CNN Headline: Bin Laden's Driver Found Guilty

CNN's article:.

A U.S. military jury found Osama Bin Laden's former driver guilty of five counts of material support to a terror organization in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In a split verdict, jurors found Salim Hamdan not guilty of conspiracy to aid a terror organization, in this case al Qaeda.

There were eight charges in all, and Hamdan was acquitted of conspiracy, the most serious one. How does that justify "...Found guilty in Terror Trial," which is the headline on their home page? (Link goes to BBC article that also says "found guilty".)

Last line in the BBC article:

However, defence lawyers had feared a guilty verdict was inevitable and said the system was geared to convict.

In George Bush's pentagon? No way!

More here, with at least a (homepage) headline that reflects reality, "Bin Laden's Driver Found Guilty in Split Verdict."

"This is not a day the administration should glory in. It's a day that America should be ashamed of," deputy chief defense counsel Michael Berrigan said after testimony ended in the two-week trial. "Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, this process will go away and we'll have real trials."

The NYTimes says he faced only two charges. How weird. The BBC and CNN both say eight.

Sheesh! The LATimes says there were ten charges! Does anybody actually know?

John McCain: Imprison and Torture the Innocent

John McCain called the recent Supreme Court decision to grant detainees in Guantanamo the right to habeas corpus "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". They're "not citizens of this country," he said, and they're "bad people."

McClatchy news reports today that many of the men imprisoned in Guantanamo were innocent:

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

Innocent men pulled from their homes and families by American troops and held in prison for years - and likely tortured. They are finally granted the smallest possibility that their nightmares might finally end - and McCain calls it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

What exactly are John McCain's beliefs regarding good government? Do they somehow include stealing innocent people from their homes and imprisoning them thousands of miles from those homes simply because they're "not citizens of this country" and because someone in the military told us they were "bad people"? Is habeas corpus, a bedrock of modern understandings of liberty and freedom and good government, a decoration, a table piece, something to be tossed aside in difficult times and put back only when everything's nice and easy again? Is that good government to him? is that good anything to him?

President McCain. Think of that. Think of the justices he'd appoint to the nation's highest courts.

Here's the story of 17 innocent men who have been in Guantanamo for more than six years. The U.S. military admits that they are innocent, that they were wrongly imprisoned - but John McCain would be perfectly happy to keep these innocent men in prison.

President McCain. We really, really, need to think about that.

Ex-Chief Gitmo Prosecutor Testifies AGAINST BushCo

Things that make you want to say, "God damn America":

On the witness stand was the former chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Col. Morris Davis. Called to testify by defense lawyers, he told the court what he'd told the press -- that he'd quit after becoming convinced that the political appointees overseeing the system were about politics first and justice second, that he was told "we can't have acquittals," and that he was pushed to land indictments or plea deals before the election. He also said that his superiors saw no problem with using confessions obtained through torture, including waterboarding. Everything is "fair game," he says he was told, "let the judge sort it out."

And hiding veteran suicide rates - what the hell will it ever take before people have had enough? Veteran administration officials - which means Bush administration officials - are hiding U.S. military veteran suicide rates - and they still have any supporters at all? What the hell is wrong with people? Especially so-called "pro-troops" people?

Torture Expose: Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair:

As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war-crimes charges.

Photo from TortureLaw.org






The People in Guantanamo

How many mechcnics and bakers and taxi drivers have been in that hell for no good reason for years? Christ.

Feinstein Bill Would Close Guantamo Bay Prison

Close it down.

The link has numbers so you can call your senators.