New York Times:

Legacy of Torture
EDITORIAL | Published: August 26, 2010

. . Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated.

The report details how the use of torture abroad, with the silence or assent of the U.S., and the use of George W. Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ in American facilities have produced a multi-tentacled legal monster, gumming up or destroying case after case against detainees, some of whom are probably legally responsible for crimes against Americans.

Judges have found it impossible to be sure of the detainees’ confessions given the circumstances under which they were obtained.

The government’s case for keeping the Guantánamo Bay prisoner locked away seemed airtight. He had confessed to overseeing the distribution of supplies to al-Qaida fighters battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, even describing the routes where pack mules hauled the packages.

But a federal judge rejected Fouad Mahmoud Al Rabiah’s confessions, concluding that he had concocted them under intense coercion.

So insidious and long-lasting are the effects of torture that virtually all subsequent confessions become suspect as well:

Al Rabiah

Even statements that the government insisted Al Rabiah had made under noncoercive, or “clean,” questioning were tainted, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled, and she ordered that Al Rabiah be released.

The government has lost eight of 15 cases in which Guantánamo inmates have said they or witnesses against them were forcibly interrogated . .

To wit:

Government lawyers didn’t contest that [Saeed Mohammed Saleh] Hatim, while held for six months at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, had been beaten repeatedly, kicked and “threatened with rape if he did not confess to being a member of the Taliban or al-Qaida,” according to U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina’s opinion. Instead, they submitted confessions he gave after arriving at Guantánamo, under cleaner questioning. But Urbina found that Hatim’s confession was “tainted by torture” and ordered that he be released. The government is appealing the decision.

Does any of this surprise anybody? I doubt it. And the negative legal reach of torture isn’t trivial, moving well beyond the cases of the victims:

Last year, Justice Department lawyers tried to show that Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed was an al-Qaida fighter by using statements from another detainee, Binyam Mohamed, whose “harrowing” interrogation ordeal was described in an 81-page opinion by Senior Judge Gladys Kessler.

Binyam Mohamed, now free

For two years, beginning with his capture in April 2002, foreign interrogators holding him “at the behest of the United States” beat and kicked him, chained him to a wall, kept him half-standing for long stretches and cut him with a blade, including on his genitals. He was “fed information” and “told to verify it.” During that time, he was also interrogated by the FBI and CIA.

The government’s lawyers didn’t contest the allegations of mistreatment but instead argued that the treatment of the informant didn’t undermine the evidence he gave later . .

But Kessler didn’t buy that better treatment had done the trick. Given that, “throughout his detention, a constant barrage of physical and psychological abuse was employed in order to manipulate him and program him into telling investigators what they wanted to hear,” she wrote, it was “more than plausible” that he had also manufactured details in nonabusive questioning.

So, even with American handlers, under reasonable treatment, making statements against somebody else, the evidence is still junk.

Didn’t we all know we’d end up here? I think so.

If you’re considering the use of torture, you’re going to have to change completely the character and habits of a nation in order to be honestly successful. Good nations produce good legal systems. When the use of torture becomes apparent, the system rejects the ‘evidence,’ and the cases die. It’s predictable. Otherwise, you’d have to become Saudi Arabia or Egypt to rack up many wins. It looks bad now, but the tossing of so many cases is actually good news.

Oh, and haven’t the predicted verdicts come in against shortsighted Dick Cheney and his boss, George W. Bush, as well? Losers.

There goes a naked politician. Gohmert’s now caught in a stinking, lumbering lie. Might as well take his embarrassment out on Anderson Cooper.

He apparently thinks that if something could be true, then what’s the diff? No one likes a terrorist, so what does it matter if Louie’s a liar? Sheesh, Anderson.

And the ‘controversy‘ ends.

Does it matter if a politician tells an outrageous, howling lie? Of course it does, it could end his or her career.

Does it matter if a lunatic Republican tells an outrageous lie? Yes it does — how else are they gonna get TV time and fire up the base? Hell, the truth won’t do that for the wingnuts, that stuff is BORING.

Hilarious, screeching lying is the feed of fear farmers, and there’s plenty here. And the biggest bull-milker would be Louie Gohmert.

