Major Fleener strikes again
A post on this blog on Tuesday described a BBC interview with Guantanamo detainee military lawyer Major Tom Fleener; after calling the commissions "show trials," he concluded "I don't know how we got here, but I know we shouldn't be here."

Now Fleener's making waves again. Associated Press writer Ben Fox reports:

A military defense lawyer asked the Pentagon on Wednesday to move the trial for an alleged bodyguard of Osama bin Laden to the U.S., saying difficult access for witnesses and the media make it impossible to hold it fairly at Guantanamo Bay. [...]

Army Maj. Tom Fleener suggested the trial for Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al-Bahlul could safely be held at Navy bases in the United States where there are fewer restrictions on the defense and the media.

'They are making it difficult on purpose for the media to attend these trials and it's not right,' said Fleener, who filed a change of venue motion with the Office of Military Commissions."

Via former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith ("firedoglake"), who adds,

Good for the military attorney who is pushing this forward. Folks in the JAG corps are often between a rock and a hard place in these cases — where their patriotism is challenged for doing their jobs, but where dedication to the ideals of legal practice have to remain at the top of the list. It’s a very, very tough job, and I salute the ones who are doing it. Well done, indeed.

Fleener really seems to be pulling out all the stops on behalf of his assigned client (including siding with Bahlul's request for self-representation). That's his job; I salute him, too. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Just whose Democratic Party is it?
Chuck Schumer had better climb down from this one pronto:

Schumer said that the DSCC 'fully supports' Sen. Joe Lieberman in his primary bid, and he refused to rule out continuing that support if Lieberman were to run as an independent.

There were degrees of independence, Schumer said. 'You can run as an independent, you can run as an independent Democrat who pledges to vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader.'

Who died and made Schumer duke of the Democratic Party? Do Democratic primary voters count for anything in his plans?

I haven't been a cheerleader for Ned Lamont, but from what I've read he can't help but be better than a Senator who's reliably preening and unreliable when the chips are down and the stakes are high. "We can do better," indeed: Lieberman should have been reprimanded or financially punished for his threat, not coddled or applauded.

But regardless of the merits of the two candidates, I do insist that the Democratic Party and its leadership support the choice of Democratic voters in the primaries, and not even speak theoretically of supporting a challenger who's bolted the party.

So Joe? Chuck? For trying to take the "Democrats" and the "democratic" out of the Democratic Party, here's my raspberry for the both of you.


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NOTES: DSCC=Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. National Journal HotLineBlog quote and "preening and unreliable" link to Talking Points Memor via digby, for those of you who haven't already read this at "hullabaloo".

UPDATES, 6/15: The New Republic's Jason Zengerle fatuously applauds Schumer; it seems like TNR feels like democracy needs to take hold in Iraq first before we can risk spreading it to Connecticut. DemFromCT ("The Next Hurrah") takes a closer look at the Lamont/Lieberman contest and says "When you're not just running against, but running away from, your own base, you're in deep trouble."
Add your name to Ned's asking Senator Lieberman to support the winner of the August 8th primary. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:19:00 AM -- |    

 
Quick hits
Capsule summaries and key passages of some posts worth reading in full:

Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow") makes a crucial observation about Ann Coulter's attack on the 9/11 widows -- rather than take on their arguments about the 9/11 commission or security policy, Coulter complains that they aren't people the Right can respond to. Ms. Carol notes:

What she is demanding is the right to attack them personally rather than answer their argument. Deprived of the weapon of ad hominem attack, she may be forced to engage what the 9/11 families and the survivors of our military dead, like Cindy Sheehan, are trying to say.

Paperwight says the weakness of the Democratic Party's "culture of corruption" 2006 election theme is that it doesn't take much to look like both sides are the same on that score. Sure, the GOP is way more corrupt -- they're in power, and many of them seem wired that way -- but it's too hard to quantify the difference:

When you're explaining, you're losing. And a sense that everybody's corrupt depresses turnout and favors Republicans on a lot of levels. The Republican turnout machine is the fundie churches and the well-off. Period. Those people will turn out even if the system is corrupt, because it's not corrupt in ways that offend them.

