Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 136

The U.S. searches for war criminals

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, something you read is so magnificent on its own that there is nothing to say about it.  This USA Today article, proudly touting the increased efforts of the U.S. Government to track down and punish war criminals (provided, of course, that they're not American), is one such example:

War criminals find it's harder to hide from past, U.S. agents

When federal agents finally caught up with Gilberto Jordan, he had all the trappings of a solid American life: a house in a tidy South Florida neighborhood, steady work as a chef and a spotless record as a law-abiding citizen since emigrating from Guatemala in the early 1990s.

Nothing suggested he was hiding from a horrific past that the agents attributed to him when they knocked on his door that day in May. He still used the same name that appeared on a decade-old order for his arrest on murder charges in his native country. . . .

The prosecution of Jordan, 54, underscores a new push by federal law enforcement agencies to hunt down war criminals and human rights abusers who have found refuge in the United States.

The agents that tracked him are from a special center that Immigration and Customs created last year to bolster its work on such cases.

When Jordan pleaded guilty this summer to participating in the [1982] Dos Erres massacre, it marked the first conviction won by a new, 50-person Justice Department office set up to prosecute them.

The targets range from African despots and military officers from the former Yugoslavia to lesser-known figures, such as Jordan. It's unclear how many are out there, but officials at Justice's Human Rights and Special Prosecutions office say they're tracking multiple suspects. Armed with new investigative tools, more legal powers and a beefed-up congressional mandate, they're charging culprits at an unprecedented rate.

Convicted offenders usually are deported, sometimes after a U.S. prison stint. Many end up being turned over to authorities in countries where they face charges for war crimes or human rights abuses.

"I don't think there's any question that we're going to have a greater number of these cases and that these cases are going to reach (suspects from) more parts of the world," says Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, a child of Holocaust survivors who has pushed the more aggressive efforts to hold war criminals accountable. "It's something we have to do. We owe it to our citizens and we owe it to the world."

Congress passed the laws amid a broader international push after the Cold War to hold war criminals and human rights abusers accountable, says Eli Rosenbaum, who ran the Office of Special Investigations and now is director of strategy and policy in the new Human Rights and Special Prosecutions unit.

"Interest burgeoned all over the world in bringing these people to justice," Rosenbaum says. Among U.S. policymakers, "there was bipartisan support for doing this, and Congress gave us a lot of new tools."

Now, it's going full steam.

"We want to send a message to would-be human rights violators of the future," Rosenbaum says. "Their odds of getting away with it are shrinking rapidly."

I love that Lanny Breuer quote so much that I just need to repeat it:  "It's something we have to do. We owe it to our citizens and we owe it to the world."  And that Rosenbaum quote seems grounded in the premise that -- imagine this -- war crimes become more likely in the future, become virtually inevitable, if "would-be human rights violators" know they can "get away with it."  This, from a country that actually placed as a Judge on its second-highest federal court level one of the prime legal architects of its worldwide torture regime, and which blithely leaves him there even as more evidence emerges of the central role he played in enabling it, and whose top political leader formally adopts a position of full immunity for its own war criminals.  My duties as a citizen compel me to help this new, muscular DOJ War Crimes unit by pointing to one place where they haven't yet looked.

Questions for Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan quotes from an excellent column by Alex Massie in The Spectator.  Massie points to Obama's assassination program and writes: "you can make an argument that Obama's actions are worse than Bush's since a) he wasn't charged with cobbling together a security framework in the confused, panicked aftermath of 9/11 and b) he actually, you know, once campaigned against quite a lot of this stuff."  Andrew, basically objecting to Massie's claim, makes several points in response that merit attention and, at least for me, prompt various questions.  Andrew:

But a single American al Qaeda terrorist in a foreign country actively waging war against us seems to me to be a pretty isolated example.

First, Awlaki is most certainly not a singular case.  Obama's "hit list" has at least four Americans on it; Awlaki is the only one whose identity we know.  From The Washington Post's Dana Priest in January:  "After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad . . . . The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. . . . . As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added."

