Source for "preventive detention" comment was on Amy's show today.

His name is Vincent Warren and he's an attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights:

Human Rights Attorney Vince Warren: Obama’s “Preventive Detention” Plan Goes Beyond Bush Admin Policies



We get reaction to President Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney’s dueling speeches on torture from Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Warren took part in a secret meeting Wednesday between Obama and several human rights groups. Warren says although he welcomes Obama’s willingness to hear critical views, he’s disappointed in Obama’s new support for preventive detention.

Vince Warren joins us now in San Francisco. He is the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He met with President Obama earlier this week.



http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/22/vince_warren

Video at link. No transcript yet.

(Note: the two outlets that carried this story on Wednesday, NYTs and Newsweek, characterized Warren and others as being on the left when they should have characterized them as human rights activists. But, that wouldn't have worked as well to promote the meme that the left is "turning" on Obama.)

and it's shit like he and Maddow spewed yesterday that's pushing me to the center

Thanks!

what do you think we should name it?? :) So many here are chugging it as fast as they can. Personally, I'll pass. :hi:

What if we print up a bunch of postcards for people to mail DoJ in favor of prosecution? I don't know it that's very expensive. I was going to check it out after chugging some COFFEE. :hi:

I was thinking yesterday of a downloadable letter they could send! :D

IM me and let's work on this.

Hell :hi:

:)

That is , in a word, TYRANNY.

in which two of the parties--being Warren and the corporate media--have a vested interest in sensationalizing the story.

Just flinging a bunch of upset verbiage, name calling, and not one counter argument. Perhaps there are none?

and the way we handle responding to him.

I've always admired the work CCR does.

It's 100% pure bullshit. The claim is this will be extra-judicial yet Obama himself stated emphatically it will require an effort of the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches.

What this asshole seems to forget was how FISA courts came into being after Nixon abused power. There were no FISA courts until after warrantless wiretaps were perpetrated by Nixon's crew for political gain. They saw a need for such wiretaps in cases of national security and built a framework to accommodate the need.

Same applies to some of the detainees.

doesn't make the detentions constitutional, let alone right.

The Judiciary is the final arbiter in what is and what is not constitutional.

If the Judiciary agrees to the framework, the framework is constitutional.

Same thing happened with FISA.

I'm always amazed at how willing some people are to side with authority, even when that authority is clearly in the wrong.

or Roe v. Wade

Or Griswold.

Sorry, bbut what is constitutional is determined by the courts, whether we like and agree with the decision or not.

There's also the possibility it's not, and there aren't any sources for the most bombastic of his claims. So it's rumor.

I don't understand - can someone explain this controversy to me?

Obama is talking about holding certain prisoners indefinitely in detention without charges -- prisoners who cannot be tried in a court because the evidence is total crap but might act against the US if released.

The exact same thing Bush has been doing al these years.

It was unacceptable under Bush, and unacceptable under O.

Bush created kangaroo courts.

From what Obama has said, it appears that he is working to setting up a procedure that allows all detainees the requisite due process.

In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight.

Has some policy been adopted that is counter to his statement above? Are they conducting the kangaroo courts of the Bush admin?

Yoo, Gonzo -- the rest of them "created" a legal frameowrk that the prisoners could be kept under.

Just because it can be created doesn't mean it is right.

Obama is still talking about keeping certain prisoners completely out of having any due legal process -- if the prisoner is determined by the Pentagonm to be a threat but the State could not prove it in a court or military tribunal, then that prisoner would be kept in legal limbo indefinitely. The prisoner would never have access to any court system and the chance to prove their innocence and seek their freedom.

I am sorry, but that is just dead wrong. :(

You should try to make yourself familiar with the kangaroo courts that bush set up.

Then you should await the procedures that Obama's admin establishes.

Then compare the two.

Prolonged detention without being able to defend yourself in a trial. Simlply expanding the number of people who can decide your imprisonment is not the same thing as a trial with judgement of peers.

see my post 52

I am an American.

And the issues presented are not as simple as you seem to try to make them

the sources were nameless and discounted by a some people. After all the cr@p we're fed in the media, can't blame them.

But, the story turns out to be true except that the media framed it as lefties being upset with Obama instead of human rights advocates disagreeing with some of his positions. Like this one, on preventive detention.

this is all about concerns about what might happen - got it

and "preventive detentions" are not "divide and conquer crap" although the way the media was covering it probably was. They started pushing the "Obama = Bush" bs in the first week he was in office or something. It was pretty early, anyway.