Reported on June 27, Gohmert (R–TX, of course) took to the House floor, saying that he talked to a retired FBI agent who knew of terrorists bringing in pregnant women to have children here so that the kids would have American citizenship. Then they’d return home, train the kids to be terrorists, and then send the grown-up anti-American murderers back to the states to “destroy our way of life.”

And thus was born the “Terror Babies!” knee-slapper. Sensing a good thing — volcanic bugshit — Gohmert was happy to flog it again, about a week later. But this time, with a twist.

Appearing on Fox Business Channel (?), he trotted out his “Terror Babies!” again. But, oddly, he now had a completely different source for the shocking revelation: someone he personally knew heard about it first hand. From the grandmother of two of the Terror Babies.

You see, as Gohmert and his people were flying to the Middle East on a passenger plane, one of them, just minding his own business, had the woman sitting next to him inexplicably detail the whole thing. Turns out it’s a program being run by Hamas.

Grandma married into Hamas, her son-in-law is Hamas, and she simply had to tell the stranger sitting next to her how they assured the babies’ citizenships by flying her pregnant daughter to HAmerica. Now, some day, you can bet she’ll send them back to, you know, murder us all.

This is some serious stuff. Serious enough that, some day, the bullcrap may sprout legs and walk out of Texas. Just not this week.

Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle has some shocking news for Anderson Cooper: here come the “Terror Babies!”

COOPER: Representative Riddle, you told my producer that pregnant women are coming here as tourists, having babies, and then going back home — quote — “with the nefarious purpose of turning them into little terrorists, who will then come back to the U.S. and do us harm.” You said it’s part of an organized terrorist element and could cost us lives. Where did you hear that?

RIDDLE: Uh, that is information that is coming to my office from former FBI officials.

WOAH — she’s got Gohmert beat. Her office has talked to several FBI guys.

COOPER: But you have no actual evidence?

RIDDLE: Other than that coming from former FBI folks.

COOPER: Can you tell us who these former FBI folks are, and what evidence they have or what evidence they’ve shown you?

RIDDLE: At this point, uh, I’m not going to reveal that.

Come on, Anderson. Do you expect her to tell you she howls at the moon?

Tobacco Taxes Finance Terrorism by Deroy Murdock
06/07/2010

NEW YORK — The next terror attack on America could be a self-inflicted wound – specifically a cigarette burn.

Tobacco taxes are mostly a states’ thing. The revenues get funneled to terrorists? Really?! This I gotta hear. Gotta be some sorta LeCarre spy thingie where the bureaucrat in charge of moving funds from one account to another is blackmailed by his supermodel mole/lover. He gets killed, of course, with two rounds to the back of his head, all in some fancy beige high-rise hotel. Gets duct-taped in the silken sheets and hurled off the balcony.

Tobacco taxes create a perfect arbitrage opportunity that radical Muslims exploit to collect money for terrorist groups that murder Americans and our allies. Tobacco taxes should be cut, or at least frozen, before they fuel further Islamic-extremist violence.

Consider the first attack on the Twin Towers, which killed six and injured 1,040. As Patrick Fleenor recalled in a Cato Institute study, “counterfeit cigarette tax stamps were found in an apartment used by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad cell that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center” . .

A $2.70 spread separates Virginia’s 30-cent-per-pack cigarette tax and Connecticut’s at $3.00. Driving 1,500 cigarette cartons (10 packs per carton) from Arlington to Hartford yields $40,500 per trip.

Joint Terrorism Task Force Alert: the facile Terrorists have invented . .

THE! ASTUTE! SHOUTING! BLOGGERS! STRIKE! AGAIN!

WE! TOTALLY! SCOOPED! YOU! LOSERS! AGAIN!

SHOE-BOMBER CAUGHT IN PAKISTAN: RED SIREN ALERT: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS DRUDGE BY A DAY!

DRUDGE TONIGHT:

Pakistani air passenger caught with electronic circuits
concealed in his shoe...

THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS POSTED THIS ITEM YESTERDAY – WITH MORE LINKS.

REGULAR READERS KNOW THAT WE SCOOP ALL THE BIGGIES ALL THE EFFIN’ TIME – YES: EVEN DRUDGE.

OOPS! THEY! WERE! MASSAGE! SHOES!

WHATEVER! WE! DON’T! APOLOGIZE!

