By Debra Sweet
About 100 people joined the march to protest the wars at the gates of West Point Saturday, while President Obama was giving the commencement address to officers about to lead the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and by the time, they’re in the field, who knows where else?
To the officers graduating Saturday, Obama said, "This war has changed over the last nine years, but it’s no less important than it was in those days after 9/11. We toppled the Taliban regime — now we must break the momentum of a Taliban insurgency and train Afghan security forces. We have supported the election of a sovereign government — now we must strengthen its capacities.
"We’ve brought hope to the Afghan people — now we must see that their country does not fall prey to our common enemies. Cadets, there will be difficult days ahead. We will adapt, we will persist, and I have no doubt that together with our Afghan and international partners, we will succeed in Afghanistan."
I contest every one of those statements, addressed as much to the world and the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq as to the graduating officers. See this youtube report from Channel 4 News in the UK: U.S. Trains, Backs Afghan Death Squads.
Bagram is the New Guantanamo….Except It’s Worse. US Court Rules NO Habeas Rights
I can’t say it better than Ken Theisen and Glen Greenwald said it after Friday’s US Court of Appeals ruling that men detained by the U.S. in Bagram — no matter where they were picked up from — have no right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.
Ken Theisen runs down the history and implications of the decision. The End of Habeas Corpus: This is "Justice" in Obama’s America.
Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, who argued the plaintiff’s case, and has traveled the world to find their familes, said that if the precedent set by Obama stands, "Obama and future presidents would have a free hand to ‘kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives’ without having to prove in court that their suspicions about such prisoners were accurate.
‘The thing that is most disappointing for those of us who have been in the fight for this long is all of the people who used to be opposed to the idea of unlimited executive power during the Bush administration but now seem to have embraced it during this administration,’ she said. ‘We have to remember that Obama is not the last president of the United States.’"
Glen Greenwald: "This is what Barack Obama has done to the habeas clause of the Constitution: if you are in Thailand (as one of the petitioners in this case was) and the U.S. abducts you and flies you to Guantanamo, then you have the right to have a federal court determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold you. If, however, President Obama orders that you be taken to from Thailand to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then you will have no rights of any kind, and he can order you detained there indefinitely without any right to a habeas review. That type of change is so very inspiring — almost an exact replica of his vow to close Guantanamo . . . all in order to move its core attributes (including indefinite detention) a few thousand miles North to Thompson, Illinois…"
Where is the end to this?