Second, could Andrew please explain how he knows that Awlaki is an "al Qaeda terrorist"?  Being an "al Qaeda terrorist" is a crime with which many people have been charged and convicted.  But Awlaki never has been.  Are the untested, leaked accusations from government officials really enough for Andrew to conclude that an American citizen is a "terrorist" and, accordingly, support the imposition of the death penalty?  Does Andrew not need or want to see any actual evidence -- let alone have that evidence subjected to due process and checks and balances -- before simply assuming and asserting that an accusation like that is true?  Does the lengthy record of error and/or abuse under both Bush and Obama -- whereby countless people have been falsely accused of being Terrorists -- not preclude a rational person from vesting blind faith in unchecked government accusations of this sort?  

Third, the "just an isolated case" defense was frequently invoked by Bush supporters.  There were "only two" American citizens detained for years without charges by the Bush administration -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi.  Did that make the assertion of that tyrannical power more acceptable to Andrew?  The claim at the time from those of us who vehemently opposed it was that if you endorse what is being done to those two individuals, then by necessity you've vested the President with the power to detain Americans without charges or due process -- not just the current President but future ones as well.  Isn't that same concern exactly applicable to Obama's asserted assassination power, no matter how many individuals --at the moment -- are targeted?  And can Andrew point to a single, similar awesome power seized by political leaders on the ground of "war" that did not end up being severely abused when it was exercised in the dark?

I agree that invoking state secrets so comprehensively as to prevent any scrutiny of this is a step way too far. 

But given that they have invoked this, and have thus shrouded their case against Awlaki in total secrecy, why is Andrew willing to assert that Awlaki is a terrorist, and not only assert it, but do so with such conviction that he's comfortable with the death penalty being imposed based on nothing more than unchecked Presidential decree?

But I do believe we are at war; and that killing those who wish to kill us before they can do so is not the equivalent of "assassination". 

Are we "at war" on the entire planet -- the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney assertion of radical powers -- or are there physical limits to where the President's war powers apply, i.e., where the "battlefield" is?  If we're "at war" anywhere and everywhere Terrorists are found, does that apply to U.S. soil?  Can Obama also order American citizens killed without due process on U.S. soil if he accuses them of being members of Al Qaeda?  What possible coherent limits could one assert to deny that power?  And is merely harboring a "wish" to "kill us" sufficient to make someone a Terrorist, or do they actually have to take affirmative steps to harm Americans?

My concern has always been with the power to detain without due process and torture, not the regrettable necessity of killing the enemy in a hot and dangerous war. 

This is the claim I have long found most confounding.  In what conceivable moral or legal universe is it intolerable merely to detain someone without due process -- something Bush did to great controversy and outrage -- but acceptable to kill them without due process?  Given that wrongful due-process-free detention can be corrected, whereas wrongful due-process-free killing cannot be, isn't the former far more acceptable than the latter?  Also recall that Bush's mere eavesdropping on Americans without due process or oversight caused a major national scandal; it's true that Bush's eavesdropping was illegal, but it was also claimed to be so dangerous because it lacked any oversight:  how can Obama's killing of American citizens without due process or oversight possibly be more tolerable than Bush's mere eavesdropping?  

Also, the language Andrew uses -- "a hot and dangerous war" -- implies that the person being targeted is involved in some sort of active hostilities at the time we kill him.  But that's not the case.  The kill order permits them to be targeted no matter what they are doing at the moment the drone lands on their head:  sleeping, playing with their children, riding in a car with their parents, anything else far away from a battlefield.  Besides torture, if the President has the authority to order American citizens killed without a shred of due process under those circumstances, what doesn't he have the power to do provided he simply accuses them of being an Al Qaeda Terrorist?  I spent years asking that question during the Bush/Cheney era without getting an answer -- Al Gore asked the same question in 2006:  "under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?" -- and sadly, the question is every bit as relevant now.

Obama to finally punish torturers!

(updated below)

For many people, one of the earliest and gravest disappointments in Barack Obama was his announcement that those who implemented a worldwide torture regime should not be punished in any way, because we must Look Forward, Not Backward.  He even chose a General neck-deep in detainee abuse to lead his war in Afghanistan, and chose a Bush-era CIA official who endorsed many "enhanced interrogation techniques" as his top Terrorism adviser.  Torture and other crimes was something to be forgiven and swept entirely under the rug.  Obama now appears to view such matters differently . . . . at least when the torturers are Iranian rather than American (h/t Atrios):

The Obama administration on Wednesday placed eight Iranian officials on a U.S. financial blacklist, saying they were responsible for beatings, killings and torture following Iran's disputed presidential election last year.