If you’re the type to suspect that wingnuts might welcome terrorist attacks, then this crap is right up your alley. Doug Giles and his teenage outrage can barely contain themselves.

There’s been a terrorist attack. OF COURSE! The jerk was a Muslim? PBBBBT!! YA THINK!?!? BWAH HA LIBBRULS!!!!!

Giles will never be more in his element:

On this Jesus website, it’s perfectly fine to characterize other folks as religious unibrows. Scott Roeder drove across part of a continent to shoot and kill Dr. Tiller in church, where his wife was sitting, but he’s no “Christian unibrow.” Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by right-winger Yigal Amir, but he’s no “unibrow Jew.”

We re-wrote movies? Or ‘movie news’?

He’s a woman! Totally good one! You burned him, I bet he’s watching.

done

Harsh words for the President:

Can’t really argue with that assessment, but it’s pretty much to be expected in a war with terrorists. If it’s the Pakistani Taliban we’re talking about, terrorist exporters and violent local thugs, some and maybe much of the action is justified. But the collateral damage is appalling, granted. Who’s the lefty critic?

Would you believe Bryan Fischer, the ultra-right-wing lunatic? A guy who advocated imprisoning homosexuals?

He started out the post by running his mouth on the new meme: Obama inflamed the ‘liberal’ Pakistani by bashing Bush. Laughably, he extended the inflammation to include Obama’s drone strikes, the real reason, but did so in the guise of “you caused the bombing you bastard” gambit. By doing so, Fischer is painting the Taliban killings as reckless politics as opposed to military actions. It’s a stupefying stance from a guy so right-wing as to be ephemeral. I’d have loved to see him drill George W. Bush for such callow politicking: killing the Taliban.

Bryan is a newborn babe. He’s never seen anything so mystifying a group of behaviors as this ‘War.’

What’s a word for ‘beyond preposterous’? Preposterousest? Preposterousisimo?

How do I fairly describe the emerging right-wing meme that the Times Square bomber, Pakistani Faisal Shahzad, was a liberal? Correspondingly, he was goaded by the reckless left-wing media? I’m currently at a loss for appropriate language for the charges.

A Muslim terrorist sympathetic to the Pakistani Taliban, who have been attacked and killed in drone strikes? Fine, okay. But a liberal? You wingnuts have lost the remnants of what once were minds:

So if this guy seeks revenge for the killing of Pakistani Muslims, that’s not the point? What’s important is how much he hated Bush? That’s what makes him a liberal, rrrriiiiiggghht. You idiots have just thrown the 9/11 hijackers into the Democratic party.

I’m gonna go hog wild here and say he’s actually a Conservative. Why? Because it’s a safe bet he hates Barack Obama. No real reason for it, he just does.

Totally, absolutely. Deporting them, too. And people who make bombs, outta here. And people who drive, adios. And men. I hate those fucking bastards, get them the fuck out of my country. That bastard Faisal was another one of those bomb-making car-driving Allah-worshiping cock-hangers. Toss ‘em all, I say. But what do I know, I’m just a patriot.

We’re lucky he didn’t kill the plane. We’d never have found him then. Or the Kennedy airport — WOAH, that would have been weiiiirrrrd. Another one of those Kennedy thingies, ooh, I just got a chill.

BWAH HA HA THEO VAN GOGH, LOTS OF LUCK GETTING HIM TO TEACH YOU ANYTHING, THEY SHOT HIM DEAD.

Hoo! That is rich. Theo Van Gogh, killed. HEY, get THIS — you wanna know the last time I saw him? AT HIS FUNERAL! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA OOOOOOOOOH CRAP. That’s just his memorial, damn, I thought I had a picture of his coffin. That was gonna be freaking hilarious. Hmm. Don’t know how you do it, Bryan, you sure make being funny look easy.

YEAH, we don’t kill civilians. We have our ‘conscience restraints.’ We never do it over and over and over again because that’s what the word ‘restraint’ means.

Alright Habib, let’s say that you’re the United States. Would you let you in?

“If I were America, would I give myself citizenship? Are you kidding? Of course nnooo . . . . wait, yes. Yes. YES, I would. I FLY TO ME AND KILL THE GREAT SATAN BECAUSE I AM MUSLIM ALLAH HALALLA ALLALLALL .. .. ” [*Boom!*]

Damn. I was really hoping that would go differently.

