Another Reason "Gitmo" Must Go

The Guardian had no trouble finding witnesses that the US Military said they could not find. Why am I not surprised?

The US government said it could not find the men that Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Mujahid believes could help set him free. The Guardian found them in three days.

Two years ago the US military invited Mr Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the United States, to prove his innocence before a special military tribunal. As was his right, Mr Mujahid called four witnesses from Afghanistan.

But months later the tribunal president returned with bad news: the witnesses could not be found. Mr Mujahid's hopes sank and he was returned to the wire-mesh cell where he remains today.

The Guardian searched for Mr Mujahid's witnesses and found them within three days. One was working for President Hamid Karzai. Another was teaching at a leading American college. The third was living in Kabul. The fourth, it turned out, was dead. Each witness said he had never been approached by the Americans to testify in Mr Mujahid's hearing.

What Would The Founders Do?

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that the Founders prized freedom of the press:

Bush supporters want nothing less than to re-visit the Founders' resolution and reverse it. They want to replace the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin with regard to press freedoms with the superior judgment of Dick Cheney, Congressman Peter King and Michelle Malkin, who want to imprison reporters for what they publish. They simply don't believe in the same principles that the Founders embraced and enshrined for our country. These observations from Jefferson simply leave no doubt about that:

Jefferson warned:


'Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.'


And in the debate over whether to favor excessive disclosure or excessive government secrecy, Jefferson left little doubt as to how that conflict was resolved by the Founders: in choosing 'government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.'

Not Yet Ready To Embrace Science

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From Firedoglake:

On this day in 1633, Galileo Galilei was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his endorsement of Nicolaus Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolves around the sun. He was threatened with torture and sentenced to life in prison, finally ending up with a life sentence of house arrest after promising never to mention his ideas ever again.

How far we have come. Today, nobody gets tortured and the people in power embrace science… just not in America.

Public Secrets

Robert Kaiser explains why secrecy is not security in yesterday's Washington Post:

Secrecy and security are not the same. On this point, Exhibit A for journalists here at The Post is the 1971 Pentagon Papers case. The Pentagon Papers were a top-secret history of the Vietnam War written inside the Pentagon and leaked to the New York Times and then The Post. Top-secret means a document is so sensitive that its revelation could cause "exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The Nixon administration was in power, and it went to court to block publication on grounds that revealing this history would endanger the nation. A court in New York enjoined the two papers from publishing the information for several days.

But the Supreme Court decided, 6 to 3, that the government had failed to make a case that overrode the constitutional bias in favor of publication. The man who argued the case was Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold. Eighteen years later, Griswold wrote a confession for the op-ed page of this newspaper: "I have never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication [of the Papers]. Indeed, I have never seen it even suggested that there was such an actual threat."

snip

For the Founders, the issue was freedom and how best to secure it. Addressing that point in his Pentagon Papers opinion, Justice Hugo Black captured the spirit that animates my profession in just two sentences:

'The government's power to censor the press was abolished [by the First Amendment] so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.'

Rorschach News Test

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Tom Tomorrow

RFK: Died June 6, 1968, Age 42

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In June of 1968 I was a Freshman at Dartmouth College studying for final exams. I was a big fan of Bobby Kennedy. I stayed up until the reports finally came in that RFK had won the California primary. I turned the radio off before he was shot in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

At his mememorial service, he brother Teddy said

My brother need not be idolized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Baghdad Morgue Reports Record Figures for May - Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times reports

Baghdad Morgue Reports Record Figures for May
Nearly 1,400 bodies were brought to the facility, the highest number since the war began.

By Louise Roug, Times Staff Writer
June 4, 2006

BAGHDAD — New Iraqi government documents show that, excluding the nearly daily bombings, more Baghdad residents died in shootings, stabbings and other violence in May than in any other month since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The numbers, and accounts from residents, depict neighborhoods descending further into violence and fear.
Last month, 1,398 bodies were brought to the central morgue, according to Ministry of Health statistics, 307 more than in April. The count doesn't include soldiers or civilian victims of explosions, on whom autopsies are not usually conducted.

Since 2003, at least 30,240 bodies have been brought to the morgue, the vast majority of them victims of gunmen who are not caught. Bodies often lie in the streets for hours.

In response, many Iraqis are closing their shops, drawing their blinds and staying home, turning once-vibrant neighborhoods into ghost towns.

One month ago the Times reported:

Targeted Killings Surge in Baghdad
Nearly 4,000 civilian deaths, many of them Sunni Arabs slain execution-style, were recorded in the first three months of the year.

By Louise Roug, Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2006

BAGHDAD — More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime — at least 3,800, many of them found hogtied and shot execution-style.

Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.

Every day, about 40 bodies arrive at the central Baghdad morgue, an official said. The numbers demonstrate a shift in the nature of the violence, which increasingly has targeted both sides of the country's SunniShiite sectarian divide.

In the previous three years, the killings were more random, impersonal. Violence came mostly in the form of bombs wielded by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency that primarily targeted the coalition forces and the Shiite majority: balls of fire and shrapnel tearing through the bodies of those riding the wrong bus, shopping at the wrong market or standing in the wrong line.

Now the killings are systematic, personal. Masked gunmen storm into homes, and the victims — the majority of them Sunnis — are never again seen alive.

The Job Creation Pattern

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The Economic Policy institute reports:

For the second month in a row, the nation's employers added fewer workers than expected, according to today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Payrolls were up 75,000 in May, while analysts expected gains of around 175,000. As the figure below shows, employment growth has slowed consistently since February.

Ignoring months affected by the Gulf Coast hurricanes, May's gain is the smallest since July of 2004. Prior to the recent deceleration, payrolls were on a trend of about 200,000 jobs per month. Thus far this year, the average monthly addition is just below 150,000, generally considered an adequate level of job growth in that it is strong enough to prevent the unemployment rate from rising (unemployment ticked down insignificantly in May, from 4.7% to 4.6%).

However, the clear deceleration in job growth, in tandem with other weak indicators in today's report (both average weekly hours and total hours over the whole economy fell in May), point towards a possible downward shift in net job creation.

We Will, In Fact, Be Welcomed As Liberators

Iman Walid
ITV News

Read Iman Walid's heartbreaking story when 7 members of her family were killed by US Marines in Haditha. Then watch the video.

The opening words say it all:

"I hate the Americans. The whole world hates them for what they have done here."

Regardless of what actually happened in Haditha, it is hard to contest that for this Iraqi girl, America will always be the enemy. Contrast this with what Dick Cheney said on that March 16, 2003:

"my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."