The Heroes at Guantanamo by Jacob G. Hornberger April 30, 2008 Just as Eastern European and Russian dissidents who opposed the Soviet Empire’s tyrannical system are today celebrated as heroes, so it will be with those Americans who have opposed the Pentagon’s system at Guantanamo Bay. Among the heroes will be Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who formerly served as the Defense Department’s chief prosecutor for ...
A Presumption of Guilt at Guantanamo by Jacob G. Hornberger April 28, 2008 One of the principle differences between the Pentagon’s military-tribunal system and the U.S. federal-court system for prosecuting accused terrorists involves the presumption of innocence. In the federal-court system, the accused is presumed innocent while in the Pentagon’s system, the accused is presumed guilty and treated accordingly. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reflects ...
False Altruism for Muslims and Jews by Jacob G. Hornberger April 25, 2008 Ever since invading U.S. troops failed to find those infamous WMDs that Saddam was supposedly about to unleash on the United States, U.S. officials have claimed that their primary objective in invading and occupying Iraq, a predominantly Muslim country, has been an altruistic one: They did it out of love and concern for the Iraqi people, nobly sacrificing more ...
Kangaroo Tribunals versus Trial by Jury by Jacob G. Hornberger April 24, 2008 Ever since 9/11 the U.S. government has maintained a criminal-justice system that enables it to treat suspected terrorists in two alternative ways: as criminal defendants in federal district court or as unlawful enemy combatants in the Pentagon’s military system. It would be difficult to find a better example of denial of equal protection and a violation of the rule ...
Censorship as Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger April 23, 2008 Conservatives are reigning supreme in Afghanistan and the United States, especially in their advancement of censorship. In Afghanistan, a country whose regime was installed thanks to the U.S. invasion of that country several years ago, the minister for information and culture, Abdul Karim Khurram, an Afghan conservative, has ordered television networks to stop broadcasting five ...
Will the CIA Kill or Oust Ecuador’s President? by Jacob G. Hornberger April 22, 2008 Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa may not be long for this world, both in a political sense and in genuine life-or-death sense. He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and joint chiefs. Why might those firings cost Correa his job or even his life? Because the reason he fired them was ...
The Monstrous Cancer of the Military-Industrial Complex by Jacob G. Hornberger April 21, 2008 A front-page article in yesterday’s New York Times reminds us of the ominous 1961 warning of President Dwight Eisenhower, a warning that unfortunately the American people decided to ignore. Eisenhower wrote: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even ...
Apply the Free Market to Drugs and Immigration by Jacob G. Hornberger April 18, 2008 While recently appearing as a guest on a radio talk show on the subject of immigration, a listener called to say, “We already have open borders in this country, as evidenced by the 13 million illegal aliens living here in the United States.” What he’s referring to, of course, is the black market, not legally functioning ...
Pope Benedict on Bush’s War on Iraq by Jacob G. Hornberger April 17, 2008 Unfortunately, during his private meeting with President Bush yesterday, it doesn’t seem that Pope Benedict repeated the sentiments on the president’s war on Iraq that he expressed prior to the president’s invasion of Iraq five years ago. According to an article in the Houston Catholic Worker, prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Benedict ...
Trying CIA Kidnappers and Torturers in Absentia by Jacob G. Hornberger April 16, 2008 Twenty-six CIA agents are scheduled to go on trial today for kidnapping. Unfortunately, all of them will be tried in absentia because the Bush administration, which has long claimed to be against torture, refuses to send the accused kidnappers to Italy, where the prosecution is taking place. The Italian indictment alleges that in June 2005 the ...
The Wars on Drugs, Terrorism, and Immigrants by Jacob G. Hornberger April 15, 2008 Ironically, the war on drugs has some interesting parallels with the war on terrorism and sometimes integrates with the war on immigrants. Recently, Norberto Ramirez, a 44-year-old Mexican father of five in the isolated village of Nocupetaro, Mexico, was kidnapped and brutally tortured by Mexican soldiers. The reason? Drug lords recently ambushed a Mexican army unit whose mission was to ...
Iran as the New Official Enemy in Iraq by Jacob G. Hornberger April 14, 2008 Uh, oh! It seems as though U.S. official are preparing the mindsets of the American people to accept a new official enemy in Iraq — Iran. You’ll recall that when the U.S. government invaded Iraq five years ago, the official enemy was Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials did everything they could to mold the mindsets of the American ...