[Owww! ALLAH!!]

*end post*

ADD:

Aliou Niasse, a street vendor selling framed photographs of New York, said that he was the first to spot the car containing the bomb, which pulled up right in front of his cart on the corner of 45th street and Broadway next to the Marriott hotel.

“I didn’t see the car pull up or notice the driver because I was busy with customers. But when I looked up I saw that smoke appeared to be coming from the car. This would have been around 6.30pm.”

“I thought I should call 911, but my English is not very good and I had no credit left on my phone, so I walked over to Lance, who has the T-shirt stall next to mine, and told him. He said we shouldn’t call 911. Immediately he alerted a police officer near by,” said Mr Niasse, who is originally from Senegal and who has been a vendor in Times Square for about eight years.

This sort of careless shit pisses me off. Marc Thiessen wonders aloud why Al Qaeda haven’t used more traditional methods of terrorism: after all, those schemes would produce more kills and be extremely effective in terrorizing us.

Thiessen is entirely too clever, glib and ghoulish here. I don’t need to read this stuff, and I don’t want to see it. And unless you can make a strong, rational argument that this sort of very visible blogging about the future deaths of Americans serves a valuable purpose for us, the potential victims, I stand by my opinion.

I believe that this medium just isn’t a proper forum for it. Yes, I will speak of such things with friends or with fellow politics junkies and bloggers, but I’ll do it away from the public, and I’ll probably do it in hushed tones. I assume anti-terrorist and homeland security people have discussions like this all the time, and that’s fine, but there are good reasons we haven’t seen those in public either. The people who read Thiessen are far more likely to be regular old Republicans clicking his links to see what Cheney’s buddy thinks of the Tea Party or Sarah Palin, not CIA agents honing their anti-terrorist strategies. And I certainly don’t understand why, given their bogeyman obsessions, a wingnut like Thiessen wouldn’t worry that the terrorists might choose to take the advice from a national security genius like him.

I certainly don’t end up thinking Marc Thiessen is any smarter, I think he’s senseless and coarse.

Yes, interesting. I’m still alive and so are you, I just don’t understand it. I should have been killed by now, something’s up.

Yeah, man, that was awesome.

Jeezus, Marc. Yes, why aren’t we completely terrified, demoralized and hopeless? We’ve had surprisingly few suicides. Why haven’t I buried more of my loved ones? We need to dwell on this at length. Perhaps we could use a week-long symposium on terrorism entitled “The Paltry American Death Rate Quandry .”

MAN. It’s right about here I started thinking “Why has this guy’s personal editing function not kicked in?”

Alright, that’s enough. You can read this garbage here.

Terrorists! Who else would blow up an Oklahoma government building, murdering almost 200 people? That’s why USA Today called it . .

. . wha!?!? Bastards!

So the Oklahoma City Police, they called the McVeigh attack . .

. . gah!! Chickenshits! Liars!!

This is the latest indication that the Pakistanis have been hosting Al Qaeda all along. As soon as their government decided instead to fight them, suddenly *poof* they’re everywhere.

Sources: U.S.-born al-Qaida spokesman caught
Gadahn, 31, reportedly held in Pakistan; $1 million reward on his head

KARACHI, Pakistan – Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida, has been captured in Pakistan, government sources said Sunday.

Gadahn was arrested in recent days, two officers who took part in the operation told The Associated Press. A senior government official also confirmed the arrest. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

An intelligence source confirmed the report to NBC News, adding that Gadahn was detained in Sohrab Goth, a suburb of Karachi, and was later moved to the capital Islamabad.

The arrest is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington. It follows the recent detentions of several Afghan Taliban commanders in Karachi . .

A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He was also charged with two counts of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Gadahn, 31, grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, Calif., and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County . .

Psychologically, this will be a bit of a blow to the wingnuts. If only the Bush Administration had pulled this off, catching the treasonous terrorist Muslim moonbat. Their reactions will have to be muted, and then they’ll have to work to disconnect Obama from it somehow . .

CORRECTION: The militant is apparently not Gadahn as was previously reported everywhere:

Now, CBS News’ Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad writes that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact “a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya.”

Website Dawn.com had further reported that Abu Yahya and Gadahn were the same person but were also incorrect. Too bad, woulda been good news.