AMY GOODMAN: Vince Warren joins us now. He’s in San Francisco, though he’s usually based in New York, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He met with President Obama earlier this week, the day before President Obama gave his speech at the National Archive yesterday.

Vince, welcome to Democracy Now! And start off—well, explain why this meeting that you, representing CCR, and other human rights groups had was supposedly originally a secret meeting. And then, what happened? And where did you meet? Tell us all the details.

VINCENT WARREN: Well, I’m not—still not allowed to talk about the substance of the meeting, but it was a meeting in which we met at the—in the Cabinet Room of the West Wing. And there were a number of high-level officials that were there at the meeting.

And what was sort of shocking about it is we were told that we should not at all talk about the meeting, but right promptly afterwards, the press started calling us, because the White House Press Office told everybody about the meeting.

But it was—in my sense, it was something that President Obama wanted to do to be able to talk and to hear our views, the views of some of the human rights organizations like CCR, and to really embrace his critics, which I think is a wonderful hallmark of this administration.

The problem is that he goes out the next day, and he has a speech in which he not only embraces the opposition, meaning George Bush’s policies, but then he comes out with things that even George Bush didn’t come out with, like preventive detention.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Vince, while you’re saying you can’t talk about the substance of the meeting, were you surprised at all, after the meeting you had, about the positions that he took, or did you have at least some indication that this was going to happen beforehand?

VINCENT WARREN: Well, with respect to how I felt about it, the military commissions piece was something that he had come out with earlier than the meeting. And so, the Center had opposed that very vigorously. You know, putting a few due process protections on an old George Bush policy is like rehabbing a house on a toxic waste site. You know, it really didn’t make a whole lot of difference. And you can’t make the military commissions better.

What was very surprising was to hear President Obama talk about what he called prolonged detention, but what I think we can all safely say is preventive detention, moving forward, the idea of detaining people not because they’ve committed a crime, but because of their general dangerousness or that they may commit a crime in the future. That’s something that the documents that President Obama was standing in front of, particularly the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, simply doesn’t permit. And when I heard that in his speech, I was deeply, deeply shocked that he would go in that direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Had he told you that the day before?

VINCENT WARREN: No, he hadn’t—he didn’t talk about his speech at all. We really didn’t have a sense of what was going to come the next day. And we didn’t discuss preventive detention. And I think what’s interesting about it is, for most people in the room, I suspect that that wasn’t even something that anybody was contemplating or really could conceive of. We haven’t heard that discussion for, you know, eight or nine months. And so, this was really the first time that we were confronted with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Vince, why can’t you talk about that meeting? Why is it off the record? Why is it supposed to be secret? And, well, that’s the question.

VINCENT WARREN: Yeah, well, you know, there are probably a couple of reasons. And one thing you can say is that the President wants to be able to have frank discussions with folks without the concern that those discussions will leak out to the press, and I think there’s some benefit to that.

You know, there’s another way to think about it, which is that President Obama wants to silence his critics. I don’t think that’s the sense, because all of the positions that I took in that meeting were positions that CCR had taken publicly before that meeting and certainly are positions that we’re still going to be taking after that meeting. So I’m not really sure what that is.

My view is that, in entering the meeting, I gave my word that I would keep the meeting confidential. And I take those things seriously.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Vince, your reaction to seeing former Vice President Cheney immediately afterwards with a speech that’s televised, the enormous pressure that has been coming on the Obama administration from some sectors of the Republican Party? The Vice President is actually being seen publicly a lot more now, the former Vice President, than he was when he was in office. And, of course, he said in his speech that those who criticize enhanced interrogation are practicing “recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”

VINCENT WARREN: Yeah. I really yearn for the day when I don’t have to turn on my television and see Dick Cheney talking. It’s been eight years of that, and I can’t believe that it’s still moving forward.

And, of course, you know, he’s done—he’s doing the same thing that the Republican machine has done ever since September 11th, is every time that there are policy discussions on the table, every time that they begin to lose the fight about what is legal and what is proper, they roll out the fear carpet, which, of course, he’s doing again.

And not only has he, you know, I fear, spooked this administration a little bit, but he’s also spooked the Congress. It’s outrageous that the Congress is playing this entire piece on the Republican battlefield.

