Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 160

The right kind of bigotry

From the long-time Editor-in-Chief and owner of The New Republic, this morning:

There were moments--long moments--during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn't quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right.

The point here is so obvious that it makes itself.  In the bolded sentence, replace the w...

The WP: Obama close to reversing Holder on civilian trials

One of the very few commendable steps taken by the Obama administration toward reversing the Bush/Cheney Constitution/Terrorism template was the DOJ's decision to try the five accused 9/11 defendants in a civilian court (just as the rest of the civilized world does with Terrorists).  But ever since that was announced, Obama officials have been clearly signaling that they intend to reverse that decision in response to the GOP's political attacks (while Rahm Emanuel has been busy making clear ...

The WP's employment of a fear-mongering smear artist

One of the DOJ lawyers being smeared as part of the "Al Qaeda 7" campaign by Cheney/Kristol (and Wolf Blitzer/CNN) is Karl Thompson, who, while at the law firm O'Melveney & Myers in 2007, represented a Guantanamo detainee (Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was detained).  Today in The Washington Post, Walter Dellinger, a senior partner at that firm and former head of the OLC, recounts how his firm came to represent Khadr:  specifically, they were implored to do so by Bush DOD lawyer Rebecca...

The full-scale collapse: From Murrow to Blitzer

(updated below)

When discussing the McCarthyite DOJ witch hunt spawned by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, I wrote yesterday:  now that "we have real, live, contemporary McCarthyites in our midst -- Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol -- launching a repulsive smear campaign, we'll see what the reaction is and how they're treated by our political and media elites."  On Twitter yesterday, I wrote:  "How media figures treat Liz Cheney after her vile McCarthyite smear campaign will say a lot about ...

The full-scale collapse: from Murrow to Blitzer

When discussing the McCarthyite DOJ witch hunt spawned by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, I wrote yesterday:  now that "we have real, live, contemporary McCarthyites in our midst -- Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol -- launching a repulsive smear campaign, we'll see what the reaction is and how they're treated by our political and media elites."  On Twitter yesterday, I wrote:  "How media figures treat Liz Cheney after her vile McCarthyite smear campaign will say a lot about their character."

CNN's ...

Who are the actual "crazy" people in American politics?

My Salon colleague, Mark Benjamin, writes about last night's Larry King Show -- featuring a debate between Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson and GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann -- and  does by repeatedly branding Grayson as "crazy" in the same way that Bachmann is.  Beginning with the article's  headline ("Bachmann and Grayson: A diary of crazy") to his sarcastic description of "these two towering intellects" to his claim that Grayson and Bachmann are "the Candy Stripers of Crazy of their...

Salon Radio: The lawyers smeared by Liz Cheney

As I noted yesterday, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol released what is certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant.  It's the type of McCarthyite act which would, if we had any minimal standards in our political culture, result in the shunning of Cheney and Kristol by all decent people (instead, it will likely land the Vice President's daughter on multiple Sunday talk shows where she can pose as an expert on national...

Transcript: Jonathan Hafetz on GITMO lawyers

To listen to this discussion, go here and click PLAY on the recorder at the bottom:

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU, and he has a new book which he has co-edited, along with Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall Law School, entitled The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law, and the book essentially contains numerous personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees at Guantanamo as well as places like Bagram and secret CIA p...

Genuine American exceptionalism on due process

The Obama administration has made explicitly clear its intention to deny civilian trials to scores of detainees, by sending some to military commissions and imprisoning others indefinitely without any charges.  And for those cases where it has deigned to provide real due process -- such as its decision to try the 9/11 defendants in a criminal court -- it is moving in the wrong direction.  Obama officials are clearly signaling their intention to reverse that decision and instead place those d...

Dredging up the Israel/apartheid question

In addition to everything else they are, the scribblings on The Washington Post Op-Ed Page are often wildly out of touch.  They often have the feel of having been written a decade ago, stuffed under a mattress somewhere, and then arbitrarily hauled out and dusted off for publication.  With seemingly no trigger, Richard Cohen woke up today and decided to write about a long-standing though not particularly relevant (and largely semantic) controversy:   whether the word "apartheid" is properly ...