Im surprised the release of Sami AL Haj is not covered by CNN , Skynews , ITV or BBC . why isnt it a Journalist worthy of a coverage , even short one? if he was called Johnson or another name and was in an Arab jail we would definitely hear about his ordeal and the injustice and how his rights were abused . shame on the so called Honest Neutral Media , now it has been exposed !

Oh, I hope that your next “computer crash” is fatal, cyrena....... Geeze, your stuff gives me a headache, uhh.

Well, Al Jazeera has turned out to be one of the very best media organizations on the planet (that’s not hard these days). And they have extensive on-the-ground coverage throughout Asia (from Turkey to Taiwan). What is more, they understand what they report on in a way that Westerners can’t.

So, perhaps the entire Guantanamo ‘exercise’ was about intimidating such interests outside of the USA? After all, if you are reporting on a story and know that you can at any moment find yourself bound and gagged on a CIA “black flight” to an unknown country, you are supposed to be mindful of what you say.

Note that the Bush administration didn’t particularly care, either, that their “renditioning” came to light as well as the things that happen on a military base located offensively in someone else’s country. The fact that Guanatanamo is in Cuba should explain something in itself, uhh.

But you have missed the point, Ernesto, if you think that BushCo is “...a movement that does not accept the legitimacy of the established order...”. It is merely an update on the established order that you all blindly accepted being deceived by all of your life.

What you all fail to understand is that this is something that has been worked up to diligently since 1945. Not that it didn’t have its roots a century earlier but it has been continuous since then. You are all as helpless as the prisoners in Guantanamo yourselves!

The Grapes of Wrath was about arriving in California as much as it was about leaving the dustbowl of bank foreclosures.......

Being met with repression and prejudice is no different then than it is today and was when African were brought in chains to America and other “settler societies”.

Fear engendered by an endless “war on terror” against a phantom menace who is everywhere and anywhere at all times is but one of the tools these counter-revolutionaries use to gain and maintain power.  At a critical juncture in Orwell’s “1984,” inside the Ministry of Love, O’Brien, the burly inner-Party member, halts his physical torture of the protagonist Winston Smith (electric shock)in order to assault him with a fundamental truth about the Party.  “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.  We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.  Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power.”

^ it is about fear.  This combines all of the elements of Kafka, Orwell, and Fahrenheit 451.  I understand “how” this was pulled off, but, what I don’t understand is how it is; that this is still being “pulled off”.  Why is it the American people don’t see through this; and, they are still running scared?

Ernest, you are my hero of the day. You just saved me a whole bunch of work in retracing resources that I lost to a fatal computer crash serveral weeks ago.

And, I DESPERATELY NEEDED this info to complete some overdue work.

This that you’ve quoted from Krugman is enormously helpful, because it helps to explain, (when considered in conjunction with other references) what has been so difficult for me to digest as a theoretical concept. (I’ve struggled with Carl Schmitt as well, though I think I’m finally getting that weaved in).

• “In “The Great Unraveling” Paul Krugman described the Bush/Cheney regime and the hard right movement that put them in office as a “revolutionary power"--that is a movement that does not accept the legitimacy of the established order.  “When you’re dealing with a revolutionary power, it’s important to realize that it knows what it wants, and will make whatever argument advances that goal. So there should be no presumption that the claims it makes on behalf of its actions make any sense in their own terms.”

“So there should be no presumption that the claims it makes on behalf of its action MAKE ANY SENSE IN THEIR OWN TERMS.”

That says it. But I’ll tell you what, this has been the HEAVIEST of “intellectual lifting” I think I’ve ever needed to contemplate, and it ain’t been easy. That’s because there’s no way to make the irrational, rational. Needless to say, it’s because it isn’t INTENDED to. The additional consequences of this revolutionary movement (and lack of logic for actions) also creates and maintains the chaotic and unstable environment that is REQUIRED of any revolutionary movement. None of it would ‘work’ (for the movement) without this chaos and instability, and the terror is a required component.

Now of course that much I managed to figure out a while back. This ‘War on Terror’ is actually a “war OF terror’ as perpetrated by this ‘revolutionary power’. Guantanamo is just ONE it’s mechanisms.

Meantime, how exactly to explain the gutlessness of the Congress? It’s NOT a ‘partisan’ thing - unless of course that much of the Congress is part of the revolutionary power and we just haven’t figured that out. I don’t know.

Geeze…this stuff gives me a headache.

