This image of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken in July 2009 under an agreement with Guantanamo prison camp staff that lets Red Cross delegates photograph detainees and send photos to family members.

The Obama administration has signaled that it is willing to allow the Justice Department to find a new venue to prosecute self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, according to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

The senator’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said Schumer spoke “with high-level members of the administration and urged them to find alternatives.”

The move comes a day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the Justice Department to change the venue of the trial. Bloomberg had been a staunch supporter of holding the trial in New York.

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg was quoted as telling reporters. “There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City”

In a statement aboard Air Force One Thursday as President Obama flew to Tampa, White House spokesman Bill Burton said the administration will not weigh in on where the trial should be held.

“Let me start by saying that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a murderous thug who has admitted to some of the most heinous crimes ever committed against our country,” Burton said. “The president is committed to seeing that he’s brought to justice. He agrees with the attorney general’s opinion in November that he and others can be litigated successfully and securing in the United States of America, just like others have, like Richard Reid. Currently our federal jails hold hundreds of convicted terrorists, and the president’s opinion has not changed on that.”

Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that the trial for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in New York City.

The decision by Holder and the Obama administration to hold the trial in New York City was met with loud opposition, which came mainly from Republicans.

The issue took on a renewed sense of urgency Thursday with legislation introduced by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) aimed at outlawing the prosecution of terrorists in federal criminal courts.

King said on his website that the choice to transfer Mohammed and four others to New York “is one of the worst decisions ever made by any president.” King’s legislation, titled “Stopping Criminal Trials for Guantanamo Terrorists Act of 2010,” would prevent Justice Department funds from being used to prosecute any person detained at Guantanamo in a criminal court in the United States or one of its territories.

Even Democrats became concerned. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) joined seven other elected officials in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that said they “are concerned that the Administration has not fully considered the impact that the trials would have on lower Manhattan.” In the letter they requested an evaluation of potential trial sites outside of Manhattan.

The decision to try Mohammed and four others in a Manhattan Federal court has been a flashpoint for argument since announced by Attorney General Eric Holder on November 13, 2009.  The decision to try Mohammed in a civilian court, as opposed to a Military Commission has been an issue or argument for weeks.

The letter to Holder from Nadler and the seven other elected officials, along with King’s bill to prevent the 9/11 trial from receiving Justice Department funds echoed Bloomberg’s newfound concern about the price tag for the trial and the potential for the trial to disrupt people and business in the city.

“It would be great if the federal government could find a site that didn’t cost a billion dollars, which using downtown will,” Bloomberg said.

Joshua Durkin is a contributor to The Public Record based in Connecticut. He can be reached at joshua.durkin@pubrecord.org

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: phunkstarr, Travelin' Librarian, Joshua Davis)

This story was originally published on Truthout.org and is being republished here under a Creative Commons license.

One week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press corps, “This isn’t Pearl Harbor.” No, it was worse.

In 1941, the United States didn’t have a director of central intelligence, 14 intelligence agencies and an overall intelligence budget of more than $50 billion to provide early warning of enemy attack. One day after a Nigerian man nearly blew an airliner out of the sky, Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the media that the system had worked. No, the system was dysfunctional.

In 2009, we had two additional intelligence agencies, a czar for national intelligence and an intelligence budget of more than $75 billion. In all three cases, there was sufficient intelligence available to prevent the attacks. In all three cases, however, our intelligence efforts were unimaginative, divided and diffuse.

A blizzard of warnings went unheeded in all three cases. The United States had broken the Japanese military code, which provided many warnings of a decision to attack the United States. In the case of 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency received warnings from foreign liaison intelligence services, including the French, German, Israeli and Russian services.

The German intelligence service warned both the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli service, in the summer of 2001 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack US targets. The Israelis issued their own warnings to the FBI and the CIA in August 2001 that al-Qaeda was planning to attack US targets. The State Department and the CIA even possessed information that al-Qaeda had decided on targeting American Airlines and United Airlines, prompting some Foreign Service officers to change travel plans.

As early as August 2009, the CIA and the National Security Agency had sensitive information on a person of interest dubbed the “Nigerian,” who was suspected of meeting with terrorist elements in Yemen. The mainstream media are treating Yemen as a new concern, but Yemen has been a problem for terrorism for the past ten years.

Adm. Tony Zinni had been warned in 2000 not to refuel ships off the Yemeni coast, but chose to ignore these warnings. The USS Cole was attacked in October 2000. A prominent Nigerian banker and former senior government official, well known to the international community, relayed suspicions about his son to the US Embassy and the CIA station in Lagos, but there was no effort to approach Yemeni officials to gather information on the banker’s son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The son was a poster child for the “no fly” list, buying his ticket with cash, checking no luggage, lying to British authorities about his student visa and spending several months in Yemen. The British denied Abdulmutallab reentry, but the US State Department didn’t even bother to check whether he had an entry visa for the United States.

In fact, he had a multiple entry visa and, since all intelligence and law enforcement agencies have access to State’s consular database listing visa holders, this fact was available throughout the community. It’s one thing to worry about due process in dealing with a US citizen; it makes no sense to wait for additional derogatory information in the case of a foreigner who has traveled to Yemen and whose father has provided a warning about his son’s extremism.

The simple fact is that the intelligence community is not a “community”; it does not share intelligence effectively and it fails to make corporate decisions. The NSA had transcripts of al-Qaeda phone conversations in 2001 and sensitive intercepts on the “Nigerian” in 2009 that it didn’t share with the CIA, the FBI or the National Security Council. The FBI accumulated intelligence on al-Qaeda that it hoped to use in a criminal case against Osama bin Laden; therefore, most of this intelligence never left the compartmented areas of FBI headquarters. The CIA withheld information on two 9/11 terrorists, presumably because it hoped to recruit these suspects as sources.

We were led to believe the intelligence situation had improved in the wake of 9/11, but in view of the traditional cultural and professional jealousies of the military and civilian intelligence agencies, we have no evidence of significant change. Various departments and agencies have their own watch lists for limiting travel of terrorist suspects, but apply their own parochial concerns to operational activities and often ignore the intelligence products of rival agencies.

The master list at the National Counter Terrorist Center is too large and unwieldy (more than 550,000 names) to be useful, and the State Department computer network lacks an automatic feedback loop that would link a suspect to a US visa. The Department of Homeland Security never should have been created and should have been abolished in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (remember “you’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie”). If we must have such a superfluous organization, then it should possess a centralized depository of terrorist suspects containing all relevant information.

The analytical capabilities of the CIA, the FBI and the DHS have not been enhanced by the creation of the intelligence czar. Moreover, it is revealing that President Barack Obama made his decision last month to increase troops in Afghanistan without requesting a National Intelligence Estimate from the so-called intelligence community. Perhaps, he understands that there are too many instances where assumptions drive facts in the intelligence process.

