U.S. to Release Photographer Held for 2 Years

The U.S. military said Monday it will release Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, more than two years after he was detained by U.S. Marines on suspicions of links to insurgents. The military said it has determined Hussein is not a threat and plans to free him Wednesday.

In the past week, Iraqi judicial committees dismissed all allegations against Hussein and ordered his release.

Hussein has been in custody since April 12, 2006. The AP and Hussein denied any improper contacts and said he was only doing his job as a journalist working in a war zone.

AP President Tom Curley expressed relief.

“In time, we will celebrate Bilal’s release. For now, we want him safe and united with his family. While we may never see eye to eye with the U.S. military over this case, it is time for all of us to move on,” said Curley.

A statement by Multi-National Forces-Iraq said Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commander of coalition detention facilities in Iraq, signed the release order after confirming the Iraqi committee’s decision to grant Hussein amnesty — a ruling that drops charges but carries no implication of guilt or innocence.

“After the action by the Iraqi judicial committees, we reviewed the circumstances of Hussein’s detention and determined that he no longer presents an imperative threat to security,” Stone said in the statement.

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Bush Replaced REX84 With New Martial Law Executive Order!!

In May 2007, Bush signed executive new orders NSDP51 and HSDP20 to replace REX84. The older order REX84 was an older directive to establish martial law in the event of a national emergency. Everything done in government is done for a reason, and these two new orders are no exception. These new directives surprised and alarmed many real conservatives and true patriots at the time.

These two orders established that the White House administration would take over all local governments under a national state of emergency, instead of Homeland Security. In May 2007, The Washington Post apparently saw nothing wrong with it and placed the story back on page 13 (a fitting unlucky number for it), according to a CSPAN television interview with well known author and writer Jerome Corsi. A contradiction appears to exist here. It cites a nuclear attack or a decapitating event in Washington as the reason for this, according to security analysts. If all the leaders and the administration in Washington are dead from a nuclear attack, who will be left to take over leading the nation under executive orders NSDP51 and HSPD20?

Who would be left to sign the martial law orders? This implies that martial law must be activated BEFORE an attack takes place while the administration is out of town, which clearly implies a false-flag operation by traitors of the worst kind. The administration was in Florida on 9-11, too.

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Closing in on Bush's Torture Cabal

By Jeffrey S. Kaye / AlterNet

It remains to be seen whether there will be any fallout from the news that the country's top officials signed off on torture. Don't rely on the press.

An interview in Esquire magazine of John Yoo, former Bush attorney for the White House's Office of Legal Counsel, and author of two controversial torture authorization memos, may give a hint of what kind of defense Yoo will be present if he decides (under threat of subpoena) to appear before John Conyer's House Judiciary Committee on May 9. Of course, he may decide (or be forced) to fight any appearance. But when career prosecutors start thinking War Crimes Act, and Yoo wakes up and discovers he's expendable, then he might feel differently.

This comes out in Yoo's interview (with the portion below reproduced from TPMMuckraker, bold emphasis added). Note that the time Yoo is talking about is after torture techniques were approved and apparently directed by Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and others in Bush's National Security Council's Principals Committee. The approval came supposedly at the behest of the CIA, who were frustrated with the interrogation of Abu Zubayda, captured in Pakistan in March 2002.

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Nader Supports New Inquiry Into 9/11

Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and independent presidential candidate, seems to think that the report of the commission assigned to investigate the events of 9-11 should not be the last word.

"There are unanswered questions in the 9-11 investigation, and they should be answered," Nader said at a recent address at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. "How do you go from plausibility to evidence? You have a more independent inquiry."

On the morning of September 11, 2001, airliners collided with each of the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, after which they and a third nearby office building mysteriously collapsed. Other incidents on the same day at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania were also attributed to aircraft collisions. All were pitched by the government as the result of a terrorist conspiracy, although it is widely believed that the government may have played a direct role in orchestrating the events.

After public cries for an investigation, President George Bush and Congress deputized the 9-11 Commission, which issued its report in 2004. While the report was praised by some, critics contended that it was not much more than a government whitewash.

On another topic, Nader had kind words to say for presidential candidate, Ron Paul.

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Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks

By Len Hart / The Peoples Voice

It was David Hume’s 1758 Of the First Principles of Government that stated:

"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

—David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government

Hume was not alone in associating military governments with despotic governments. When any person puts himself both above and against the law, then the people are entitled lawfully to rise up —violently if necessary —to overthrow the tyrant, the self-proclaimed dictator. In our own Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said that "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it". Che Guevara spoke of such 'governments' when he said:

"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."