Thanks again for the resources…

Jane Mayer, in “The Hidden Power,” an article published two years ago in “The New Yorker” cited a Seton Hall study which revealed that 55% of the detainee population at Guantanamo had never committed a hostile act and only 8% of which were alleged to have been connected to al-Qaeda.  The vast majority, 86%, were captured either by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance at a time when the U.S. was offering huge bounties for “suspected” terrorists.  Per Mayer, both David Addington (Cheney’s chief of staff) and Alberto Gonzales were well aware of this for the JAG & CIA officers sent to Guantanamo to find out why no useful intelligence was being extracted returned, reporting to Addington & Gonzales, that “more than half the detainees...didn’t belong there.” Their pleas were callously ignored.  A perplexed administration official questioned the logic:  “How could you deny the possibility that one or more people were locked up who shouldn’t be there?  There were old people, sick people--why do we want to keep them?”

In “The Great Unraveling” Paul Krugman described the Bush/Cheney regime and the hard right movement that put them in office as a “revolutionary power"--that is a movement that does not accept the legitimacy of the established order.  “When you’re dealing with a revolutionary power, it’s important to realize that it knows what it wants, and will make whatever argument advances that goal.  So there should be no presumption that the claims it makes on behalf of its actions make any sense in their own terms.” The administration official’s questioning of the utility of detaining the innocent made sense only if one assumes that Addington & Gonzales possessed the belief, however misguided, that there was utility in torture in terms of the “professed” goal of fighting a war on terror.

Per the Mayer article:  “‘Torture isn’t important to Addington as a scientific matter, good or bad, or whether it works or not,’ the Administration lawyer, who is familiar with these debates, siad.  ‘It’s more about his philosophy of Presidential power He thinks that if the President wants torture he should get torture.  He always argued for ‘maximum flexibility.’”

Every bill passed by Congress is routed first to Addington who scours them for interference with the exclusive prerogatives of the Unitary Executive.  It is Addington who created the Kafka-like military tribunals and who attached presidential signing statements to more than 800 bills, purporting to reserve to the President the authority to enforce only what he agrees with.

Why did the administration hold Al-Haj all this time without any evidence to justify holding him for as much a one day--a) Because the Administration has been targeting and seeking to silence al Jazeera ever since al Jazeera began broadcasting photos of civilians killed by U.S. bombs in Afghanistan in 2001 and b) because in doing so, it demonstrates that it has the power to do so.  And who’s to say it doesn’t when a gutless Congress not only fails to put impeachment on the table but, in passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, granted an immunity from war crimes prosecutions for all crimes committed by Bush administration officials in service of the so-called war on terror retroactive to 9/11/01?

I can’t wait to see/read Sami’s first photo-essay apres-Guantanamo.

Locked and Loaded.

Where in the Hell is our press corps?  Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job in the back room by a young consenting adult.  A SINGLE crime of lying about an embarrassing incident. 

Aside from all of the lives lost in this war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a case of holding one man against his will without charging him of a crime for 6 years and then releasing him.  That in and of itself is a crime.  The people (note: multiple)who are responsible must, MUST be punished.  And then let’s get on with punishing those same people for the death and destruction of two countries.

^ so what are you going to do about it?  Pack big (.45) and pack smart!

^ Sudan.  Nice.  Thanks.

^ your words Aegrus; “young bison”, in your first post; thats what made me laugh.  I still chuckle on those words.  Get busy!

I’ve been following this story for a long time on Al Jezeera News.  I feel nausea every time I read an update.  This mans life has probably been destroyed for nothing:  For nothing by Bush and Cheney!!!  Resident Nazi fascists in charge!  I remember a time something like this would have brought an administration down.  My Lai and Tet comes to mind; that was the beginning of the end for us in Viet Nam.  This situation about (Sami Al-Haj) is a fundamental paradigm shift so far to the right as to leave the right on the left.  From my far away view “you” (I’m not there) are sleeping through the theft of everything of any intrinsic value to a free people.  Does anybody see the price being paid for some bozo telling you, you need to “trust” the neo-cons to protect you?  I lived in a very rural area rife with criminal activity; so I carried a gun (sometimes two) because I could not rely on the police (1 officer 500 sq. miles); so I took personal responsibility for my and my families’ safety.  Surely you have seen National Geographic shows showing predator and prey, yes?  The next time you see a show about that watch the behavior of the prey.  Victims always exhibit the same behavior and the American people are exhibiting the same identical behavior.  I’m ashamed to say I’m an American here in Thailand, when I meet other westerners.  Ya’all need to get a grip and get going!  Times flying!  Over and out!