By contrast, the Dems need turnout from ordinary people, and if everyone's corrupt, why bother? Worse, if the Dems aren't offering anything real for working people, and the system is corrupt, the Dems might lose some of those working people to the cultural wedge issues the Republicans pimp.

Publius ("Legal Fiction") suggests Zarqawi's demise may help clarify what the U.S. presence in Iraq is not about:

...without some figure like Zarqawi to create the necessary Iraq narrative, it’s going to be harder to portray reality as not-reality. In other words, unless another rises up to take his place in our consciousness, it’s going to be harder to portray a civil war with little relevance to terrorism as a war against terrorists.

Publius builds on Billmon's "convenient scapegoat" post of last November, which is worth reading too. It seems like an inevitable convergence of goals: some Zarqawi wannabe will rise to the top by whatever ghastly means necessary, and American and even Iraqi players need him as a concrete enemy everyone can hate. Kill the wannabe, another rises in his place; repeat endlessly.

Suzanne Nossel ("Democracy Arsenal", Center for American Progress/Security and Peace Initiative) shares her notes on Richard Holbrooke's glum take on Iraq at a recent conference panel:

He and our own Mort Halperin now agree that Iraq is worse than Vietnam both in its consequences and the policy challenge posed by the need to extricate. Neither thought they would ever say that about any foreign policy quandary. It's astonishing that with 1000 days left Bush is already saying he plans to hand this to his successor - its a guaranteed 2000+ more casualties. Plus our international standing will only continue to wane.

Administration's dilemma is whether to draw down troops for political reasons or increase troops for strategic reasons. Says Haditha reflects a climate of permissiveness throughout the power structure - the marines there don't know the name Alberto Gonzalez but got the message.

Holbrooke regretted his qualified support before the war, and said Al Gore's 2002 speech in San Francisco was prescient and well worth a re-read. Nossel also says that the most "rousing defense of American exceptionalism to be sounded" was made by ... former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. More as a statement of fact than as a hip-hip-hooray, of course, but still.

The Talking Dog interviews former Guantanamo "Tipton Three" detainee Shafiq Rasul by e-mail. Rasul concludes:

People have to understand that when we say that these people have no rights that we mean that they do not have any rights at all, they are being treated much, much worse than if they had actually been convicted of a crime. They have now been incarcerated for four and half years in Guantanamo with no form of justice. They are in constant fear, worry and despair. For some reason the American Government thinks that these people have no values and are not human, and that this situation that they are in is not enough punishment for them. We in the west believe in democracy and in justice, so I believe it is about time that these people got some form of justice.

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NOTES: Nossel via Kevin Drum, who concludes, "If we leave now, full-blown civil war seems inevitable, but if we stay, full-blown civil war also seems inevitable — except with the U.S. Army stuck in the middle. And that's long been my biggest worry." Shafiq Rasul is the subject of an upcoming movie, "The Road to Guantanamo."
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:08:00 PM -- |    

 
U.S. officer: Guantanamo commissions are "show trials"
Reporting for the BBC, Adam Brookes interviews Major Tom Fleener, assigned to defend Guantanamo detainee Ali Hamza Ahmed Suleiman Al Bahlul on charges of conspiracy.* From the report (transcription my own):

BROOKES: How far do you feel that these commissions afford internationally recognized standards of justice?
MAJOR FLEENER: None. Zero. There will be no fair trial. These will not be legitimate. These will be show trials.
BROOKES: Show trials!
MAJOR FLEENER: Correct.
BROOKES: That's a very strong term. Show trials in the U.S.?
MAJOR FLEENER: Yeah. They're show trials in the United States.

The report outlines the basic disturbing features of the military commission system: the defendant does not have access to all the evidence against him, the trial can be held in secret, no independent appeal -- and how little point there is to the whole farce anyway:

MAJOR FLEENER: If Mr. Al Bahlul is convicted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If he's acquitted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If the system is disbanded, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. So there is no reason whatsoever to have these trials, and America and the international community shouldn't stand for it. I don't know how we got here, but I know we shouldn't be here.

