War on Terrorism

FFF/YAL Civil Liberties College Tour: War on Terrorism, Civil Liberties, and the Constitution (videos)

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 17, 2012

In the second week of February 2012, the Future of Freedom Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty cosponsored a panel entitled "The War on Terrorism, the Constitution, and Civil Liberties" that included Bruce Fein, Glenn Greenwald, and FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger. The panel visited Columbia University in New York, Indiana University/Purdue University in Indianapolis, Middle Tennessee State University ...

Bushs Torture Program Began Ten Years Ago

by Andy Worthington February 13, 2012

Last month was the 10th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and as this year progresses it is appropriate to remember that there will be other grim 10-year anniversaries to note. This week, one of those 10-year anniversaries passed almost unnoticed. On February 7, 2002, as Andrew Cohen noted in the Atlantic, in the ...

TSA — Tenth Anniversary of a National Nightmare

by James Bovard February 8, 2012

Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush promised Americans, “We will not surrender our freedom to travel.” In hindsight, he may have been referring to himself and other high-ranking government officials. Because for all other Americans, airline travel has become more arduous and more perilous in the past ten years. The Bush administration and Congress responded ...

Fear, Inc.

by Matthew Harwood February 1, 2012

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State by Dana Priest and William Arkin (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011); 320 pages. All Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others. Since the attacks of September 11, a new, powerful class of people has swarmed into the nation’s capital and its surrounding suburbs. Armed ...

The Real Reason Guantánamo Should Be Closed

by Laurence M. Vance January 31, 2012

It has been ten years now since the first “terrorists” arrived at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Of the 779 people who have been detained at Guantánamo over the years, 171 still remain. Of those 171 prisoners, 46 are “indefinite detainees” who will neither be charged nor released, 89 are eligible for release or transfer ...

Obama Considers Repatriating Foreign Prisoners from Bagram

by Andy Worthington January 30, 2012

Ten years ago, foreign prisoners, seized in other countries, began to arrive in the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Some were held in a secretive part of the prison and had often passed through other secret facilities in Afghanistan or elsewhere. The majority of those prisoners ended up in Guantánamo, but some were stealthily repatriated ...

The Permanent Injustice of Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington January 12, 2012

When the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, opened on January 11, 2002, as part of the Bush administration’s global “war on terror,” in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was not immediately apparent that it was a dangerous aberration from recognized laws and treaties that would tarnish America’s name for years to come. There had been ...

A Tired Obsession with Military Detention Plagues American Politics

by Andy Worthington January 7, 2012

Before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there were only two ways of holding prisoners — either they were prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, or they were criminal suspects, to be charged and subjected to federal court trials. That all changed when the administration of George W. Bush threw out the Geneva Conventions, equated the Taliban with ...

Formalizing Tyranny

by Tim Kelly December 30, 2011

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) contains provisions that give the president power to use the military to arrest anyone including U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely without charges or trial, anywhere in the world. The provisions shred due process of law and habeas corpus, and they effectively repeal the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use ...

Conditions at Guantánamo Under Scrutiny

by Andy Worthington December 16, 2011

Last week, the Associated Press reported that officials at Guantánamo, stung by lawyers criticism of conditions in a disciplinary block known as Five Echo, had fought back against claims that the cells are too small to be regarded as humane and that the toilets are inadequate, the lights are too bright, and the air in the cells ...

Freedom Watch (Fox Business Channel): The U.S.’s March Toward Totalitarianism? (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2011

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

As Judges Kill Off Habeas Corpus for the Guantánamo Prisoners, Will the Supreme Court Act?

by Andy Worthington November 28, 2011

When it comes to Guantánamo, the prisoners held in the Bush administrations experimental prison have mostly been abandoned by those who should have acted on their behalf in all three branches of government the executive branch, Congress, and the judiciary. In June 2004, for a brief moment, George W. Bush's excesses were checked by the Supreme Court, which took the ...