The President said—you know, let’s focus on some of the good things. President Obama said that he was going to close Guantanamo in a year, and he should be applauded for that. But, of course, Congress is messing with that timeline fairly severely by not providing the funding for him to do that and by saying no one will be able to release to American soil, whether they’re in—they come as prisoners or detainees or they come as free people, which, of course, holds up the timeline for any types of trials that the administration wants to do. It doesn’t allow groups like the Uyghurs, the Chinese Muslims who everybody says pose no threat to anyone, to possibly be resettled in the United States, which they absolutely should. And when that doesn’t happen, it keeps the doors to Europe locked. So, the question is, with the Congress taking this stance, how is the administration going to close Guantanamo and send people who can be released back to where they came from or to third countries, or to try the people that can’t be released?

AMY GOODMAN: Vince Warren, I want to go to that issue of the Uyghurs, for people to understand what you’re talking about. A judge says they should be released immediately. The Chinese government doesn’t allow them back into China. So, where are they? And explain why this is such a good example of the argument of people being allowed into the United States?

VINCENT WARREN: The Uyghurs are a very, very interesting group. And we should start out by saying that there used to be more Uyghurs in Guantanamo than there are now. There were a group of Uyghurs that were released several years ago and are now living in Albania in a camp there, posing no threat to anyone. The remainder of the group are still in Guantanamo. But, of course, the factual circumstances of the people in Guantanamo are the same factual circumstances of the people that were released to Albania. And, of course, it’s just a hallmark of the Bush era that they would release some people but not release others.

So now we have court cases in which we’ve gotten orders that the Uyghurs should be released or can be released. And first the Bush administration and now, it appears, the Obama administration, in terms of their legal position, has been opposing that. So we’re in a situation where the Uyghurs fall into, I believe it was, the third category of detainees that President Obama talked about, when these are people that have been released—ordered released by courts, but right now what makes it difficult is that China doesn’t want them back, and then no other country wants to take them, because they fear getting into a tangle with China.

So this has completely politicized a situation that has fallen on the backs of innocent men who have been in Guantanamo for years. And no one, especially not Congress, is stepping up to do anything about it.

What we need to do is to release the Uyghurs into a Uyghur community into the United States. That will then unlock the door to Europe to take a whole range of other people that should be released, some that have ordered been released and some that have been cleared for release by the Bush administration that are sitting in Guantanamo right now.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama’s opposition to an independent commission?

VINCENT WARREN: That was an interesting discussion, because our view at the Center for Constitutional Rights is that the purest form of accountability is criminal prosecution. We don’t oppose a commission at the Center for Constitutional Rights, one in which there’s subpoena power, in which criminal charges can come, and there’s no amnesty.

But what I found interesting is that President Obama opposed blue ribbon commissions like the 9/11 Commissions, but at least in his discussion seemed to leave open the possibility of criminal prosecution, by saying that the existing part of the democracy, the Justice Department, has the full ability to investigate folks. So, I found it a little bit interesting. I think that there’s room there for a criminal investigation, and I certainly think that accountability and transparency go hand in hand.

And to the extent that this administration is agreeing to release documents and release information as a subject of our lawsuit and the ACLU lawsuit and to the extent that those documents show criminal activity, it’s beholden—it behooves this government to start criminal investigations of the very information that they’re releasing to the public. You can’t just put it out there and pretend it doesn’t exist.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Vince Warren, I want to play one more part of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday and then get your response.

DICK CHENEY: Over on the left wing of the President’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorist. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called truth commission. Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessor.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Vince Warren, your reaction to former Vice President Dick Cheney calling this an issue of political disagreements?

VINCENT WARREN: That is a tremendous amount of nonsense. This is not a political disagreement. What has happened here, this is arguably some of the worst and notorious criminal activity committed by government officials in the history of the United States.

So, what we really need to be focusing on is, once the criminal activity is exposed, what is this administration going to do about it? This is not about partisan wrangling in the Beltway. This is not about respectful policy disagreements. This is about torture. This is about illegal activity that was engaged in by members of the administration and military operatives and CIA operatives under the Bush administration. And it is absolutely beholden on this administration, and in fact required under Article IV of the Geneva Conventions, once this information is out there, specifically around torture, to begin an investigation. It’s not a question of “if”; it really is a question of when he’s going to do it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And on a related note, what’s your reaction to the report that came to light this week, the Pentagon report that one in seven former detainees at Gitmo who were released have gone back to terrorist activities?