The Treasury and State departments jointly announced that the sanctions, signed by President Barack Obama, target Iranians who "share responsibility for the sustained and severe violation of human rights in Iran."

At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said this is the first time the United States has imposed sanctions on Iranians for human rights violations.

"On these officials' watch or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed and killed," Clinton said. "Yet the Iranian government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses."

Obama's order blocks any U.S. assets of the eight Iranians and prohibits Americans from doing business with them.

Numerous detainees in American custody were also beaten, tortured and killed.  The photos Obama caused to be suppressed -- even after two federal courts ordered them disclosed -- depicted multiple acts of detainee rape.  Thousands were arbitrarily arrested and detained by the U.S. without due process, and continue to be.  None of that resulted in a smidgen of accountability for the high-level government officials responsible for all of that, because the Obama administration formally took the position that they should be immunized.  Somehow, though, the same Obama officials manage with a straight face to stand up in public and impose penalties on Iranians for the same conduct.  Note, too, how freely the Associated Press uses the word "torture" to describe what the Iranians did, in contrast to the American media's refusal to use that term for what Americans did.  

Can you believe those crazy, paranoid Muslims and Arabs who claim that the U.S. maintains completely different standards for itself and the rest of the world?  Such deranged, conspiratorial thoughts can mean only one thing:  They Hate Us For Our Freedom.

* * * * * 

Uganda today implemented a supposedly "controversial" new eavesdropping law "giving powers to security officials to listen into private communication if they have sufficient reason to suspect the communication is in aid of criminal activity"; requiring "telecom companies [] to give government security agencies cooperation to place their (agencies') tapping gadgets on their network equipment with the aim of enabling the security men access private conversations or exchanges"; and "makes it compulsory for all mobile phone users in the country to register their SIM cards for security purposes such that if a sim card is used for criminal communication and coordination, the user can be traced."  It's interesting that this law is deemed "controversial" given that its safeguards are far greater than what Americans enjoy under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 supported by Obama ("according to the [Ugandan] law, only a High Court judge can grant permission to a state security operative to tap into a person's communication").  I wonder if the State Department tomorrow will issue a stinging condemnation of Uganda's tyrannical new eavesdropping powers.

 

UPDATE:  Harper's Washington Editor, the excellent journalist Ken Silverstein, is leaving his position and explains what it is about Washington that led him to his decision.  It is short and well worth reading.

Salon Radio: ACLU and CCR on the Obama DOJ's assassination defense

As I wrote about on Saturday, the Obama administration on Friday night filed its first response in the case of Awlaki v. Obama, the lawsuit brought by Anwar Awlaki's father seeking a court order enjoining the President from assassinating his son with no due process.  The Obama DOJ raised numerous arguments, all of which were grounded in the claim that courts have no role whatsoever to play in interfering with the President's decisions over who to assassinate as part of the "War on Terror."  Along with several others, I focused on the DOJ's invocation of the "state secret" privilege because that was most viscerally horrifying:  the very idea that the President claims the right not only to order Americans killed with no due process, but to do so in total secrecy beyond the reach of the courts, is -- as Radley Balko and  note -- as tyrannical a claim as we've heard in the last decade.

But beyond "state secrets," there were several other equally dubious, dangerous and Bush-replicating arguments raised by the Obama DOJ to immunize itself from judicial review.  Included among them was a claim that Awlaki's father lacks "standing" to bring this lawsuit because (a) he cannot prove that the U.S. Government is trying to kill his son and (b) Awlaki himself could sue if he wanted to.  The DOJ also argues that, as a result of the AUMF, it is for the President alone -- not the courts -- to decide who can and should be killed as part of the War on Terror.

My guests today on Salon Radio to discuss these claims are Ben Wizner of the ACLU and Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights, both of whom are representing Awlaki in this lawsuit.  I posed to them all of the arguments I've heard from Obama supporters over the past few days to "justify" this due-process-free assassination program, and also asked them to explain the arguments raised by the Obama DOJ in its defense.  The discussion is roughly 20 minutes long, and I really urge anyone interested in this issue to listen.  Both Wizner and Kebriaei are extremely clear and informative, and everyone can make up their own minds about whether there is any remote justification -- legal, Constitutional, ethical, political or moral -- for Obama to do what he's doing here.

