He claimed a pocket veto, while technically Bush vetoed the bill under the Constitution. In the president’s Memorandum of Disapproval, he gave one main reason: his objection to Section 1083 of the legislation.

Call me crazy (or just plain realistic), but I’m reluctant to take our dear president’s word as to his actual motive(s) for such a strange method of vetoing the bill.

There just might be more to it.  Read more 

There’s a lot of verbiage in this story from AP on Bush maybe closing Gitmo, but the nut graf is buried 24 down:

[Bush’s] wife, Laura, and mother, Barbara, along with Rice and longtime adviser Karen Hughes, head of the public diplomacy office at the State Department, have told him that Guantanamo is a blot on the U.S. record abroad, particularly in the Muslim world and among European allies.

And so:  Read more 

YABL used to be one of our favorite acronyms here. “Yet Another Bush Lie!” our headlines would proclaim again and again until, really, it became redundant. “Bush Opens Mouth” we might as well have said. But this particular topic seemed to call for a YABL revival as it is particularly blatant.

For graphic starters, take a look at this lovely Map of Routes of CIA Torture Transports. A larger version can be found here at Le Monde, and even non-Francophiles will have no trouble understanding the breakdown of which flights were by the big C-130 and which by the little Gulfstream. It’s nice to have various vehicles handy for different uses, don’t you think?

But the particular lie in question comes from this story which only a couple of papers appear to have picked up. Those who watched the recent PBS/Bill Moyers story about Pressure on the Press will understand why.

The announcement that Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility from CIA custody raises worrying questions about how long he has been detained by the CIA, where he was held, what kind of treatment he endured, and whether other prisoners still remain in CIA detention. The CIA has previously detained numerous detainees for months and even years. [snip]

Now here comes the lie:

On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush publicly revealed the existence of the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program. Although he stated that, as of that moment, there were no prisoners in CIA custody, he did not promise that the program was closing permanently.

Horseshit. He knew it wasn’t closed even as he was speaking. But to continue…  Read more 

When is an enemy combatant not an enemy combatant? Quite frequently, apparently.

The Pentagon called them “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth,” sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for “continued detention.”

And then set free.  Read more 

Joy.

The Pentagon plans to build a military commissions compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, costing up to $125 million, a major undertaking meant to accommodate up to 1,200 people for the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II, The Miami Herald learned Thursday.

If funded by Congress, the compound would be the largest single construction expenditure at Guantánamo since the Bush administration set up the offshore detention center in January 2002.  Read more 

This won’t surprise you at all:

By Carol Rosenberg
NEWARK, N.J. - The Navy lawyer who took the Guantanamo case of Osama bin Laden’s driver to the U.S. Supreme Court - and won - has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word that he had been denied a promotion to full-blown Navy commander this summer - “about two weeks after” the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.  Read more 

the 3rd post in a series

On Monday, the kewl kids at ABC’s The Note affixed a remarkable headline to its daily snarkfest of political news and views:

“The Party of National Insecurity”

What made it remarkable - the party in question wasn’t the Democratic Party.  Read more 

The 2nd in a series.

Well, well.

Just off the wires; (do they still have wires?)

As reported in the NY Times:

In Big Shift, U.S. to Follow Geneva Treaty for Detainees

In a sweeping change of policy, the Pentagon has decided that it will treat all detainees in compliance with the minimum standards spelled out in the Geneva conventions, a senior defense official said today.

The new policy comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling last month invalidating a system of military tribunals the Pentagon had created to try suspected terrorists, and just before Congress takes up the question of a replacement system in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today.

As part of its decision, the court found that a key provision of the Geneva conventions, known as Common Article 3, did apply to terror suspects, contradicting the position taken by the Bush administration.

The Pentagon memo allowing detainees the protections of Article 3 was first reported today by The Financial Times.

Mighty interesting. But please, don’t even begin to think this battle is won.  Read more 

If you listen to the SCLM you’ll hear again and again that “Hamdan” is a political problem for the Democrats, and only an operational, policy problem for Republicans.

We demand to differ.

This is the first in a series of posts in which we will explore Republican vulnerabilities and Democratic opportunities.

We take the following truths—at a minimum—to be reasonably evident:  Read more 

The big story for Fox News, this Sunday, was the perfidy of the New York Times.

The SCOTUS decision on the Guantanamo detainees wasn’t so much treated as an after-thought than as part of the same subject - why are these people, liberals, the far left, Democrats, of whom the New York Times is the perfect embodiment, so determined to thwart all Bush administration efforts in the “War on Terror,” which are only meant to protect Americans from the evil ones.  Read more 

By “we,” I mean all those Americans who still believe that our constitution is a source of our greatest strength.

The Hamdan decision is in. Nothing ambiguous about this ruling; here’s how the Wa Po’s lede describes it:

The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.”

Just a note; not a lawyer, but I think the violation of the Geneva Conventions, being an international treaty agree to by an action of congress, is also a violation of our laws.

It was a bare majority; Justice Kennedy joined the Stevens-written majority decision. Roberts recused himself, since he had ruled in the same case, as an Appellate Judge, in the government’s favor. Yeah, that’s our new Chief Justice.

What Americans don’t believe the constitution is our greatest protection from tyranny?

The ones who think it’s our greatest weakness.

Not a majority of Americans, but a significant, if small minority, that includes this Republican congress, the entire Bush administration, most of the rest of the Republican party, Joe Lieberman, and all of the right-wing blogosphere.

You think I exaggerate? Let’s look at some of the reactions on the right.  Read more 

Remember when that document was considered our greatest strength?

What have our prisoners at Guantanamo learned about American mores?

Do you ever wonder?

How about…If at first you don’t succeed….?  Read more