VINCENT WARREN: Yeah. Juan, every couple of months, the Department of Defense rolls out these statistics of who’s gone back to the battlefield. I have a couple of comments on that. Number one, they’ve never been specific, for the most part, about who these detainees are. Number two, when you look at the going-back-to-the-battlefield rhetoric, they talk about a range of things. They talk about people who may have taken arms up against the US, but they also talk about people that support people that take arms up against the US. So, theoretically, you can be one of those people on the Department of Defense list if you are consorting with people who have expressed that they want to take up arms against the United States. And so, the devil is in the details in these numbers.

And I think the important piece is this: they are way over-inflated. We’ve never gotten any details of this. Interestingly enough, this document has been the subject of a Freedom of Information Act suit for a very long time, and we still haven’t gotten it. But they like to roll out those numbers.

And I think, finally, the thing that’s important is I am convinced that the specter, the fact of Guantanamo, generates more dangerous people than the number of people that have ever been released. For every one person that may go back to the battlefield or may harbor ill will towards the United States, those number—the people that are beginning to do that for every day that people are held in Guantanamo far out-cede that—outweigh that. And so, the issue really isn’t about who’s going back to the battlefield; the issue is, who are we going to prevent from going to the battlefield in the first place by doing the right thing in the United States?

AMY GOODMAN: Vince Warren, I want to thank you very much for being with us, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

"But what I found interesting is that President Obama opposed blue ribbon commissions like the 9/11 Commissions, but at least in his discussion seemed to leave open the possibility of criminal prosecution, by saying that the existing part of the democracy, the Justice Department, has the full ability to investigate folks. So, I found it a little bit interesting. I think that there’s room there for a criminal investigation, and I certainly think that accountability and transparency go hand in hand.

And to the extent that this administration is agreeing to release documents and release information as a subject of our lawsuit and the ACLU lawsuit and to the extent that those documents show criminal activity, it’s beholden—it behooves this government to start criminal investigations of the very information that they’re releasing to the public. You can’t just put it out there and pretend it doesn’t exist."

What Obama's administration does relative to the detainees is one issue.

What Obama's admin does relative to the war criminals, those that tortured and abused, those that violated the rights of other with purpose, is another.

Also, anyone who has had a tad bit of involvement in criminal law knows that you cannot now charge these folks with "criminal laws" and expect to get them to trial. There are tons of safe guards that have been set up to protect the rights of the accused which have been violated.

There are not a whole lot of choices available. Either let them all go or set up a due process procedure that affords them rights and representation, that allows a tribunal or judicial body the opportunity to judge whether they should continue to be held.

It certainly isn't as easy as some folks make it out to be. Life is never that simple, governing is never that simple. Mankind is definitely not that simple.

I was glad yesterday to hear Obama remind everyone that the Bush cabal has left him a big MESS. America has the attention span of a match in a windstorm and people need to be reminded that Bush had eight years to screw up the country.

wreck so much, including the economy, that prosecuting the criminals becomes almost impossible. Where to begin?

What fire can I put out today? OMG, another victim.

I sure the hell wouldn't want the job.

Warren says he can't talk about the meetings with Obama because he gave his word. He says they didn't talk about the "preventative detention" so he really cannot know if Obama is advocating violations of the constitution and bill of rights of those detained indefinitely, as he alleges. He doesn't know for certain and he is speaking out to make sure that the rights of the detainees are protected. That doesn't mean that Obama is violating them or that he plans to violate them.

Face it, those in detention have had their rights violated from the get go, they have been held for years without charges and without being afforded the requisite due process. Some, if not all, have been abused and tortured.

Knowing that, I am still not sure what should be done.

I wish someone would point blank ask Warren this question.

What should be done with the Gitmo detainees that pose a risk to the national security of the nation?

The Geneva convention does provide that POWs be held until the conflict has ended. The Fifth Amendment requires the due process that Obama suggests in his speech and that Warren seems to ignore.

It isn't an easy process, I sure the hell wouldn't want to have Obama's job.

he's being very specific in a lawyerly way. They did talk about prolonged detention but not about that detention as preventative detention.

Warren indirectly answered the question you're posing when he said that holding people indefinitely is probably a greater risk to our national security than releasing them after a trial because the situation is used as a recruiting tool or a reason for war.

Bush's framing this as a war breaks down exactly at the point where you have to consider the people who actually fight it -- just like the rest of President AWOL's relationship to armed combat. There is no foreseeable end to this conflict so treating these people as POWS is basically a life sentence. That makes no sense.

relative to "preventative detention" - he can't speak to the failures of the plans because he doesn't know them.