But the process is barreling forward despite these broad concerns -- and more specific ones as well. In January, DefenseLINK News reported Fleener's concerns that he cannot adequately represent a client who would prefer to represent himself, and who will not even meet with him:

Fleener explained today that this places him in an ethical dilemma because he cannot mount a capable defense if Bahlul will not cooperate. He also has concerns about the ethical ramifications of forcing representation on a client who has asked to represent himself. He said the right to self-representation is recognized in all levels of U.S. and international law.

"To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him," Fleener said. "Put another way, to force my representation on Mr. al Bahlul may give the appearance to the outside world that I am here not to serve as Mr. al Bahlul's attorney, rather simply to add some air of legitimacy to an otherwise wholly illegitimate process."

Commission proceedings indicate Fleener was nevertheless "directed" by the chair of the "Ethics and Practices Guidelines Committee" of the Iowa Bar Association to obey Commission orders and accept appointment as Bahlul's counsel. The reasoning, as I understood it, simply invoked Fleener's duty to do so as an officer of a military court, accepted commission rules prohibiting self-representation, and took for granted the legitimacy of the whole process. "Rules are rules" law in all its glory.


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* Bahlul allegedly functioned as a bodyguard and aide to Osama Bin Laden, but is not charged with direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Charges against Al Bahlul and related commission transcripts, exhibits, and allied papers, can be found at the Department of Defense military commissions web site, along with similar materials for the other nine detainees charged so far. The Iowa Bar Association opinion can be found as an attachment, on page 137, of the March 1-2, 2006 commission proceedings.

EDIT, 6/13: link to BBC report fixed, minor rewrites. posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Technical note
There have been some technical difficulties for IE 6.x users
... at least with recent posts for some of us. Everything seems to work OK with Firefox, which is why I've been slow to notice the problem.

I'm getting a gray screen with just the number of comments for the top post when I use Internet Explorer 6.x on the blog home page, and for most of the most recent weekly archive files. But the oldest weekly archive files works OK with Internet Explorer 6.x. Compare:

• Archive for the week of May 14, 2006: works in IE 6.x, but
• Archive for the week of May 21, 2006: doesn’t.

One thing I'm seeing is that Blogger.com has been fiddling with the effect of the [$ BlogMetaData $] tag lately, but that doesn't seem to have a consistent effect on the problem, so I guess that's a dead end.

If anybody has a suggestion what to do, I'd appreciate it.



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UPDATE, 6/14: republishing the whole site, archives and all, may have has "fixed" the problem for the home page -- although I'm not sure what effect a comment will have. But the 5/21 archive file still doesn't work. !?
UPDATE, EDIT, 6/15: old title moved to text, changed from "Help:" to "There have been some" and replaced with "Technical note," in case Atom/RSS subscribers read the old title and thought the main problem is still not fixed. Also (ahem) "May" for "April." For those who care (hi WWW!) it seems like the problem with the 5/21/06 archive file is located in the uppermost (chronologically last) two posts for that week.
UPDATE, 6/21: Problems continue. The front page and at least one other archive page don't work for IE6.0 users. For the current front page, the comment threads in the "All Right..." and "You're Not..." posts appear to be the cause in some fashion -- surgically remove them from a copy of the page, and the result works. I've posted a description of the problem to the Haloscan user forum.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:39:00 PM -- |    

 
Terrorist body count watch
Pablo Shounin ("digitalwarfighter") has a hobby: he likes to go through CENTCOM's press releases now and then to see what they think is going on in Iraq. CENTCOM, of course, is "Central Command," the branch of the Department of Defense responsible for planning and conducting U.S. military activity in the part of the world including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last time around he discovered that CENTCOM releases had been describing all Iraqis killed in Iraq since February 2005 as "terrorists." Things are a little different now -- but no less perplexing:

Having tallied the numbers from April-June, I noticed that CENTCOM’s policy has changed yet again, as they’ve started to use their former terms for the groups operating in Iraq, though instead of identifying specific types of forces, their Public Affairs now uses the terms interchangeably. Though I’m fairly fluent in Bullshit, I can’t make heads or tails of the press releases now. A headline will refer to “Nine Insurgents Killed”, but the article will say nine terrorists were killed (or vice versa). In fact, one author got creative and coined a new term, referring to a detainee as a “terrorist insurgent”.