Former members of the 9/11 Commission are claiming that their recommendations have not been fully implemented, but it was the 9/11 Commission that helped to create the crazy-quilt intelligence organization that we now have, with too many working parts and a cumbersome bureaucracy. The Commission is responsible for the creation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a sclerotic and bloated bureaucracy that has done little to improve strategic intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is at the center of the Nigerian intelligence failure. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 demonstrated DHS is dysfunctional; the Nigerian failure teaches us that the DNI and the NCTC need reform.

The 9/11 Commission’s creation of an intelligence czar has ensured that diversity and competition in collection and analysis of intelligence will be given short shrift. Truth is elusive within the intelligence process, and there is rarely a single answer to a controversial question or problem. The best intelligence analysis often comes from contrarian thinkers, but the militarized intelligence process rewards consensus and not competition.

In the one area where we need centralization, watch lists for terrorist suspects, we have a redundancy of collections. Homeland Security keeps one list for border crossings; the State Department has a list for visas; the Transportation Security Administration has a no-fly list and a selectee list with 4,000 and 14,000 listings, respectively; and the National Counter Terrorism Center has an unwieldy database of 550,000 names. The criteria for each list differ, and it takes an interagency group to determine whether to place an individual on a specific list.

There is at least one thing we have to be thankful for. In view of the failed efforts of Robert Reid in 2001 and Abdulmutallab, we can be thankful al-Qaeda still has not perfected an effective detonator. We should also applaud the post-9/11 reforms that limited the amounts of liquid that can be taken on commercial aircraft.

The United States may not be so lucky the next time around, so President Obama must take a hard look at his entire national security team, particularly CIA Director Leon Panetta, DNI Dennis Blair, and NSC Deputy Director John Brennan, to make sure they are taking the necessary actions to reform the process. The failure points seem obvious, with bad decisions being made at a relatively low level in the process. The president has not demonstrated an interest in reforming the intelligence community, however, despite his campaign rhetoric.

Ironically, the president has left the CIA without its most effective component for investigating failure because he hasn’t named a statutory inspector general for the CIA to replace John Helgerson, who announced his retirement ten months ago. Helgerson was responsible for the most authoritative investigation of the 9/11 failure, which the Bush administration and the CIA managed to cover up.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

State Dining Room, 4:34 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. The immediate reviews that I ordered after the failed Christmas terrorist attack are now complete. I was just briefed on the findings and recommendations for reform, and I believe it’s important that the American people understand the new steps that we’re taking to prevent attacks and keep our country safe.

This afternoon, my Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, will discuss his review into our terrorist watchlist system — how our government failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America, and the steps we’re going to take to prevent that from happening again.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will discuss her review of aviation screening, technology and procedures —- how that terrorist boarded a plane with explosives that could have killed nearly 300 innocent people, and how we’ll strengthen aviation security going forward.

So today I want to just briefly summarize their conclusions and the steps that I’ve ordered to address them.

In our ever-changing world, America’s first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively. That’s what the intelligence reforms after the 9/11 attacks largely achieved. That’s what our intelligence community does every day. But, unfortunately, that’s not what happened in the lead-up to Christmas Day. It’s now clear that shortcomings occurred in three broad and compounding ways.

First, although our intelligence community had learned a great deal about the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen — called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — that we knew that they sought to strike the United States and that they were recruiting operatives to do so — the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland.

Second, this contributed to a larger failure of analysis —- a failure to connect the dots of intelligence that existed across our intelligence community and which, together, could have revealed that Abdulmutallab was planning an attack.

Third, this, in turn, fed into shortcomings in the watch-listing system which resulted in this person not being placed on the “no fly” list, thereby allowing him to board that plane in Amsterdam for Detroit.

In sum, the U.S. government had the information — scattered throughout the system — to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.

That’s why we took swift action in the immediate days following Christmas, including reviewing and updating the terrorist watchlist system and adding more individuals to the “no fly” list, and directing our embassies and consulates to include current visa information in their warnings of individuals with terrorist or suspected terrorist ties.

Today, I’m directing a series of additional corrective steps across multiple agencies. Broadly speaking, they fall into four areas.

First, I’m directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively — not just most of the time, but all of the time. We must follow the leads that we get. And we must pursue them until plots are disrupted. And that mean assigning clear lines of responsibility.

Second, I’m directing that intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely. We can’t sit on information that could protect the American people.

Third, I’m directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis — how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive. My Director of National Intelligence, Denny Blair, will take the lead in improving our day-to-day efforts. My Intelligence Advisory Board will examine the longer-term challenge of sifting through vast universes of intelligence and data in our Information Age.

And finally, I’m ordering an immediate effort to strengthen the criteria used to add individuals to our terrorist watchlists, especially the “no fly” list. We must do better in keeping dangerous people off airplanes, while still facilitating air travel.

So taken together, these reforms will improve the intelligence community’s ability to collect, share, integrate, analyze, and act on intelligence swiftly and effectively. In short, they will help our intelligence community do its job even better and protect American lives.

But even the best intelligence can’t identify in advance every individual who would do us harm. So we need the security — at our airports, ports, and borders, and through our partnerships with other nations — to prevent terrorists from entering America.

At the Amsterdam airport, Abdulmutallab was subjected to the same screening as other passengers. He was required to show his documents — including a valid U.S. visa. His carry-on bag was X-rayed. He passed through a metal detector. But a metal detector can’t detect the kind of explosives that were sewn into his clothes.

As Secretary Napolitano will explain, the screening technologies that might have detected these explosives are in use at the Amsterdam airport, but not at the specific checkpoints that he passed through. Indeed, most airports in the world — and in the United States — do not yet have these technologies. Now, there’s no silver bullet to securing the thousands of flights into America each day, domestic and international. It will require significant investments in many areas. And that’s why, even before the Christmas attack, we increased investments in homeland security and aviation security. This includes an additional $1 billion in new systems and technologies that we need to protect our airports — more baggage screening, more passenger screening and more advanced explosive detection capabilities, including those that can improve our ability to detect the kind of explosive used on Christmas. These are major investments and they’ll make our skies safer and more secure.

As I announced this week, we’ve taken a whole range of steps to improve aviation screening and security since Christmas, including new rules for how we handle visas within the government and enhanced screening for passengers flying from, or through, certain countries.

And today, I’m directing that the Department of Homeland Security take additional steps, including: strengthening our international partnerships to improve aviation screening and security around the world; greater use of the advanced explosive detection technologies that we already have, including imaging technology; and working aggressively, in cooperation with the Department of Energy and our National Labs, to develop and deploy the next generation of screening technologies.

Now, there is, of course, no foolproof solution. As we develop new screening technologies and procedures, our adversaries will seek new ways to evade them, as was shown by the Christmas attack. In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary. That’s what these steps are designed to do. And we will continue to work with Congress to ensure that our intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement communities have the resources they need to keep the American people safe.

