Guilty As Ordered

Editorial
New York Times
August 7, 2008

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.

The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism.

The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Mr. Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

The charge on which Mr. Hamdan was convicted seemed logical since he did work as Mr. bin Laden’s driver. But it was still an odd prosecution. Drivers of even the most heinous people are generally not charged with war crimes.

It is impossible, in any case, to judge the evidence against Mr. Hamdan because of the deeply flawed nature of this trial — the blueprint for which was the Military Commissions Act of 2006, one of the worst bits of lawmaking in American history.

At these trials, hearsay and secret documents are admissible. Mr. Hamdan’s defense was actually required to began its case in a secret session. The witness was a camp psychologist, presumably called to back Mr. Hamdan’s account of being abused by his interrogators.

Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in Guantánamo, put the trial in a disturbing light. He testified that he was informed by his superiors that only guilty verdicts would be tolerated. He also said that he was told to bring high-profile cases quickly to help Republicans score a pre-election public relations coup.

Colonel Davis gave up his position on Oct. 4, 2007. That, he wrote in The Los Angeles Times in December, was “the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system.”

In his article, Colonel Davis described a highly politicized system in which people who were supposed to be neutral decision-makers were allied with the prosecutors. According to Colonel Davis, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pushed out a fair-minded “convening authority” — the official who decides which cases go to trial, which charges will be heard and who serves on the jury.

That straight-shooting administrator was replaced by Susan Crawford who, Colonel Davis said, assessed evidence before charges were filed, directed the prosecution’s preparation and even drafted charges. This “intermingling” of “convening authority and prosecutor roles,” Colonel Davis argued, “perpetuates the perception of a rigged process.”

Colonel Davis said the final straw for him was when he was placed under the command of William J. Haynes, the Defense Department’s general counsel. Colonel Davis had instructed prosecutors not to offer evidence obtained through the torture technique known as waterboarding. Mr. Haynes helped draft the orders permitting acts, like waterboarding, that violate American laws and the Geneva Conventions.

We are not arguing that the United States should condone terrorism or those who support it, or that the guilty should not be punished severely. But in a democracy, trials must be governed by fair rules, and judges must be gui= ded by the law and the evidence, not pressure from the government. The military commission system, which falls far short of these standards, is a stain on the United States.

Crusaders sue the Pope

Telegraph, London
August 5, 2008

MADRID: The heirs of the Knights Templar have launched a legal battle in Spain against the Pope to salvage the reputation of the order accused of heresy and dissolved 701 years ago.

Members of the Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ claim that when the order was dissolved by Clement V in 1307 more than 9000 properties and commercial ventures belonging to the knights (worth $168 billion) were appropriated by the church.

"We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our order," the self-proclaimed modern-day knights said in a statement.

The Templars were a secretive group of warrior monks founded after the First Crusade of 1099 to protect pilgrims en route to Jerusalem.

They spectacularly fell from grace after the Muslims reconquered the Holy Land in 1244 and rumours surfaced of their heretic practices: denying Jesus, worshipping icons of the devil in secret ceremonies and practising sodomy. Many Templars confessed under torture and some were burned at the stake.

Last October the Vatican released copies of trial records, one of which showed Clement V had declared the Templars were not heretics but disbanded the order to keep peace with their accuser, Philip IV of France.

When Extremists Attack

Time Magazine Blog
Posted by Joe Klein
July 29, 2008 4:58

I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and a whole bunch of other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003. Their motivations involve a confused conflation of what they think are Israel's best interests with those of the United States. They are now leading the charge for war with Iran.

Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country. Unhappily, their views have had an impact in the highest reaches of the Bush Administration--and seem to have an influence on John McCain's campaign as well. Happily, the Bush Administration seems more interested in talking to the Iranians than in launching on them--and, according to my Israeli friends, the Israelis are not going to do anything foolish, either. I remain proud of my Jewish heritage, a strong supporter of Israel and a realist about the slim chance of finding some common ground with the Iranians. But I am not willing to grant these ideologues the anonymity they seek.

In early 2003, during my first weeks as a Time Magazine columnist, I wrote a handful of skeptical columns about the coming war in Iraq, including this one about Israel's security as a hidden casus belli. Then, with the troops in place and the war about to begin, I said something stupid on Tim Russert's cable TV show--reluctantly saying ok, we should proceed with the attack. It was the only statement I made in favor of the war and I quickly came to my senses--but that's no excuse. We have lost more than 4000 Americans, tens of thousands have come home grievously injured, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and wounded, and we are weaker, palpably and morally, as a result.

I am not going to make the same mistake twice. I don't think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn't very important in the grand scheme of things, but I'm going to do my job--and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America's long-term interests and because they believe Israel's existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I'm not going to be intimidated by them.