The post comes with a chart of monthly "terrorist killed" totals, sourced from CENTCOM press releases from February 2005 through May 2006.

Now the good people on CENTCOM's public relations staff may not even be so-called "fobbits"* (military personnel in Iraq who never venture off the "forward operating bases" or FOBs), but may instead be typing away in the safety and comfort of Tampa, Florida. So it's hard to say how meticulous and reality-based these releases and distinctions are. Still, we can assume this is CENTCOM's and the Pentagon's very best shot at telling Americans what they'd like to say -- and the results sound confusing.

Maybe, then, this dovetails with the "Too Late for Haditha" item below, where I suggested "the failure to understand the kind of conflict we were fighting might be a fundamental cause of the shame of Haditha." To put the best face on things, maybe this is merely also a failure by the PR department to communicate the kind of conflict we're fighting.

But it might also reflect a wider disagreement within the military about what to think, what to say, and what to do about Iraq. If you're not sure what your goals are, what measures do you use to see if you're making progress? If you can't even say what you're measuring, how do you know what progress you're making?


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* Term used in George Packer's New Yorker article, "The lesson of Tal Afar." posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:47:00 PM -- |    

 
Slow but steady improvement
U.S. Loses to Czech Republic, 3-0 (New York Times):

When the Americans returned to the World Cup in 1990 after a 40-year absence, they were embarrassed 5-1 by Czechoslovakia in their opener. Ever since December's draw, they said this game was an opportunity to show how much they've improved.

Lost by 4 in 1990, lost by 3 today... let's see... we're on track for a one goal World Cup victory against them 64 years from now.

I kid because I love. Go, USA! Next up, unfortunately: perennial contender Italy on Saturday. On the other hand, it could practically be a home game for the U.S. team. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:15:00 PM -- |    

 
No fair - they're making us look bad
CNN -- Admiral: Gitmo suicides a 'planned event'. Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo:

'They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own,' Harris said. 'I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.'

The three suicides were described as dangerous by Harris. But as The Talking Dog points out, we don't know who they are or what they did, adding, of the supposed Al Qaeda member:

There's certainly a 98% chance he wasn't charged with anything, seeing as only 10 out of the nearly 500 detainees there have been charged.

There may have been nothing to charge them with. A study by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux (a lawyer for two Guantanamo inmates) used U.S. government documents about the detainees to provide the first public glimpse of the fairly underwhelming threat they represent:

1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed “fighters for;” 30% considered “members of;” a large majority – 60% -- are detained merely because they are “associated with” a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.

4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody.

This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.*

The report provides a picture and translation of a leaflet distributed in Afghanistan advertising bounties for Al Qaeda or Taliban suspects that would make an Afghan wealthy for life (see figure on right).

Obviously, there's little incentive for an unscrupulous Afghan to get it right. At the time, I might have thought "fine; we'll sort out later who belongs and who doesn't." But it's been five years, and there's been no serious, systematic effort to do that. Charge these people with something if there's something to charge them with, and put them on real, fair trial -- or shut this place down.

Another CNN report notes that "Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told CNN that the United States and its allies are "fighting for the rule of law" against terrorism. Maybe he is, but our government is way beyond quaint ideas like that.


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* Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data. Mark Denbeaux, Joshua Denbeaux, David Gratz, John Gregorek, Matthew Darby, Shana Edwards, Shane Hartman, Daniel Mann and Helen Skinner. (Acrobat file, ca. 500KB)
NOTES: Denbeaux et al via Charlie Stross via Avedon Carol this weekend, and Gary Farber at some earlier time, I believe; Talking Dog via eRobin ("fact-esque").

UPDATE, 6/12: In the first comment, Nell Lancaster forwards the information that the three men were Ali Abdullah Ahmed from Yemen, and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani from Saudi Arabia. In an update to the post cited above, The Talking Dog notes that neither of the Saudis, at least, are on the DoD list of prisoners charged with crimes; if the Yemeni's name is correctly reported, neither is he. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |