War on Terrorism

Creating a Military State

by Andy Worthington July 19, 2011

“Some issues,” the New York Times declared in an editorial on June 25, “require an unwavering stand. Preserving the role of law enforcement agencies in stopping and punishing terrorists is one of them. This country is not and should never be a place where the military dispenses justice, other than to its own.” Fine words, indeed, although the ...

Understanding the U.S. Torture State

by Anthony Gregory July 15, 2011

The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by Marjorie Cohn (New York University Press: 2011), 342 pages. When I was a child in Reagan’s America, a common theme in Cold War rhetoric was that the Soviets tortured people and detained them without cause, extracted phony confessions through cruel violence, did the unspeakable to detainees who were helpless ...

Coming Soon to an Airport Near You

by Wendy McElroy July 6, 2011

If you fly within the United States in the future, keep your expression neutral, do not blink too much or too little, and do not sweat. Carefully maintain a normal respiration and heart beat as you submit to demands from Homeland Security agents. If you question or resist their demands, you could be detained as a pre-crime suspect, fined ...

America’s Sham War on Terrorism

by James Bovard June 26, 2011

Almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks, the war on terrorism continues chugging along. Despite the trillions of dollars that the U.S. government has spent supposedly in response to 9/11, few people have raised questions about the fundamental definition of what the United States is fighting. The U.S. government’s definition of terrorism almost guarantees that the so-called war on ...

Judges Keep Guantánamo Open Forever

by Andy Worthington June 24, 2011

Seven years ago, on June 28, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a historically important ruling in Rasul v. Bush, recognizing that foreign nationals held at the Bush administration's “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had habeas corpus rights — that is, the right, under the “Great Writ,” whose origins stretch back even before Magna ...

WikiLeaks and the Lawyers

by Andy Worthington June 16, 2011

Justice Department Finally Allows Attorneys to See Leaked Guantánamo Files, But Not to Download, Save or Print Them. In the U.S. government’s farcical world of over-classification, four reporters were banned from Guantánamo last year for reporting the name of a witness in the trial by military commission of the Canadian citizen and former child prisoner Omar Khadr, even ...

The 22 Children of Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington June 10, 2011

In May 2008, in a submission to the 48th Session of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (PDF), the Pentagon claimed that it had only held eight juveniles — those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place — during the life of the Guantánamo Bay prison. This, however, was a ...

The 9/11 Trial Time Warp

by Andy Worthington June 3, 2011

On Tuesday, the Pentagon issued a press release announcing that prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions at Guantánamo had sworn charges against five prisoners: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid Bin Attash, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Accusing the five men of being “responsible for the planning and execution” of the 9/11 attacks, the ...

The Supreme Courts Failure to Tackle Torture, Now and Forever

by Andy Worthington May 26, 2011

Since the dying days of the Bush administration, when the Supreme Court savaged the indifference of the executive branch and of Congress towards the cruel mess they had created at Guantánamo, by recognizing that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, it has, sadly, all been downhill when it comes to judicial oversight of the national-security ...

The PATRIOT Act in the Crosshairs Again

by James Bovard May 26, 2011

The most controversial provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act are coming up for renewal this year. There is hope that Americans will finally learn more about how the feds have been prying into their lives with this law for almost a decade. Some members of Congress are fighting tooth and nail to avoid giving the Justice Department an extension ...

The Only Way Out of Guantánamo Is In a Coffin

by Andy Worthington May 20, 2011

Despite sweeping into office promising to close Guantánamo, President Obama now oversees a prison that may well stay open forever, from which the only exit route is in a coffin. The last living prisoner to be released from Guantánamo was Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who was repatriated against his will in January. Since then, an Afghan ...

After bin Laden?

by Sheldon Richman May 17, 2011

The hunt for Osama bin Laden was always a sideshow. President George W. Bush even said at one point that he wasn’t much concerned with finding him. He probably meant it. Still, bin Laden played a useful role for the U.S. foreign-policy elite: he was still out there plotting, necessitating a vigilant “war on terror.” And if he were ...