There is a huge difference between a trial and a legal detention hearing.

The practical person will tell you the obvious, they cannot be tried. Their rights have so been violated that a judge could do nothing more than release them because of the due process failings.

What then to do with those you know pose a risk to the security of the nation?

If you go do some research on the issues involved, you will find that the majority of the legal minds of the world, those involved in international law and human rights, wanted the Bush admin to label these people POWs so that they could be afforded the protections POWs have under the Geneva Conventions. They have never been labeled as such, that is why they can be continually interrogated, that is why they don't get to have contact with their families, that is why TRC was prevented from checking on them - and so on and so on.

And no, Warren has not answered the question - What should we do with those who still pose a threat to the US?

Under our constitutional and federal laws, their rights have so been violated they should be released.

Do we just open the doors and let them go join up with AQ and the Taliban and wait from them to commit new crimes and arrest them again and then charge them?

I don't have the answers, I do know that Bush's policies didn't afford due process, they were not entitled to attorneys or hearings on their captivity, their tortured statements or the tortured statements of others were used against them, etc, etc.

From what I understand Obama to have said, his administration will set up procedures that afford the detainees their due process rights. That is more than what Bush's kangaroo courts provided as one can tell by the SCOTUS decisions on the military tribunals and habeaus corpus rights of the detainees.

. . .But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who've received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, or commanded Taliban troops in battle, or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States. .

. .Let me repeat: I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture -- like other prisoners of war -- must be prevented from attacking us again.

Warren is doing his job, he is trying to ensure that the Obama administration respect the constitution and our laws in its treatment of the detainees, that they act humanely. Voicing his concerns is a good thing, accepting them as gospel not so good.

with people who pose a threat before the threat has been established. I might do that, lol, but it's understandable that a human rights attorney wouldn't want to.

You are right about how the years of abuse and violations these guys have endured complicates everything. And in fact, that's my main objection to military commissions.

I've said before that military commissions may be the fastest way for most of these people to get clear of their detentions where they were innocent bystanders to Rumsfeld's insanity. It's pretty hard for Republicans to attack them and so, to delay them with political tantrums.

But, there are to my mind some significant down sides. These guys have been abused and even tortured for years. Some of that abuse was calculated to disrupt their ability to avail themselves of the little due process they were allowed. They have been told their lawyers are Jews, homosexuals, and spies. Their mail has been opened. They had watched their peers go through military commissions that were so stacked as to be ridiculous. It's difficult to see how asking them to also go through a military commission wouldn't affect the way they interact with the venue after what they've seen.

The other thing is that it's one thing for you and me to hear Obama talk about reforming these commissions to make them fair and functional. It's another thing for the public in, say, Pakistan to hear the same thing. If Obama goes back to those commissions, the expectation that he will break with Bush's policies is undercut in the court of world opinion which won't process the fine points he is changing.

There are other considerations, too, that Obama seems to plan to address -- standards of evidence and so on. But, to my mind, the appearance of continuing in an abusive venue outweighs those. Not to mention, no matter what is planned in the White House, it still has to be implemented by the Pentagon which is not having a 100% turnover of personnel. Some of the same abuses will still happen because we're still talking about the same actors in the same venue; it seems inevitable.

So, while these commissions may be faster for the defendants, I'm not confident they will work for the defendants in the way they are intended to work and in the longer term, believe Obama may come to regret them.

But, to my mind, the appearance of continuing in an abusive venue outweighs those.

You are going on appearances without fact. You are making assumptions and you are letting words bother you. You don't like the term "military tribunals" or "military commissions" because bush rigged his. The GC provides that a competent tribunal decide the status of those held.

What other options are there? Would you feel more confident if he named the due process tribunal something else?

but to the defendants, to the staffers and to the world as I explained in my post.

But let's say, I was. Do you think the defendants or the watching public in the Arab world would view these commissions more favorably than I do? I don't think so.

You haven't provided any alternatives.

You haven't suggested any new names for the tribunal or commissions. (Though giving something a new name is such a bush thing, one would think the names don't matter if the procedures and polices have been changed.)

You haven't said what should be done with the most dangerous of those still held.

You haven't suggested what it is that should be done.

Let's accept the obvious, the detainees rights have been so violated that should they be tried and charged, the charges would be dropped and the courts would order them released after the defense files its first motion to dismiss. I don't even think the court's would require a hearing on the issues. (I can see speedy trial violations, fruits of the poisonous tree issues, 8th amendment violations, etc.).