I ordered these two immediate reviews so that we could take immediate action to secure our country. But in the weeks and months ahead, we will continue a sustained and intensive effort of analysis and assessment, so that we leave no stone unturned in seeking better ways to protect the American people.

I have repeatedly made it clear — in public with the American people, and in private with my national security team — that I will hold my staff, our agencies and the people in them accountable when they fail to perform their responsibilities at the highest levels.

Now, at this stage in the review process it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies. That’s why, in addition to the corrective efforts that I’ve ordered, I’ve directed agency heads to establish internal accountability reviews, and directed my national security staff to monitor their efforts. We will measure progress. And John Brennan will report back to me within 30 days and on a regular basis after that. All of these agencies — and their leaders — are responsible for implementing these reforms. And all will be held accountable if they don’t.

Moreover, I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately, the buck stops with me. As President, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people. And when the system fails, it is my responsibility.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let’s be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.

And we’ve made progress. Al Qaeda’s leadership is hunkered down. We have worked closely with partners, including Yemen, to inflict major blows against al Qaeda leaders. And we have disrupted plots at home and abroad, and saved American lives.

And we know that the vast majority of Muslims reject al Qaeda. But it is clear that al Qaeda increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations not just in the Middle East, but in Africa and other places, to do their bidding. That’s why I’ve directed my national security team to develop a strategy that addresses the unique challenges posed by lone recruits. And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death –- including the murder of fellow Muslims –- while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.

To advance that progress, we’ve sought new beginnings with Muslim communities around the world, one in which we engage on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect, and work together to fulfill the aspirations that all people share — to get an education, to work with dignity, to live in peace and security. That’s what America believes in. That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

And in this cause, every one of us — every American, every elected official — can do our part. Instead of giving into cynicism and division, let’s move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people. For now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship — a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.

That’s what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism. That’s how we will prevail in this fight. And that’s how we will protect our country and pass it — safer and stronger — to the next generation.

Thanks very much.

Tony Blair at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009. Photo by Andy Mettler/flickr

Compare Tony Blair’s latest confession to mass murder with Bush’s.

The BBC has just aired an interview of Blair in which he was asked whether he would have attacked Iraq even if he had known there were no “weapons of mass destruction” there. Blair replied:

“I would still have thought it right to remove him.”

Him is, of course, Saddam Hussein. And of course Blair did know that Iraq had no serious weapons and that any such weapons were not Bush’s real motivation. The Downing Street Minutes record a meeting at which Blair was informed of that fact. The White House Memo (from Jan. 31, 2003) does the same.

Blair tells the BBC that he would have gone to war because Iraq posed a “threat to the region.” Never mind that the Downing Street Minutes record the Foreign Secretary informing Blair that, “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”

And never mind that in the same meeting the Attorney General told Blair, as he told him again just afterwards in a letter, that regime change was not a legal basis for war.

Back on Dec. 16, 2003, ABC News aired an interview in which Diane Sawyer asked George W. Bush about the claims he had made about “weapons of mass destruction,” and he replied:

“What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.”

Yes, what’s the difference?

No big deal.

Just a million human beings killed and four million displaced.

Iraqi deaths as a result of the invasion and occupation, measured above the high death rate under international sanctions preceding the attack, are estimated at 1.2 million by two independent sources (Just Foreign Policy’s updated figure based on the Johns Hopkins/Lancet report, and the British polling company Opinion Research Business’s estimate as of August 2007).

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has reached 4.7 million.

If these estimates are accurate, a total of nearly 6 million human beings had been displaced from their homes or killed. Many times that many have certainly been injured, traumatized, impoverished, and deprived of clean water and other basic needs.

Now let’s compare the reaction to Blair’s confession in the UK with the reaction to Bush’s in the United States. First Blair. AFP reports:

“Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a ‘game-changing admission’ for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.

“Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix added: ‘The war was sold on the WMD, and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of deployment of arguments, as he said, it sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up.’

“Blair is due to give evidence to the inquiry into the war, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, early next year, and the commentator in the Sunday Telegraph said the investigation’s focus must now change. ‘Mr Blair’s game-changing admission gives them a licence to be tougher and more prosecutorial,’ he wrote, a call echoed by campaigners at Stop the War Coalition, who urged Chilcot’s inquiry to recommend legal action against Blair.

“Professor Philippe Sands, a leading international lawyer, said he believed Blair’s comments had left him vulnerable to legal proceedings.”

Now Bush in the United States:

[Sound of crickets chirping.]

Actually, the U.S. corporate media did have a response to Bush turning the WMD claims into a joke at a Washington press-politico dinner party in 2004 (when he showed slides of himself looking under chairs for Iraq’s WMD): they laughed along with him and congressional leaders.

And yet, a grassroots movement has been created in the United States that is going to be taking advantage of every opportunity growing out of the prosecution of Bush’s poodle to hold the poodle’s owner responsible.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy Phillip Carter.

Last week, lawyer, ex-Army Captain and Iraq veteran Phillip Carter, described by Glenn Greenwald as “a very harsh critic of the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies,” suddenly resigned his post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy, which he had occupied since April. Carter claimed that he was leaving due to “personal issues,” which may be true, but as Greenwald noted, “the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter’s responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.”

Greenwald then proceeded to explain how, in May 2008, Carter had condemned the Bush administration’s Military Commissions (the trial system for Guantánamo prisoners) as “fundamentally and fatally flawed,” arguing that “the rule of law will prevail only if they are perpetually blocked,” and cited a trial in a “civilian court” (his emphasis) of accused terrorists in France that involved “a combination of open and sealed (i.e., classified) evidence to prove the defendants’ guilt in a six-day trial,” which he regarded as the only viable model for the United States to follow.

How disappointing, then, that, just a month after Carter joined the Obama administration, the President announced, in a major national security speech, that the Commissions were back on the table, and Carter then watched, two weeks ago, as Attorney General Eric Holder announced that, although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks would face a federal court trial in New York, five other prisoners — previously charged in the Bush administration’s Military Commissions — would face what is apparently a second tier of justice based solely on the government’s belief that their cases are weaker: trials in the revamped Military Commissions, which have been brought back from the dead with the help of Congress.

Greenwald also noted that, in another post in April 2008, Carter expressed dismay at the Bush administration’s decision to charge Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a “high-value detainee” held for over two years in secret CIA prisons before his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, in a Military Commission “for acts committed before Sept. 11 — to wit, his alleged participation in the bombing of the US Embassy in Tanzania [in 1998].” Carter focused on the following passage in a Washington Post report: “Almost all of his alleged ‘war crimes’ occurred before the Sept. 11 attacks, and most predated the nation’s fight against terrorism. Four co-conspirators in the Tanzania bombing were convicted in US federal courts. Ghailani, too, was indicted in the United States, but federal authorities have opted to try him before the commission, composed entirely of military officers.”