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An Iraqi View of the War

By Walter Pincus / Washington Post

While Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker were on Capitol Hill last week updating the situation in Iraq from the American point of view, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, Sameer Shaker Sumaidaie, was giving his somewhat different -- also upbeat -- view at a think tank in downtown Washington.

Seeing the situation in Iraq through the eyes of an Iraqi official is a worthwhile exercise, starting with a look back at 2003.

When, as Sumaidaie put it, "the Americans breezed in" five years ago, they found a country where Saddam Hussein's "security apparatus [had] represented more than 50 percent of employment" and years of sanctions had caused the collapse of government institutions and services.

"In this vacuum -- and politics, like nature, does not like a vacuum -- stepped in anybody who could step in internally and externally," he told the audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Neighboring countries who wanted to grab a foothold" and Iraqi political entities in exile "moved in to claim whatever they can claim of this potential huge pie that came into being."

Because of this, he said, "the main people who were organized were the Kurds and the religious, or the Islamist, parties. The secular organizations were very underrepresented."

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The Democrats Have Only Themselves to Blame

By Alicia Hope / GangsterGovernment

When Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the proverbial table, she signed the death certificate for the democratic party! Even though the Democrats may not have had the votes needed, impeachment would have stopped the "new crazies" from launching another illegal war for profit...only this time against Iran! It would have also been the death knell for any Republican nominee! The prognostication, only a few months ago, was not a good one for Republicans! Now, it looks like McCain may beat Obama. In a recent poll by USA Today, McCain actually beats Obama The Savior!

By the way, Barack's assassination is off the table too. It is no longer necessary. It was never viable but these are desperate times for the real evil-doers. That's the one good thing about this entire fiasco. Obama will not be "taken out". The race is now close enough that they can steal the election(if necessary) without raising the ire of the public. Diebold machines just happen to still be in place, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting electorate! If it's too close, the Supreme Court or some other judicial body will step in and give the race to McCain.

The Democrats should have impeached this bunch a long time ago! I know the Democrats fear the power behind the presidency! But they'll soon learn that impeachment would have been the option that would have saved this nation or at least given it a reprieve. Historian Michael Parenti called Bush “the biggest thug” ever to occupy the White House! Do I need to list the dirty deeds(and they weren't done dirt cheap)?

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The Government Is Trying to Wrap Its Mind Around Yours

By Nita Farahany / Washington Post

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets nabbed immediately because his brain has given him away.

Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 movie "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise and based on a Philip K. Dick novel, I'm not talking about science fiction here; it turns out we're not so far away from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

It's a question I think we should be asking as the federal government invests millions of dollars in emerging technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity. And though government funding focuses on military uses for these new gizmos, they can and do end up in the hands of civilian law enforcement and in commercial applications. As spending continues and neurotechnology advances, that imagined world is no longer the stuff of science fiction or futuristic movies, and we postpone at our peril confronting the ethical and legal dilemmas it poses for a society that values not just personal safety but civil liberty as well.

Consider Cernium Corp.'s "Perceptrak" video surveillance and monitoring system, recently installed by Johns Hopkins University, among others. This technology grew out of a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense -- to develop intelligent video analytics systems. Unlike simple video cameras monitored by security guards, Perceptrak integrates video cameras with an intelligent computer video.

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Secret Iraqi Deal Shows Problems in Arms Orders

An $833 million Iraqi arms deal secretly negotiated with Serbia has underscored Iraq’s continuing problems equipping its armed forces, a process that has long been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.

The deal was struck in September without competitive bidding and it sidestepped anticorruption safeguards, including the approval of senior uniformed Iraqi Army officers and an Iraqi contract approval committee. Instead, it was negotiated by a delegation of 22 high-ranking Iraqi officials, without the knowledge of American commanders or many senior Iraqi leaders.

The deal drew enough criticism that Iraqi officials later limited the purchase to $236 million. And much of that equipment, American commanders said, turned out to be either shoddy or inappropriate for the military’s mission.

An anatomy of the purchase highlights how the Iraqi Army’s administrative abilities — already hampered by sectarian rifts and corruption — are woefully underdeveloped, hindering it in procuring weapons and other essentials in a systematic way. It also shows how an American procurement process set up to help foreign countries navigate the complexity of buying weapons was too slow and unwieldy for wartime needs like Iraq’s, prompting the Iraqis to strike out on their own.

