Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 168

Civilian trials and the so-called "rule of law"

I was wondering if someone could reconcile these three things:

From Obama terrorism adviser John Brennan, on this weekend's Meet the Press:  

MR. GREGORY: Why isn't [Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab:] being treated as an enemy combatant instead of a criminal?
MR. BRENNAN: Well, because, first of all, we're a country of laws, and what we're going to do is to make sure that we treat each individual case appropriately. In the past Richard Reid, the former shoe bomber; Zacarias Moussaoui; Jose...

The degrading effects of terrorism fears

(updated below - Update II)

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points.  Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media.  The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in...

The degrading effects of Terrorism fears

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points.  Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media.  The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most...

They hate us for our freedoms

National Review's Cliff May, yesterday:

A Bipartisan Proposal
Step (1): Return all Gitmo detainees to Yemen.
Step (2): Use Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive.
Just an idea.

Virtually all of the 90 Yemeni detainees currently at Guantanamo have been imprisoned for years despite never having been charged with any crime.  Roughly half of them have been officially "cleared for release" -- meaning even the U.S. Government believes they did ...

Fulfilling al-Qaida's "warrior" wish

(updated below)

It's so striking how often the agenda of America's Right and the desires of Al Qaeda Terrorists perfectly coincide.  The greatest gift one could give Terrorists is to fulfill their supreme wish:  to treat them (i.e., venerate them) as warriors -- enemy combatants -- rather than as what they are:  criminals.  To understand how true that is, consider this exchange at the Sentencing Hearing of Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber, between Reid and Federal Judge...

Fulfilling Al Qaeda's "warrior" wish

It's so striking how often the agenda of America's Right and the desires of Al Qaeda Terrorists perfectly coincide.  The greatest gift one could give Terrorists is to fulfill their supreme wish:  to treat them (i.e., venerate them) as warriors -- enemy combatants -- rather than as what they are:  criminals.  To understand how true that is, consider this exchange at the Sentencing Hearing of Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber, between Reid and Federal Judge William Young, who sentenced h...

Craving terrorist melodrama

(Updated below - Wednesday)

As dumb as our political discourse typically is, it gets dumber by many magnitudes whenever there's a terrorism-related scare (of the Islamic variety).  From The Washington Post's editorial writer Jo-Ann Armao:

Why is Obama still in Hawaii?

President Obama wants us all to know he's taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety.  But his words would be a...

Craving Terrorist melodrama

As dumb as our political discourse typically is, it gets dumber by many magnitudes whenever there's a terrorism-related scare (of the Islamic variety).  From The Washington Post's editorial writer Jo-Ann Armao:

Why is Obama still in Hawaii?

President Obama wants us all to know he's taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety.  But his words would be a lot more convincing if not delivered...

Making "Islam" synonymous with "terrorism"

No matter how many times you see it, the capacity for people to believe what they want to believe, rather than what is actually true, is astounding -- and those who want to depict Islam as the ultimate evil seem to grant themselves special license to live that way:

From Jeffrey Weiss, Politics Daily, today: "And we're still left with a terrible problem for a free and multicultural society: Even though 99.999 percent of Muslims abhor attacks on innocent civilians on moral and theological...

Rove: Champion of "traditional" divorce

(updated below)

Karl Rove is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, citing "5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage" as his justification.  He also famously engineered multiple referenda to incorporate a ban on same-sex marriage into various states' constitutions in 2004 in order to ensure that so-called ""Christian conservatives" and "value voters" who believe in "traditional marriage laws" would turn out and help re-elect George W. Bush.  Yet, like so many...