Rounding on the Bush administration, Carter stated:

I’ll be very interested to see how the Bush administration’s lawyers argue their way around the provision of Article 1 that reads, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed”. Setting aside the myriad objections to the military commissions generally, and this case specifically, I think this is going to present a major hurdle for the government.

I’m also concerned about the deliberate decision to take this case away from federal prosecutors … In my opinion, our default choice for the prosecution of suspected terrorists should be federal court … The substantive and procedural due process granted by federal courts has strategic value — it confers legitimacy on the outcome. That legitimacy matters for the struggle against terrorism, and I think it’s crucial that we evaluate our prosecutorial decisions with that strategic calculus in mind.

As Greenwald noted, bringing the story up to date:

While the Obama administration commendably sent Ghailani to New York to be tried in a civilian court, it just announced two weeks ago that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose case originated as a criminal investigation with the FBI, would now be turned over to a military commission for prosecution in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole — raising all of the serious objections Carter voiced to the Ghailani case.

There’s more to Greenwald’s article — regarding Carter’s opposition to the use of the “state secrets” privilege, his concerns regarding the distinction between conventional wars of the past and the “War on Terror” when claiming presidential power, and his willingness to prosecute Bush administration officials and lawyers for war crimes, all of which have also been ignored by President Obama — but I’d like now to move onto the second departure from the administration: that of Greg Craig, the former White House Counsel, who resigned on November 13.

Craig is no darling of the left, as is apparent from complaints about his business dealings, including his relationship with Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s former Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff. However, on national security issues, his departure set the seal on the demise of a period of principled optimism that marked the first few months of the Obama administration, and that has degenerated into chaos and confusion ever since. A former foreign policy advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy and to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served as special counsel in the White House of President Bill Clinton, and directed the team that defended Clinton against impeachment, Craig not only brought a wealth of political experience to Barack Obama’s administration, but was also the main driver of the policies designed to overturn and repudiate the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies in the “War on Terror.”

As Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf explained two weeks ago in an article in Time, “The Fall of Greg Craig,” Barack Obama “tasked Craig with dismantling Bush’s interrogation and detention policies” just four days after the Presidential election, and he took to his new job with extraordinary vigor, “creating one of the largest White House counsel’s offices ever, with dozens of high-powered lawyers, compared with only a handful who served under Bush in early 2001 … Craig’s office was an instant power center in the White House, able to produce answers, memos and ideas seemingly overnight while other parts of the Administration were still getting up and running.”

Despite opposition from the intelligence agencies, Craig drafted the Executive Orders, issued on President Obama’s second day in office, which, singlehandedly, sent a message to the world that the extra-legal horrors of the Bush administration had apparently come to an end. The orders set a one-year deadline for the closure of Guantánamo and called time on the CIA’s use of torture and secret prisons, and President Obama also announced that he was suspending the Military Commissions. Human rights activists were overjoyed, and, as Time noted, “Craig was delivering much of the change Obama had promised during the campaign.”

On March 15, Craig’s insistence on repudiating the Bush administration’s policies and providing the transparent government that Barack Obama had promised was delivered to full effect when, as a result of a long-standing court case initiated by the ACLU, a court deadline was reached regarding the release of classified memos, issued in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which purported to justify the use of torture. When Craig notified the President that the Justice Department planned to make the memos public three days later, Obama asked for a one-month extension to consider his options.

According to Time, when Gen. Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA, learned of the administration’s intention to release the memos, he “went ballistic,” calling Craig on March 18 and asking him, “What are you doing?” Hayden claimed that, if Obama released the memos, “al-Qaeda would be able to train its warriors to resist the techniques described in their contents.” Craig was apparently unperturbed. “The President is never going to authorize any of those techniques,” he replied, prompting the following response from Hayden: “Lemme get this right. There are no conditions of threat this nation might face that would prompt you to interrupt the sleep cycle of somebody who may have lifesaving information?” As Time described it, “There was a long silence. Craig would not concede the point.”

This showdown may well have been the high point of Greg Craig’s endeavors to reset America’s moral compass, confirming the President’s commitment to non-abusive interrogation techniques, in the face of Hayden’s extraordinary insistence that sleep deprivation — a clear component of the torture techniques favored by the Bush administration — ought to continue to be part of the agency’s operations.

As Time explained, Hayden refused to back down, and rallied CIA opposition to Craig’s plans. Former Director George Tenet called his former aide John Brennan, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and John Deutch, a CIA Director under President Clinton, called Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon. National Security Council aide Denis McDonough, a former Senate staffer who has “daily access to the President,” was also recruited, and on April 15, as the court’s extension came to an end, Obama “invited eight officers of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center to make their case against release” at a meeting in the Oval Office. That evening, Obama called Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff, to discuss the memos, and discovered that Emanuel was already discussing it “with about a dozen national-security and political advisers.” After joining the meeting, Obama “asked each to state a position and then convened an impromptu debate, selecting Craig and McDonough to argue opposing sides.”

As Time explained, “Craig deployed one of Obama’s own moral arguments: that releasing the memos ‘was consistent with taking a high road’ and was ‘sensitive to our values and our traditions as well as the rule of law.’ Obama paused, then decided in favor of Craig, dictating a detailed statement explaining his position that would be released the next day.”

What happened next signaled the start of the Obama administration’s retreat from the moral high ground, which led to the sidelining of Craig, and, finally, his resignation. Former Vice President Dick Cheney went on the attack, pollsters noted a drop in Obama’s support among independents, and, as a result, Rahm Emanuel “quietly delegated his aides to get more deeply involved in the process.”

Craig, however, remained focused on how to close Guantánamo, as he was, according to Time, “under pressure to eliminate … indefinite detention without charge or trial and the use of military commissions.” On April 17, he assembled officials from a range of government departments, and explained his plan: to bring some prisoners from Guantánamo to the US to face federal court trials, and also to bring others to settle in the United States. The latter were the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province whose release into the United States had been ordered in October 2008 by Judge Ricardo Urbina, after the Bush administration declined to challenge their habeas corpus petitions.

Craig, like Judge Urbina, recognized that, because they could not be repatriated (because of fears that the Chinese government would torture them), because no other country could be found that would take them, and because their continued imprisonment in Guantánamo was unconstitutional, they would have to be brought to the United States. According to Time, defense secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior officials “approved Craig’s plan to release two Uighurs in northern Virginia” as part of “a global game to empty the prison. If the two settled without incident, six more would be let into the US. That in turn would help the State Department persuade other countries to take Gitmo detainees. The hope was that those remaining could be tried in federal courts.”