The discussion can be heard by clicking PLAY on the player below, or downloaded as an MP3 here.  A transcript will be posted tomorrow.

WH messaging about its base

President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone and actually said this:

The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible. . . . .If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election.

This may be one of the most audaciously hilarious political statements I've read in quite some time.  The Holder Justice Department's is actually one of the few areas where there has been substantial improvement -- and that's a perfectly legitimate argument to make -- but for Barack Obama to cite "civil liberties" as a reason why Democratic apathy is "just irresponsible," and to claim with a straight face that this election will determine whether we're "the kind of country that respects" them, is so detached from basic reality that I actually had to read this three or four times to make certain I hadn't misunderstood it.  To summarize Obama's apparent claim:  the Republicans better not win in the midterm election, otherwise we'll have due-process-free and even preventive detention, secret assassinations of U.S. citizens, vastly expanded government surveillance of the Internet, a continuation of Guantanamo, protection of Executive branch crimes through the use of radical secrecy doctrines, escalating punishment for whistleblowers, legal immunity for war crimes, and a massively escalated drone war in Pakistan.  That's why, as the President inspirationally warns us:  "If we want the kind of country that respects civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election."

Speaking of inspirational messaging, Vice President Joe Biden yesterday said we must "remind our base constituency to stop whining."  Last week, Obama condemned "Democrats griping and groaning," and the day before he mocked Democrats who "just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty."  That, of course, was preceded by Robert Gibbs announcing that liberal critics of the President who complain about continuation of Bush policies "need to get drug tested," while Rahm Emanuel had previously shared his view that dissatisfied liberals are "fucking retarded."  Echoing those sentiments almost verbatim, Matt Yglesias called this week in The Daily Beast for a "little less whining and a little more cheerleading from the left," and accused those who fail to comply of "self-pity and self-indulgence" on the ground that the enthusiasm gap could jeopardize gains in health care coverage.

Obama supporters often claim that those who object to this White House messaging are reacting emotionally and personally because they're "offended" by these criticisms.  Speaking only for myself, that has nothing to do with any of this.  I'm not the slightest bit "offended" when Obama officials and their apparatchiks voice these accusations.  They have the same right to condemn their critics as their critics have to condemn them, and it's hardly a surprise that Obama officials harbor these thoughts about the "left."  Contempt for the left is one of the unifying beliefs of the Washington establishment, which is why most conventional establishment journalists -- Maureen Dowd, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank -- cheered Gibbs' outburst about the "Professional Left."  None of that is new; none of it is a surprise; and none of it is "offensive."

What is notable about it is what it reveals substantively.  The country is drowning in a severe and worsening unemployment crisis.  People are losing their homes by the millions.  Income inequality continues to explode while the last vestiges of middle class security continue to erode.  The Obama civil liberties record has been nothing short of a disgrace, usually equaling and sometimes surpassing the worst of the Bush/Cheney abuses.  We have to stand by and watch the Commander-in-Chief fire one gay service member after the next for their sexual orientation.  The major bills touted by Obama supporters were the by-product of the very corporatist/lobbyist dominance which Obama the candidate repeatedly railed against.  Rather than take responsibility for any of this, they instead dismiss criticisms and objections as petulant, childish, "irresponsible whining" -- signaling rather clearly that they think they're doing the right thing and that these criticisms are fundamentally unfair. 

That is what makes these reactions significant:   not that anyone's feelings are hurt by the name-calling, but that they believe that this record merits gratitude rather than valid condemnation, and that anger over the state of the country is nothing more than irresponsible whining.  It's fine to tout accomplishments and try to unify the base behind them -- it's election season and they ought to be doing that -- but it's just mystifying that they think they're going to accomplish anything other than feeling better about themselves with these incessant, name-calling attacks on those who are dissatisfied with their behavior -- their policies -- in power.  Talk about "self-pitying and self-indulgent."  It's just amazing to read about how union members are reluctant to work for Democratic victory because of the economic suffering they are experiencing -- or how young, first-time and minority voters see little reason to work for Democrats -- and then hear Joe Biden dismiss those concerns as "whining" and Obama deride them as "irresponsible."  Democratic voters aren't unenthusiastic because they're reading too much blog criticism of the President; they're apathetic because they see what has happened in their own lives over the past 2 years and see little reason to work for those who have been in power during that time.