Such weaknesses mean that five years after the American invasion, the 170,000-strong Iraqi military remains under-equipped, spottily supplied and largely reliant on the United States for such basics as communications equipment, weapons and ammunition, raising fresh questions about the Iraqi military’s ability to stand on its own.

Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Qadir, defended the arms deal, saying he had followed proper contracting protocols and had informed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki every step of the way.

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230 Dead as Battle Rages in Baghdad

THE toll from fierce fighting in Baghdad’s Sadr City has risen to at least 200 dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to doctors in the besieged suburb.

US and Iraqi troops killed at least 13 gunmen in heavy fighting there yesterday against the Mahdi Army loyal to the radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The reports from Sadr City hospitals suggest far higher casualty figures than previously reported, although they cannot be independently verified. Dr Qassem Mudalal, the director of the Imam Ali hospital, said: “There are 230 killed, I can confirm, in the hospitals of Sadr City. I’ve been living in the hospital for two weeks.

“I can’t leave because of the siege and it’s too dangerous to be on the streets because of snipers and bombs.”

He said most had died from shrapnel wounds. Other doctors claimed only a minority of the dead appeared to be militants.

The Iraqi government yesterday briefly lifted a blockade of the suburb, and allowed about 20 lorries loaded with food, blankets and medical supplies to enter the area.

An American convoy was struck by at least 10 roadside bombs while moving in to support Iraqi soldiers setting up a checkpoint in the west of the city, the US military reported.

There was no sign of a cessation of hostilities between al-Sadr and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Children, women and old men have been injured and killed and there are no ambulances,” said Um Ali, a housewife, by telephone from her home in Sadr City. “The hospitals have no first-aid supplies and there are so few doctors.”

CIA Transfer of Suspects to Jordan for Torture Violated International Law

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) transferred at least 14 terrorist suspects to Jordanian custody for interrogation and torture since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.

The 36-page report, “Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan,” documents how Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) served as a proxy jailer and interrogator for the CIA from 2001 until at least 2004. While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan.

"The Bush administration claims that it has not transferred people to foreign custody for abusive interrogation,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “But we’ve documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture.”

Based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects, the report describes eight previously unknown cases of rendition. The new cases include Ibrahim “Abu Mu’ath” al-Jeddawi, whose statements may have been relied upon as evidence in US status review proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, and Khayr al-Din al-Jaza’eri, whose alleged activities were mentioned in a high-profile terrorism prosecution in France. None are known to have been charged with a criminal offense.

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Bush Approved Meetings on Interrogation Techniques!

By Dan Eggen / Washington Post

President's Comments to ABC News Prove Top-Level Involvement in Allowing Harsh Coercion

President Bush said Friday that he was aware his top national security advisers had discussed the details of harsh interrogation tactics to be used on detainees.

Bush also said in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at the presidential ranch here. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies.

Bush suggested in the interview that no one should be surprised that his senior advisers, including Vice President Cheney, would discuss details of the interrogation program. "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

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Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in United States!

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

"I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns," Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. "I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it."

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Constitutional Exception Not Valid, Mukasey Says

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told senators yesterday that a 2001 Justice Department memo insisting that Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable searches did not cover military activities within the United States is "not in force."

Under sharp questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) at an Appropriations Committee hearing, Mukasey said that the "Fourth Amendment applies across the board, regardless of whether we're in wartime or in peacetime," even though the memo by the department's Office of Legal Counsel had concluded otherwise.

Lawmakers pressed Mukasey to publish the unclassified document after department spokesmen said it was being withheld under a doctrine of attorney-client confidentiality. Members of the House and Senate have also sought other controversial memos issued by the OLC that underpinned the administration's counterterrorism efforts.

While promising the release of documents will be a "priority" this year, Mukasey cautioned members of the Appropriations Committee that other factors are at play.

The Justice Department, he said, needs to consider the interests of other federal agencies and to protect the flow of ideas, so that government lawyers are free to make judgments "without having their thinking then become the subject of congressional hearings simply because they offered an idea."

The House Judiciary Committee has asked John Yoo, a former OLC deputy who wrote many of the counterterrorism memos at issue, to testify at a hearing next month. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has indicated he would prefer not to appear.

Lawyers Move To Get Torture Memo Author Yoo Tried As War Criminal

Steve Watson / Infowars.net

The National Lawyers Guild has called for the firing from Berkeley Law School of former assistant to the Attorney General John Yoo for what it describes as "complicity in establishing a policy" that has led to war crimes.

During his time in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo authored various controversial memos in which he advocated the possible legality of torture and decreed that enemy combatants could be denied protection under the Geneva Conventions.