At the meeting on April 17, security measures were planned for monitoring the Uighurs in their new home, and Craig also called for the development of “a plan to convince Congress and the public that it was a good idea.” The Uighurs’ lawyers had apparently agreed that their clients could be tagged, to play down security fears, and a Defense Department official told Time that the planned arrival of the Uighurs in the US “was a matter of days, not weeks.”

It was a fine and principled plan, and, had it happened, it would, I believe, have made the closure of Guantánamo by January 2010 possible. However, what happened instead is that another Cheney-baiting court case, concerning the release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners by US forces, reared up to derail the administration. On April 16, Craig had explained that the photos would have to be released, and at that point Robert Gates was supportive, and Rahm Emanuel was only concerned about locating a good time to release the information to cause minimal damage. A week later, however, when the government announced its plans to release the photos, senior military figures warned that soldiers in the field would face reprisals, Gates flip-flopped, and Republicans seized on another opportunity to attack the administration.

The uproar over the photos was then revived on April 24, when news of the Uighur resettlement plan was leaked. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell “launched three weeks of near daily attacks on the idea of letting the Uighurs loose in the US,” and although Dick Durbin, a staunch supporter of Obama and the Majority Whip in the Senate, thought the government could win the fight in Congress, cowardice finally prevailed.

By May 8, when Craig was summoned to a meeting with Obama, the tide had turned. “I don’t like my options,” the President said, in relation to the abuse photos, and although Craig explained that his legal team had found no alternative to releasing the photos, Obama directed him to find a way, which he did, by withdrawing approval and paving the way for a legal struggle that reached the Supreme Court this fall. In a one-line ruling on November 30, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s ruling that the pictures be released, citing a provision in the Homeland Security funding bill signed into law on October 28, which authorized the Pentagon to block the release of the pictures, as well as any others which might “endanger” US soldiers or civilians.

Objectively, the refusal to release the photos in May was a distressing volte-face on the part of the administration, but behind the scenes it is now clear that the combined Republican assaults on Obama’s national security credentials led the administration to withdraw completely from Craig’s principled position regarding the Bush administration’s detention policies, compromising on issues that, as Craig had astutely recognized, were not open to compromise or negotiation if they were to succeed in overturning the Bush administration’s toxic legacy.

By the second week of May, Obama had killed the Uighur plan. As Time described it, “Craig never got a chance to argue the case to the President,” and an aide explained, “It was a political decision, to put it bluntly.” Thereafter, Craig was sidelined. The administration failed to fight back when Congress rose up in revolt, threatening to impose its own ban on the release of the photos, withholding funding for the closure of Guantánamo, legislating to prevent prisoners being brought to the US mainland, and interfering in the transfer of prisoners to any other country.

On May 21, Craig, like Phillip Carter, was obliged to watch as President Obama delivered the national security speech in which he not only announced his intention to revive the Military Commissions, but also — presumably to the absolute horror of Craig and Carter — explained that he would continue to hold some prisoners without charge or trial; those who, as he put it, “cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” By doing so, Obama ignored the sub-text that, if you cannot prosecute someone, it is because the information you are using does not rise to the level of evidence, or is otherwise tainted by torture, and is therefore inherently unreliable.

Six months on, as Greg Craig finally tendered his resignation, the price of subscribing to the Bush administration handbook, instead of standing up to bullying lawmakers and a renegade ex-Vice President, has become distressingly clear.

When it comes to finding new homes for cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated, the administration finally managed to dispose of ten of the Uighurs, in Bermuda and Palau, although seven still remain at Guantánamo, nearly 14 months after Judge Urbina ordered their release, and dozens of other cleared prisoners face indefinite detention at the US government’s pleasure, because other countries — unenthused by Obama’s inability to bring even a single man to settle on the US mainland — have not rallied sufficiently to the cause.

Moreover, although the administration finally announced federal court trials for the five men accused of involvement with the 9/11 attacks on November 13 (the same day that Greg Craig resigned), Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder not only had to fight back against a wave of Republican fearmongering that has only grown in strength throughout the year, but also lost whatever credibility this should have given them — in the eyes of those whose allegiance is to the rule of law — by announcing that five others would face trials by Military Commission. They also conceded that Guantánamo would not close by January 2010, and let slip that some of those still held — those described by Obama in May as prisoners who “cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people” — would likely remain imprisoned forever without charge or trial.

Forgive me if I have oversimplified matters, but it appears to me that the failure to deliver a single, coherent system of justice to the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo, the failure to close the prison by Greg Craig’s deadline, the failure to kill the Military Commissions once and for all, and the acceptance, rather than the elimination of indefinite detention without charge or trial (which is at the very heart of the Guantánamo regime established by George W. Bush) demonstrate what happens when tough battles on points of principle give way to cowardice and political maneuvering, as exemplified in the poisonous compromises embraced six months ago by the Obama administration.

This report was originally published at the Future for Freedom Foundation.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.

I spoke with him on Tuesday about his forthcoming documentary film, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, based on his bestselling book (pre-order DVD here http://www.indiegogo.com/bush).

I consider Vince a friend, an ally, and a hero, but we don’t see eye to eye on everything. I oppose the death penalty and all manifestations of revenge. I’m an atheist. I think the United States had a pretty darn horrible government before George W. Bush even came on the scene and that war lies have been a proud tradition of ours for centuries.

I see strategic advantage in pushing for accountability from underlings and for less than the most severe charges. Vince disagrees to various degrees on each of these points.

I don’t object to Vince’s choice to focus exclusively on one thing, because what he is focused on is one of the most important things anyone could. He is seeking to prosecute George W. Bush for the murder of the U.S. soldiers he sent into war on false pretenses.

Vince has written three New York Times #1 bestselling books, so he expected the one on prosecuting Bush to do well. It has, in fact, sold nearly 100,000 copies. But that is a shocking disappointment to its author.

The difference with this book was that the corporate media completely whited it out. There has not been a single review in a major newspaper (although the New York Times published an article about the lack of coverage).

And Bugliosi has not been put on national television to talk about this book, as he was with his other books. So, his publisher has been thrilled with the sales that have been generated through the independent media.

Vince told me he thought a blackout like the one of his book would not happen in any other country except perhaps Russia.

His topic, an illegal war on Iraq based on lies and the need to hold a former President accountable, is not discussed in the corporate media or even much by independent sources any more. It was a hot topic in 2005 and 2006, but the Democrats in Congress dropped it in 2007 when they obtained the power to do something about it. Vince has been flabbergasted by this every time I’ve talked to him for years now:

“How is it possible for George W. Bush to take this nation to war on false pretenses with the cataclysmic results that there have been, and America does absolutely nothing about it – How is that possible?”

I asked Vince if there was anything people could compel Congress to do that would help in any way. He said that a congressional committee had made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice which was now investigating whether baseball pitcher Roger Clemens had committed perjury when he testified that he hadn’t used steroids.