So should we just accept the obvious and release them all?

As to the detention proceedings, should they be set up to afford the accused the due process rights that have not been afforded to date, I don't think the name of the proceeding matters.

In the first place, those people are so broken, in order to rationally believe they pose a threat to the United States, one would have to overlook their actual condition.

In the second place, threats are part of living. If we detained everyone that posed a threat, we'd have to make this a prison planet. We have to work our way out of the mindset of fear and false omnipotence that we have been hooked into by the Bush cabal. That, imho is our larger task.

Rachel rightly pointed out last night that in trying to solve the problem posed by BushCo, Obama has inadvertently duplicated it. Eta: In other words, he wound up doing the same thing Bush did when he was trying to find a solution. She was referring to his comment about an ad hoc legal framework to deal with the threat of terrorism. Duplicating or replicating the problem you are trying to criticize and solve happens, especially when you are out there in the weeds of that problem and it especially happens when you are doing that mostly alone.

That Obama has done that tells me two things: One, that he is out there in the weeds of this problem. And that is reassuring. He's serious about solving this problem. But, two, it tells me he isn't getting anywhere near the support he needs from Congressional and Senate Democrats. We need to get on the horn and fax and email and ask these people what the hell they're doing, not supporting the President over closing Guantanamo and making it so difficult for him to even consider the options for the release of these prisoners.

That is a major problem here, imo. Obama may, probably will, self correct. These Congressional weenies and our crazy uncles in the Senate need to be pulled up.

The dems have yet to figure it out - the reasons they loose is because they take their eye off the needs of the notion while they focus on their political safety.

See post 61, the portion of Obama's speech on the issue - I think he is trying to do the right thing.

The one category outlined in his speech that I have the biggest problem with is #4. Released to another nation for detention and rehabilitation.

So, like the Saudis agree to take them all. Wow, that means their human rights are safe, doesn't it.

that might pose a threat to their safety.

God only knows what the Saudis even mean by "rehabilitation". :scared:

I think Obama is trying to do the right thing, too. It's not helpful when people attack him although, that seems to be the first thing people do any more when they disagree or have a question. That seems to be part of our Morning After Bush Hangover. :(

I think Obama needs a lot of support that he isn't getting. Not for his plans but for him on this set of problems, period. Maybe we can figure out a way to get him some more from the douche-baggery in Congress.

issues for years - I have no idea how to reach anyone - I just keep trying, don't know what else to do but try.

I'll check the videos.

K&R

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

Play the first video. I'll catch Amy later this afternoon.

very much any more.

to the Darth Vader party.

all the noise and hype that comes with that format is irritating lately. Fine in small doses but I can't do the whole show.

And the language in this very sick country is meant to dismiss the facts produced by organizations such as the CCR.

We don't want to show pictures of war crimes. The war criminals go on television and upbraid the president. And the victims of kidnapping, abuse and torture are excoriated in Congress as monsters.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Vince Warren, I want to play one more part of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday and then get your response.

DICK CHENEY: Over on the left wing of the President’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorist. The kind of answers they’re after would be heard before a so-called truth commission. Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense and political opponents as criminals. It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessor.

VINCENT WARREN: That is a tremendous amount of nonsense. This is not a political disagreement. What has happened here, this is arguably some of the worst and notorious criminal activity committed by government officials in the history of the United States.
So, what we really need to be focusing on is, once the criminal activity is exposed, what is this administration going to do about it? This is not about partisan wrangling in the Beltway. This is not about respectful policy disagreements. This is about torture. This is about illegal activity that was engaged in by members of the administration and military operatives and CIA operatives under the Bush administration. And it is absolutely beholden on this administration, and in fact required under Article IV of the Geneva Conventions, once this information is out there, specifically around torture, to begin an investigation. It’s not a question of “if”; it really is a question of when he’s going to do it.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/22/vince_warren

It's wrenching. And that's why it's so hard to keep steady and just look at the problem honestly and ethically. That's why it's so easy for Cheney to take everyone off task with his bullshit. It's even easier to contemplate his evil than to stay with this problem.

Doing things for political expediency can leave painful bite-marks on one's ass.

:kick:

The other labels concede the lie that this is "about them" (and their "threat"), rather than the truth that it is about us (and our fear).

Obama has adopted the core bushcheney/beltway paranoia -- about how to treat "evildoers" on both sides of the permanent "war on terra."

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Cuba had to do better with political prisoners and human rights.

The world rolls its eyes.