm innocent, never was I terrorist, never never, they tell me. 'You are, you are not cooperating, I have to punch you.'"

Boumediene also explained that, at Christmas in 2006, he began a hunger strike, which lasted until his release, “in an effort to get someone to listen to his pleas of innocence,” and was force-fed twice a day through a tube inserted through his nose and into his stomach, a horribly painful experience that it is difficult to imagine enduring for nearly two and a half years. He added that he only broke his fast on two occasions: “once when he learned of President Obama’s election and again when the judge ordered his release.”

It's too bad Boumediene's faith in Obama was so misplaced. […]”

[emphasis added] The new [Military Commissions] proposal is said to come from Obama's own task force on detentions. As I noted [http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/farce-in-making-new-task-force-on.html ] when the task force was first set up, it's head, Brad Weigmann, is [former] deputy chief of staff in the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (or was in the Bush administration). This appears to be more than a mere trial balloon. Nor is anonymous leaking of a possible policy. It's the leak of a definite recommendation by the panel Obama himself set up to determine policy.

This particular effort by the Obama administration is so transparent, so unnecessary, and therefore, so pernicious, as to boggle one’s mind. It shows that despite all the glorious talk from Obama, he is not above changing the laws and protections set down in US law if it suits the political purposes of the executive branch.

http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/boumediene-talks-obama-greases-skids.html

To prove we CAN!

N/T

1]We were getting a legal opinions from the courts on this issue.

2] The Obama Administration, along with Graham/Lieberman is now trying to pre-empt any further legal opinions by passing Legislation.

It doesn't seem like they have one on Pennsylvania Ave.

Maybe that's the whole plan...if all of these troublesome "freedoms" are taken away, then those who live to hate US will no longer have any reason to live.

Makes sense...no?

[Only repeating glimpses]

Why would the Democratic Congress want to replicate that behavior and allow a Democratic President to constrict their own long-standing transparency law?-GG

American political history displays over and over an open hostility to social, civil and political progressive thought and movements.-R. Ashen

From the responses of our leaders, it is only the United States of America, with the world's largest economy and vastly superior military which dare not run the terrifying risk of treating terrorists as what they are - criminal defendants.--Diana Powe

There is an odd belief that "terrorists" are immutable, through-and-through evil, not like us, and bent on pure evil. Terrorists do not repent or change. They do not age. -- susan sunflower

The common thread is the creation and use of FEAR of The Other to dominate.

Excellent comment!

Would we argue that Obama never read Odysseus?

Odysseus had the wisdom to listen to Circe and act accordingly to REQUEST that his strength [power] be restrained by his crew [The People]-for his own good, as well as for the good of The Ship and The People. He submitted to that restraint.

Will we see that kind of wisdom here and now?

Did you miss the fact they they "pose no threat, [...] were never "enemy combatants", were...um...NOT guilty?

I think it's wee-gurs...might be wrong about that.

to get them each a t-shirt that says:

"Palau got 200mil for taking on this huge risk...and all I got was this t-shirt."

If you're terrified, then their methods are clearly working.

That was funny!

Thanks for following this.

The whole process gives me the creepy feeling that this Act is an insidious and mutating cancer cell.

They have to ASK you? OY!

September 15, 2006 - Bush lobbies for the Military Commissions Act, asserting that the Geneva Conventions Article III [“outrages upon human dignity”] is “very vague” and that it is a “statement that is wide open to interpretation." The MCA is signed into law on October 17, 2006. [16]

October 17, 2006 - The Military Commisions Act is signed into law. [Public Law No: 109-366] It strips detainees of their constitutional right to habeas corpus and, in a provision pushed by Cheney, grants retroactive immunity to Americans accused of potential war crimes. [16] “[This Act] will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue its program for questioning key terrorist leaders and operatives.”- Bush For an example of the effect of the MCA on an attempted prosecution see the case of Mohammed Jawad. [24] For a pdf of the Military Commissions Act, see [28] See also September 15, 2006 and November 10, 2006. In the June 12, 2008 Boumediene decision the Supreme Court declared that the detainees have a constitutional right to habeas and struck down the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the MCA as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. [118] “Above all, the Military Commissions Act protected the CIA's use of psychological torture by repeating verbatim the exculpatory language found in those Clinton-era, Reagan-created reservations to the U.N. Convention [Against Torture] and still embedded in Section 2340 of the Federal code. To make doubly sure, the act also made these definitions retroactive to November 1997, giving CIA interrogators immunity from any misdeeds under the Expanded War Crimes Act of 1997 which punishes serious violations with life imprisonment or death.” [153]

For Sources and References, see http://www.webdsi.com/jebbie/tline.html