Bugliosi suggests, rather reasonably, that an apparent case of lying the nation into war should be similarly referred for prosecution. He made this same suggestion in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last July.

Why does this not happen? In Vince’s analysis, “the Democratic Party is much too civilized. They’re not fighters like the shrill and strident Republicans.”

Vince has spoken to large crowds around the country about his book. The forthcoming documentary, making the same case as the book, is built largely around a speech Bugliosi made at UCLA Law School.

Also included in the film is footage of my friends Carlos and Melida Arredondo who lost their son Alex in the Iraq War.

Another survivor shown in the film is Jane Bright who lost her son and expresses the guilt she feels for not having been there to stop a rocket from hitting him. She holds no ill will toward the Iraqi who shot the rocket who, she says, was just doing his job: “George Bush murdered my son.”

The film is still a work in progress, but a rough cut was shown to a group in Los Angeles last week, not a group of peace activists, but not necessarily a strictly representative sample of the country either. For what it’s worth, over 90 percent of the viewers said they would definitely urge their friends to see it, and the rest said they probably would.

Just as torture photos move Americans much more powerfully than written evidence of torture, the passion of the film may have an impact that reaches much further than the book. Footage of bloodshed in Iraq is juxtaposed with footage of Bush joking about WMDs, intended to show Bush’s lack of interest in honesty, as well as footage of Bush enjoying himself, intended to encourage the hatred that Bugliosi feels.

I asked Vince, as I always do, to explain his targeting of Bush for killing American soldiers who participated, but not innocent Iraqis who did not. Vince said that Bush was clearly guilty of the deaths of Iraqis (he STILL uses the outrageously low figure of 100,000 dead Iraqis in order to not overstate it).

However, Vince explains, he was not able to establish jurisdiction in America for trying Bush for those murders.

I asked why it is that the highest laws of our land cannot be enforced. The Constitution makes treaties, like the UN Charter, the supreme law of the land, but unless there’s a corresponding statute in the U.S. Code there’s nothing a prosecutor can do. Vince’s explanation was that, sadly, that’s just the way it is.

So I asked whether he would approve of the International Criminal Court developing the jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of aggressive war, and/or approve of Congress legislating criminal penalties for the same crime.

In the case of Congress, Bugliosi expressed concern that the creation of such a new law (which could not be used against Bush’s past crimes due to the Constitution’s ban on ex-post-facto laws) might be used to argue that heretofore the activity has been legal.

Bugliosi explained that the biggest obstacle he’s faced with his book has been the assumption by all sorts of people (he mentions Jerry Brown, once and perhaps future governor of California, as an example) that it’s simply not possible to prosecute a President for a war. But, Vince says, every single person who has argued that has admitted that they have not yet read his book.

I asked Bugliosi whether Jay Bybee’s Oct. 23, 2002, memo purporting to legalize aggressive wars, could make him complicit in murder. The question, Bugliosi said, would be one of proving that Bybee knew what he was writing to be false.

There are a million things I know I could never do, but I think I could persuade a jury on this one with no sleep, no breakfast, and a ban on using words with the letter ‘E’ in them. I have no doubt that Bugliosi could do it in a brief afternoon.

I asked Bugliosi what he would think if the Department of Justice were to indict Bush for the felonies of misleading Congress and making false statements to Congress. Bugliosi’s response was what it has been before: “That’s such small potatoes.”

Vince would be glad to include those charges as one count of an indictment, but only if another count was murder. The punishment for lying to Congress is far too low, he thinks, and — says Bugliosi — presidents lie to Congress all the time. (He acknowledged that while I think they do this about wars all the time, he thinks they do it only about other topics.)

We also talked about Pakistan and what we are doing there, in particular with drones. Bugliosi said the killing there could certainly be murder, regardless of whether it’s a war or what we call it.

And we talked about the just-opened investigation of Iraq war lies in England.

“I’m impressed with England,” said Bugliosi. ”Their nation is not in the decline that America is. I salute them for what they’re doing. If there’s a prosecution of George W. Bush in the United States, and if I’m involved, several of those witnesses would be asked to testify, including Manning and Dearlove.”

What about Blair? Has Tony Blair committed murder? We discussed this for a while.

Vince stressed that his focus has been on Bush. The question of whether Blair is guilty, Vince said, comes down to whether he lied to the British people in taking them to war. We discussed areas where it looked like Blair had lied.

Bugliosi pointed to the Downing Street Minutes in which the attorney general of the UK (Goldsmith) tells Blair that his planned war has no legal basis. The minutes state: “The Attorney General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.”

Bugliosi decided that the more he talked about it the more he would find Blair deserving of prosecution, but that Blair’s responsibility did not compare to Bush’s.

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

This image of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken in July 2009 under an agreement with Guantanamo prison camp staff that lets Red Cross delegates photograph detainees and send photos to family members.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate “mainstream” media make quite a pair.

We’re hearing a very “balanced” debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We’re not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime.

We’re not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the “war on terror” might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis.
What effect might that have had on Americans’ willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren’t hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM’s motive?
Isn’t motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We’re told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we’re not told what that propaganda might be.

If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn’t that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don’t they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word “Israel”?

Outside of progressive blogs, we’re not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham.

If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that “military justice” is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military?

Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We’re not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time.

And in KSM’s case it might include video of the “interrogation” of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect.

More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting.

It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can — while still in the custody of the torturers — give an un-coerced confession.

Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we’d see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn’t the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country?

Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM’s American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives.

The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort.

Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose.

But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it.

More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM’s possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM.

This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don’t we talk about it?

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. [This article previously appeared at Afterdowningstreet.org.]

Now, I’ve never been a big follower of the ‘peak oil crowd’ – a group of people that have the same passion as 9/11 truthers. At my last job I received many an e-mail from peak oilers that contained threats. For that reason, over the years I have chosen to stay away from the conversation all together, merely shrugging my shoulders when the topic comes up at conferences and talks that I’ve attended. “I’m not an expert” then following that with “Hubbard’s “peak” has been moved forward several times,” and adding finally – now with a raising of the hands “but that’s just what I have read,” and then quickly changing the subject to something about Bush’s oil wars.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a peak – if we have reached it already it does not matter – what is important is that at the current rate of global economic expansion an oil collapse is imminent. And this is where I begin with Michael Ruppert and Chris Smith’s new documentary ‘Collapse.’

Mr. Ruppert began his adult life with a “Q” clearance (above top secret) – essentially inherited from his father, an Air Force officer and his mother a cryptographer for Army Intelligence. Michael was given the “Q” since he could have potentially look in his fathers briefcase as a child. If genetics meant anything for an investigative journalist – he’d would have started out as one of the best. They don’t of course – but Ruppert set out to spend the next 30 years building a resume the hard way.