^ how can he possibly “not” have any “mental” problems?  Did you see pictures of him? He’s aged 30 years.  This is the thing that twists my insides to nausea and furthers my resolve to never set foot on American soil again.  Yes, god damn America!  And yes “young bison”, those were the first words I read on the first post you did on TD.  That made me laugh; a lot; but: Your government is terminally ill and it will never be brought to heel unless you youngsters get some courage and face the bankrupt bastards down!  There may be blood!

^ Thank you!

Aegrus,

I don’t think ANY of these men are returned mentally in-tact, because of the torture. That in itself is reprogramming.

According to the complete article, he was one of the many that went on hunger strikes, (400+ days for him) and so they did the feeding tube thing to him, and that’s torture.

So, I don’t know. For the few who HAVE been interviewed after the years of captivity and torture, they all seem not so much ‘reprogrammed’ in the old sense of the practice, but just totally whacked out from the torture. KSM wound up ‘confessing’ to every crime under the sun, even though there’s no possible way he could have been in or involved in all those activities at the same time.

Others that they’ve finally charged can’t be tried for the same reasons...all of the stuff they’re charging them for was obtained under torture. How can we ever find out?

This man may certainly be an exception, if he’s ever able to talk, but still. The stuff they’ve done to all of these men is so far beyond the pale that it seems impossible to believe they could ever be ‘right’ again.

Which makes me wonder about John McCain. We’ve been told that he was tortured in captivity, and I have no reason to doubt that. But, I don’t think any of the details of his captivity, or the specific torture methods have ever been revealed. Hard to imagine anyone undergoing the types of torture that have been revealed now, could ever be fully restored to any measure of mental health. 6 years is a very long time.

It makes me so sick just thinking about it.

Maybe she was going to “beat his brains out”, too.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBgcVEG6HVg

Which is the civilized country - USA or Sudan??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDFjZ_DHVSc

Very appropriate quote here Nancy. WE knew exactly what he was talking about, eh?

The same thing applies to every single story of torture and other crimes against humanity, of which there are now millions notched into the belt that is America.

God should BLESS US? And just exactly what sort of God would do that?

KenDen…

You are right to wonder, but I have to tell you, there are so many that we’ll honestly never know. Even among those captured at the same time as this journalist, there were hundreds more that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or no, that’s not at all correct. They were NOT in the ‘wrong place’ as they were where they’ve always been. There were hundreds of merchants, sheep herders, farmers, and regular PEOPLE..Afghanis and Pakistanis and others, who were captured at the time, in the ‘sweep’ for ‘terrorists’. Many of them were captured by Pakistanis and ‘sold’ to the US military for bounties. Like I said..regular people.

There have been over 1,000 men ‘processed’ through the torture chambers of Guantanamo. Less than a dozen have actually been charged with anything. I’ve lost count now of the numbers that remain, but keep in mind that George Bush and others of his regime have OFTEN claimed that ‘THERE ARE NO INNOCENT MEN AT GUANTANAMO’. That has ALWAYS been a lie.

For those that have been captured (or rendered) from here and other countries, and taken to secret prisons that the CIA maintains around the world, we’ll never really know the number. We’ve learned of a few, but there are so many that have been ‘disappeared’ that it will take decades to learn of them all, if we ever do.

When facism comes to America it will be draped in a flag carrying a cross” - Sinclair Lewis

That time has come and gone.  To deny citizens of other countries the freedoms which America was founded on, described in the declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

The original Bill of rights was not written exclusively for Americans, but as a moral compass for our government to follow as not to mimic the government of an outside power (England).

How the tables have turned in less than 300 years that our government is now the perpetrator of deeds which envoked the creation of America.....how ironic.

Ha, ha!!!  Can’t touch Bush or Cheney because the illegal action of holding this man was off shore, off of United States soil so no US laws were broken.

Brilliant, isn’t it? 

What a bunch of pukes we have running our government.  You also Condolizza!

I just wonder how many other innocent people are being held by the fascists running our government.  I still find it hard to believe that they haven’t been impeached.  What does it take to wake Congress up?

Well, it will be very interesting to see if this man is returned mentally in-tact to his family, or completely reprogrammed. I’m very concerned about what this person would have to say about his captivity, or if he can even discuss any of the time he was held at Guantanamo.