And it's even more baffling that they seem to believe that insulting their disappointed supporters -- rather than addressing the source of their critiques or, even better, doing something about them -- will generate enthusiasm to go vote.  As the very same Matt Yglesias wrote in the wake of the Gibbs' controversy:

I think Robert Gibbs needs to be drug tested if he thinks whining about liberal critics in an interview with The Hill is going to help him or Barack Obama in any way.

The same must be true of Obama and Biden using increasingly strident and petulant language to condemn those who are deeply dissatisfied with their performance in office.  It's difficult to imagine Obama and his aides attacking the Democratic base this way if it were Obama running for re-election.  Obama officials aren't stupid:  they must know that insulting disaffected Democrats and deriding their concerns as "whining" is not an effective get-out-the-vote strategy. 

What's going on here seems clear.  Each time there is a Democratic loss on the horizon, White House officials find someone to blame other than Obama; that happened with Martha Coakley, Creigh Deeds, and a whole slew of other Democratic defeats.  By incessantly complaining now about the "irresponsible" "whiners" who aren't sufficiently grateful to the Obama White House, they seem to be setting up in advance a nice excuse for Democratic defeat in November:   it wasn't anything we did to cause this; it was the fault of those whiny, unrealistic irresponsible liberals who didn't cheerlead loudly enough.   What seems to matter most is that Obama be exonerated for the Democrats' electoral woes, even though he clearly bears substantial responsibility for much of it.

* * * * * 

The finalists for the 2010 Online Journalism Awards -- sponsored by the Online News Association and the School of Communication at the University of Miami -- were announced today.  Salon was named a finalist for "General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium Site," while I was named a finalist (along with Kevin Drum) for "Online Commentary/Blogging, Medium Site" (for these two posts:  one on Afghanistan and one on Elena Kagan).  As the announcement notes:  "A team of 12 journalists representing a diverse cross-section of the industry met at the university's Coral Gables, Fla., campus and seven more conferred internationally to select the finalists, which range from independent and nonprofit news and community sites to major media and international organizations. The winners will be announced at the 2010 ONA Conference and Online Journalism Awards Banquet on Saturday, Oct. 30, at the Marriott Renaissance in Washington, D.C."

The Obama administration's war on privacy

(updated below - Update II)

In early August, two dictatorial (and U.S.-allied) Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- announced a ban on the use of Blackberries because, as the BBC put it, "oth nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets."  Those two governments demand the power to intercept and monitor every single form of communication.  No human interaction may take place beyond their prying ears.  Since...

Obama argues his assassination program is a "state secret"

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration last late night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That's not...

TV discussions

I did two segments on Morning Joe this morning -- the first on Iran and the second on Afghanistan -- which actually entailed decent discussions.  I was also on Rachel Maddow's show last night discussing the Tea Party, Russ Feingold and Larry Summers.  The videos of those segments are below.  I apologize for the video-intensive posting the last couple of days, but ongoing travel makes lengthier writing very difficult; regular blogging will hopefully return later today or tomorrow.

The Ahmadinejad game

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the U.S. this week to address the U.N. and, as usual, extremists in both the U.S. and Iran are exploiting the drama for their own purposes.  At his Townhall meeting today, President Obama said that a military attack on Iran "would not be the ideal solution" to the "serious problem" of Iran's nuclear program, but that he is not taking that option off the table.  I was on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show this afternoon, along with National Review's...

The perils of false equivalencies and self-proclaimed centrism

(updated below)

New York Times, Thursday: 

Jon Stewart announced his much-awaited "big announcement" on Thursday's edition of his late-night program, "The Daily Show." He plans to stage a rally in Washington to counter what he identified as extremists on either side of the political spectrum. . . .

He later labeled it a "Million Moderate March." The purpose, he said, is to counter what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the country that has dominated the...