As a young officer in Los Angeles in the 70’s, he claimed to be approached by the CIA to help smuggle drugs into the U.S. That was a turning point for him and over the next three decades he would become one of the most prolific and well known underground journalists, starting his own newsletter ‘From the Wilderness,’ and eventually a website of the same name. Some of the stories that he has broken – or at least was the first to publish – include the Pat Tillman scandal, Cheney’s environmental meetings, and of course CIA’s drug dealings. You can see him here confronting CIA Director John Deutch at a Los Angeles town hall meeting.

Collapse opens with Ruppert sitting in what looks like an abandoned building, smoking a cigarette, he will smoke many of them by the end of this film. Honestly, by the end of Collapse I felt like picking up smoking again – what did i have to lose – the world was ending as we know it. Dire predictions are this man’s strong point, what worries me (and should worry you) is that he seems to be so often right case in point – the economic collapse of 2008. Ruppert sees this not as a one time dip but as the coming of a greater depression. He seems to scoff at the idea that human ingenuity will be able to pull us out of this one – essentially we are in too deep.

Ruppert, explains ‘peak oil’ – the idea, put simply that we have hit the top of the bell curve of crude oil discoveries – not now, or even as the new numbers suggest in 2005 but in the 70’s – Hubbard’s earliest predictions. If he, and Hubbard are correct we are very near the collapse of the oil culture. This is the collapse that he’s really talking about – not the recent economic one but the point when oil – the thing that everything, and I mean everything is built with becomes too expensive for us to continue.

“10 hydrocarbons for every ONE calorie”

This, and that seven gallons of gasoline go into every tire are the two facts that he continually goes back to when explaining why we’re are in such deep sh*t. Ruppett isn’t ok with just knocking the present – point by point he knocks down the alternatives – “electricity is not an energy SOURCE” – bashing electric cars as an alternative to petrol run autos and “[there is] no such thing as clean coal.” To call him blunt is an understatement. I would thoroughly enjoy a debate between Ruppert and Al Gore about the future of energy policy in the U.S. -although I may not agree with all of his pronouncements his ‘wake up and smell the oil fumes’ attitude is well needed within Al Gore’s current soft and fluffy cap and trade environmental movement.

“Don’t Panic”

In Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ we follow a man and his son through a desolate wasteland where all civilization has broken down. McCarthy’s vision is not that far off from Ruppert’s post-collapse world. This is where Ruppert loses me completely but it’s also where the film gets really good.

Chris Smith, the director of ‘The Yes Men’ and ‘American Movie’ makes a very interesting choice at this point in the picture – which up until now has mainly consisted of Errol Morris-esque use of stock footage and interview style – he allows his subject to put a pause in the film. Ruppert is having a revelation, a mighty smile crosses his face and he begins again this time with breakneck speed, explaining point by point how we can survive the coming end of (oil) days. It’s also at this point in the documentary when you realize how well Smith has presented this mad prophet – who if you gave him a trenchcoat would be a modern day Mr. Beale. This is something that Smith must be credited with, because what Ruppert has to say is important and without ‘Collapse’ it would be left to the Internet trolls, whether they be 9/11 or peak truther’s to scream in caps on YouTube pages at the bottom of this review. Chris Smith during a talk at the Angelika Theater in NYC said that this will be his last documentary, that he wanted to return to fiction film calling it much easier – let’s hope that’s not true. Collapse is a dire wake up call for the YouTube Generation, the VHS generation and the cinemascope generation – wake up or die.

FWD: FWD: FWD: Go.See@Collapsemovie.com

SUBJECT: Take your friend to this picture – you’ll need someone to talk about it with.

Zach Roberts is a journalist and film reviewer, he edited the 2008 investigative comic book “Steal Back Your Vote” with Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and is producer of several DVD’s including The Election Files and Big Easy to Big Empty. Currently he is working on a film investigating mining related pollution. Follow him on twitter at twitter.com/docutweets

“It is of utmost importance to me that those who were responsible for the attacks of 9/11 face a court,” says Adele Welty in the ACLU video. Her son was a New York firefighter killed at the World Trade Center.

“It’s very important to me that we get the right people,” says John Leinung, whose stepson was killed while working in the Twin Towers. “That the right people are punished or held to account for what happened on 9/11.”

Pat Perry, whose son was a police offer killed on 9/11, says she would rather see the Guantánamo detainees who have been held without charge “appear in open court where we can all sift out what we feel is really the truth and the judges can make a decision based on our Constitution.”

These 9/11 family members all say they agree that holding detainees without charge in Guantánamo is a betrayal of American values and they look forward to true justice being served in federal court.

“My son gave his life to save those trapped in the Twin Towers,” Welty says, “and it does not honor him that we violate our Constitution in retaliation for what happened on September 11.”

This image of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken in July 2009 under an agreement with Guantanamo prison camp staff that lets delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross photograph detainees and send photos to family members. Source: Wikipedia

Last Monday, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants in the long-delayed 9/11 trial at Guantánamo were scheduled to make an appearance before a military commissions judge to discuss some procedural arrangements and the ongoing dispute about the mental health of one of the men, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the naval base’s airport was busy, as reporters, observers and relatives of the 9/11 victims were flown in to witness what some parts of the military clearly still regard as a viable trial system.

In the end, the whole event was a disappointment, as Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military commissions judge, agreed to a request from the government to freeze the trial proceedings for another 60 days (on top of the two 120-day freezes to date), to allow time for the administration to work out whether it can persuade Congress to approve proposed changes to the much-criticized trial system, or whether to proceed with federal court trials instead. [I explained why the latter is the only viable option in an article headlined, “9/11 Trial At Guantánamo Delayed Again: Can We Have Federal Court Trials Now, Please?]

As a result, none of the defendants showed up in court on Monday, and the authorities were obliged to temper their disappointment by releasing a statement from the men the following day, which was clearly intended to provide another piece of evidence for the prosecution in the absence of any actual proceedings.

A statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants

In a letter submitted to the judge acknowledging that they had no objections to the government’s proposed 60-day delay, Mohammed and two of his co-defendants, Walid Bin Attash, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, sent greetings to Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, and took the opportunity to refer triumphantly to the 9/11 attacks. “We send our greeting to them on the occasion of the anniversary of eight years past on the most noble victory known to history over the forces of oppression and tyranny in the Washington and Manhattan attack,” they wrote.

As the Associated Press described it, they also quoted from the Koran to explain their continuing desire to represent themselves, but to offer no defense to the charges against them. ”I put my trust in Allah,” they wrote, “So devise your plot … Then pass your sentence on me and give me no respite.” The men also — as is Mohammed’s habit — took the opportunity to refer to the torture to which they were subjected in secret CIA custody, before their transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, and also criticized President Obama.