Yoo, a co author of the PATRIOT ACT, also suggested that it was legal to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

In a press release, National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn stated:

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act,"

The National Lawyers Guild makes the case that Yoo's memos violate US law and establish a unduly expansive definition of presidential powers.

The release concludes:

"Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal."

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AP: Cheney, others OK'd harsh interrogations

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

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Cheney's Bogus Oil Argument

By Steve Benen / Salon / War Room

There are probably some grounded, halfway reasonable arguments against withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, but the fact that the White House keeps relying on sheer nonsense suggests the Bush gang can't think of any, either.

Consider Dick Cheney's remarks on Sean Hannity's radio show yesterday.

HANNITY: If we pull out too early, what do you believe the consequences would be? [...]

CHENEY: For us to walk away from Iraq I think would have at least that bad an effect, probably worse, because if al Qaeda were to take over big parts of Iraq, among other things, they would acquire control of a significant oil resource. Iraq has almost 100 billion barrel reserves, producing 2.5-3 million barrels of oil a day. If you take a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and give it that kind of revenue, there's no telling the amount of trouble they could get into.

It's hard to overstate how far-fetched this is.

What's especially striking about this is that the president, about three weeks ago, emphasized the same point. Bush insisted that if we withdraw, there will be chaos in Iraq, which would lead al-Qaida to acquire Iraq's oil. At that point, the president said, the terrorist network "could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction and to attack America and other free nations."

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McCain Advisers Tied to Foreign Lobbying

By Jim McElhatton and Jerry Seper / Washington Times

Two of Sen. John McCain's top advisers and fundraisers are among several Republican and Democratic presidential campaign officials whose lobbying firms have been paid more than $15 million by foreign governments since 2005.

The firms of McCain senior adviser Charlie Black, who until recently was the chairman of Washington-based BKSH & Associates, and campaign co-chairman Thomas G. Loeffler, who heads the Loeffler Group in San Antonio, received millions of dollars lobbying the White House, Congress and others as agents of nearly a dozen foreign clients in recent years.

"At no time have I discussed my clients with John McCain, and there have been many occasions where he has voted against my clients' interests, but that doesn't change my belief that John McCain is the best candidate to lead our nation," said Mr. Loeffler, a former Texas congressman, whose firm has received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia.

The arrangements are legal, and hundreds of lobbyists are registered to work for foreign clients. But experts say conflict-of-interest questions can arise if lobbying and campaign activities overlap.

"I'm not sure it's a good idea that one person plays all these roles," said Toni-Michelle C. Travis, a political analyst and professor of government at George Mason University.

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Judge Orders Government to Provide Documents by 4-21-08

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won another battle against the government Friday(4-7-08) over the release of information about a campaign to change federal surveillance law.

A federal judge ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to provide to EFF by April 21, 2008, records about telecom industry lobbying of their offices.

Congress is currently considering granting immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in unlawful electronic surveillance on millions of ordinary Americans as part of changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Officials at the DOJ and ODNI have been vocal supporters of the immunity proposal. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), EFF asked the DOJ and ODNI for any documents reflecting telecom carriers' efforts to avoid legal responsibility for their role in the government's surveillance operations, but the agencies failed to comply with EFF's requests.

"We went to court over the release of these documents because they could play a critical role in the national debate over telecom immunity. Denying Americans access to this information is not only unconscionable, but also illegal," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "We're pleased the judge recognized that time is of the essence here and ordered these agencies to follow the law."

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Vanunu's Fifth Year of Restrictions Begins and Norway Caves

On April 7, 2008 Mordechai Vanunu, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for the last twenty-two years learned that Israel has continued the restrictions against his right to leave the state or to speak with human beings if they are not Israelis.

On April 9, 2008 it was reported that now Norway has joined Sweden, Canada and Denmark in refusing asylum to Vanunu.

Norway's Bergens Tidende recorded "that Vanunu's application for asylum in Norway had in fact been approved by the country's immigration agency UDI (Utlendingsdirektoratet) back in 2004. UDI was overruled, however, by Norway's center-right government at the time. Political considerations, not least Norway's efforts to remain on good terms with Israel and the US, were more important than Vanunu's human rights." [1]

UDI officials have a mandate to make asylum decisions without political interference. UDI officials had determined that Vanunu qualified for asylum and immigration authorities had determined that his application should be granted.

Israel developed its nuclear program with the help of Norwegian heavy water and between 1976 and 1985; Vanunu was employed as a mid level technician and shift manager at the Dimona nuclear weapons facility underground in the Negev desert where it was utilized.

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