“We spent three years moving around the black sites in the ‘dark ages’ of Bush, then we were transferred to the island of oppression, torture and terror, Guantánamo,” they wrote, adding, “Then, the lying Barack, the new American president was elected, and we entered the black ages of Barack.”

Afterwards, few reporters and observers stuck around for the rest of the week’s events, even though pre-trial hearings were also scheduled for two other Military Commission cases: of Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi, seized on arrival in Azerbaijan in June 2002 and “rendered” to US custody in Afghanistan two months later, who is accused of plotting to attack a ship in the Strait Of Hormuz, meeting Osama bin Laden and attending a training camp in Afghanistan, and Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan accused of training at “an al-Qaeda camp” and taking part in the insurgency against US forces.

Two who did were Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald and Jane Sutton of Reuters, and I’m grateful to them for staying and capturing some disturbing allegations about the Commissions that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Ahmed al-Darbi’s torture allegations

In al-Darbi’s pre-trial hearing last Wednesday, the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, also decided to abide by the President’s request for another stay in the Commission proceedings, but not until al-Darbi’s lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, had raised some uncomfortable questions about his client’s treatment in US custody. According to the Commissions’ rules, evidence derived through the use of torture is banned, but individual judges may use their discretion to accept evidence obtained through coercion.

The demarcation line is clearly a gray area, as was demonstrated on Wednesday, when Col. Pohl refused to abandon al-Darbi’s proposed trial, setting a date of January 11, 2010 (the eighth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo) for a further hearing to decide which of the 119 statements made by al-Darbi to interrogators would be accepted as evidence.

This was in spite of protestations by Kassim that all the statements were tainted by the use of torture, because, as Carol Rosenberg described it, they were obtained “through beatings, threats of rape, sleep and sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation,” at the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan (where al-Darbi was held for eight months) and also at Guantánamo.

Given the gravity of these allegations (explained in greater detail in a statement by al-Darbi that I’ve reproduced here, and which is well worth reading in its entirety), it was unsurprising that, following Col. Pohl’s ruling, Ramzi Kassem explained to reporters, “Either the Obama administration is duplicitously saying one thing to the public and the media and doing another here or, you know, Guantánamo and the military commissions are like a headless chicken that just keeps on moving after it’s been decapitated.”

Kassem also read out a statement prepared by al-Darbi, explaining that his client had “planned to read his statement in court but felt there wasn’t an opportunity during the brief hearing.” In the statement, al-Darbi, who, as the Associated Press described it, had held up a photo of Barack Obama “as a sign of hope” at a pre-trial hearing last December, and had stated that he hoped Obama would “earn back the legitimacy the United States has lost in the eyes of the world,” revised his opinion.

Although the statement was addressed to “his excellency, the American President Barack Obama, whose photo I held up in this place as though I had voted for him,” al-Darbi criticized Obama for “issuing certain orders and decisions” regarding the Military Commissions, telling the President that “he has gone astray.” He also criticized the government for holding a hearing during the post-Ramadan holiday of Eid, and also referred to Obama’s speech in Cairo in June, which was intended to build bridges with the countries of the Middle East.

“I can tell you that the ugliness of this place and its continuing existence … have all covered up the beautiful smile that the American president directed at you,” al-Darbi wrote, directing his comments at Muslims who had watched the President’s speech in Egypt.

The futility of prosecuting Mohammed Kamin

If the case of Ahmed al-Darbi raises uncomfortable questions about the distinctions between coercion and torture, the case of Mohammed Kamin is simply inexplicable. As I explained in an article last March, when he was first charged, Kamin seems to be “an unworthy candidate for any kind of war crimes trial at all.” I continued:

In his charge sheet (PDF), he is accused of “providing material support for terrorism,” specifically by receiving training at “an al-Qaeda training camp,” conducting surveillance on US and coalition military bases and activities, planting two mines under a bridge, and launching missiles at the city of Khost while it was occupied by US and coalition forces. He is not charged with harming, let along killing US forces, and were it not for his supposed al-Qaeda connection — he apparently stated in interrogation that he was “recruited by an al-Qaeda cell leader” — it would, I think, be impossible to make the case that he was involved in “terrorism” at all. As it is, I’m prepared to state that his case seems to me to demonstrate how hopelessly blurred the distinctions between military resistance (aka insurgency) and terrorism have become, so that anyone caught fighting US occupation is not engaged in a war (with its own well-established laws) but is automatically part of a global terrorist movement.

At the time, the Bush administration was unconcerned that providing material support for terrorism was not a recognized war crime, but whereas Ahmed al-Darbi is charged with both conspiracy and material support for terrorism, Mohammed Kamin faces nothing but a material support charge, and the Obama administration, to its credit, has already accepted, in its plans to review the Military Commissions Act in Congress, that the charge of material support for terrorism should be dropped.

Assistant Attorney General David Kris conceded, in Congressional testimony in July, that there is a “significant risk” that, on appeal, judges would not regard it as a legitimate war crime, and the Justice Department’s position is also held by the Pentagon, where General Counsel Jeh Johnson also accepted in July that “material support is not a viable offense to be charged before a military commission because it is not a law of war offense.”

As a result, although the Commissions definitely seem to be proceeding like a “headless chicken” in Kamin’s case, his lawyers asked the judge to schedule a meeting with Jeh Johnson, and are hopeful that they will be able to persuade him to accept that it would be absurd to proceed with his proposed trial.

In a detailed submission (PDF), they noted that, as recently as September 10, Johnson told a national security panel of American Bar Association lawyers that, although material support for terrorism was included in the Senate’s bill for amending the Commission, “We don’t believe that material support is a law of war offense. That’s still our position.”

The situation is further complicated because Susan Crawford, the Commissions’ Convening Authority (and a close friend of both Dick Cheney and David Addington), whose conflicted role overseeing the Commissions I have written about at length (here, here and most recently here), responded in July to a request from Kamin’s lawyers to withdraw or dismiss the charges by noting that Johnson had only stated that “appellate courts may find that material support for terrorism is not a traditional violation of the law of war” (emphasis added), and that, at present, it remained a viable charge under the MCA.

Despite Crawford’s insistence that, in the trial of Salim Hamdan, the judge ruled that “the conduct embraced within the specification [of material support] included conduct which the United States has considered a violation of the law of war since at least the Civil War,” I’m reasonably optimistic that neither Crawford nor the Congress will prevail in their arguments.

Even so, it remains disgraceful that Mohammed Kamin is still waiting for justice, nearly six and a half years since his capture, and, more worryingly, that Ahmed al-Darbi, who, unlike Kamin, is clearly regarded as a significant prisoner, is still no closer than he was six and a half years ago to establishing whether he will ever be allowed to address, in a fair and open hearing, his claims that he was tortured in Bagram and Guantánamo.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.