CIA Training Intelligence Agents for "State Sponsor of Terrorism" Sudan

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

The government of Sudan has been miffed that it cannot get off of the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism. It could be because of the history of arbitrary arrests, killings and torture by the administration of Sudan President Omar Al Bashir, as documented in a recent report by Amnesty International. Or it could be because the Sudanese government is widely reported to back the Jangaweed militia attacks against citizens of Darfur, a campaign that has killed over 300,000 people and displaced approximately three million more. Or perhaps it is Sudan's political support (and possibly military aid) to Hamas, foe of the U.S., the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority? In any case, the Obama administration has not seen fit to take Sudan off their list of bad guy countries.

So what is one to make of Jeff Stein's report today at his Spy Talk blog at the Washington Post that the CIA has been training and equipping Sudan's notorious National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS)?

“The U.S. government is training the Sudanese intelligence services and conducting bilateral operations with them -- all in the name of the long war,” said a former intelligence officer who served in Sudan....

Another knowledgeable former U.S. intelligence official said the CIA-NISS partnership began even earlier, in the Clinton administration, and called it "incredibly valuable."

While Erik Prince and his Blackwater Worldwide company is being fined for ignoring sanctions against Sudan and trying to "secure lucrative defense business in Southern Sudan," the central government in Khartoum is having its security forces -- one the most brutal in the Arab world -- trained by the CIA.

According to Stein, U.S. officials maintain the operations are limited to counterterrorism. But one wonders how the NISS separates out such training from its general operations of domestic oppression. Earlier this year, NISS arrested six doctors, members of the Doctors Strike Committee, and tortured at least two, before releasing them after being held without charges for almost a month. As recently as June 27, NISS agents were reported to be roaming "hospitals in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, ensuring that the doctors had returned to work."

According to a report by Amnesty International, referenced by Stein in his article, NISS seems to have it in for doctors.

Ahmed Ali Mohamed Osman, a doctor also known as Ahmed Sardop, was arrested by the NISS on March 20, 2009 in Khartoum after criticizing rapes in the Darfur region and the government’s decision to expel humanitarian organizations from Sudan....
"They leaned me over a chair and held me by my arms and feet while others hit me on the back, legs and arms with something similar to an electrical cable," he told Amnesty International. "They kicked me in the testicles repeatedly while they talked about the report on rape in Darfur."

Ahmed Sardop filed a complaint with the police and was examined by a doctor who confirmed his allegations of torture. A few days later, he started receiving telephone death threats: "We will soon find you and we will kill you." He now lives in exile.

But it isn't only doctors, as NISS has targeted journalists, human rights activists, and students. The agents of the NISS operate in an atmosphere of near-impunity, as they "have immunity for all the violations they commit, under the 2010 National Security Act."

Anyone who believes the NISS agents trained by the CIA limit their indelicate actions to "take-downs" of "terrorists" in Sudan knows very little about the omnipresent operations of security forces such as NISS, or the Mukhabarat in Egypt and Jordan, in this part of the world. This kind of training and involvement with some of the world's more notorious secret police is the real face of U.S. foreign policy, more so than the aid programs that other portions of the government may provide in various countries. (It's worth noting here, too, that the Palestinian Authority has received training for its security forces from the CIA.) Whatever aid is provided, the U.S. ensures the rule of governments with domestic terror regimes. Along with U.S. support for the forceable suppression of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and its campaign of wide-spread assassination throughout the region, this is the actual cause for hatred and attacks against the United States.

Apropos of the U.S. policy of widespread assassinations, today the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a lawsuit "challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out 'targeted killings' of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone."

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

A major change in U.S. policy must involve a significant change in the world-view of the U.S. populace, and a wholesale transformation of its political representatives, who remain meekly subservient to whatever military or intelligence policy that the White House demands, no matter how seemingly contradictory or self-defeating, or how costly to those in other countries who suffer under the police rule of their respective states.

For more information on the ACLU/CCR joint lawsuit, visit visit: www.aclu.org/targetedkillings and ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings.

Time Magazine for Grown-ups? Meanwhile, U.S. "War on Terror" Looks More Like Imperial Expansion

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

Glenn Greenwald gets the hat-tip for this very funny piece from The Onion News Network. Imagine, an American weekly newsmagazine written for adults: "Advanced Time".

But Greenwald also has some very serious things to report about the ever-expanding "war on terror," which has most lately picked up steam in Yemen. All the quotes are taken verbatim for the Greenwald article.

Amnesty International, June 7, 2010:

Amnesty International has released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster munitions, apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qa’ida training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children.

The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma'jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa’ida.

VOA News, July 30, 2010:

The Convention on Cluster Munitions goes into force Sunday, August 1, with 107 signatories agreeing to ban the use of cluster munitions . . . . Cluster bombs are damaging because they contain hundreds of smaller explosives, or submunitions, that detonate across a wide area. The submunitions that fail to explode on impact can then act as landmines, posing a threat to civilian populations long after a conflict is over.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a law banning the export of cluster munitions that do not meet a certain standard. But the United States has not signed the cluster bomb ban. China, Israel, India and Pakistan are among other countries that have not agreed to the treaty. Neither Georgia nor Russia has signed the treaty.

The Washington Post, today:

For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda's offshoots -- rather than the core group now based in Pakistan -- as the most urgent threat to U.S. security, officials said.

The sober new assessment of al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has helped prompt senior Obama administration officials to call for an escalation of U.S. operations there -- including a proposal to add armed CIA drones to a clandestine campaign of U.S. military strikes, the officials said.
"We are looking to draw on all of the capabilities at our disposal," said a senior Obama administration official, who described plans for "a ramp-up over a period of months" . . . .

The CIA has roughly 10 times more people and resources in Pakistan than it does in Yemen. There is no plan to scale back in Pakistan, but officials said the gap is expected to shrink.

Wall St. Journal, today:

U.S. officials believe al Qaeda in Yemen is now collaborating more closely with allies in Pakistan and Somalia to plot attacks against the U.S., spurring the prospect that the administration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen.

Such a move would give the Central Intelligence Agency a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely be modeled after the CIA's covert drone campaign in Pakistan. . . .

Authorizing covert CIA operations would further consolidate control of future strikes in the hands of the White House, which has enthusiastically embraced the agency's covert drone program in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Reuters, yesterday:

Missiles fired from a U.S. pilotless drone aircraft killed 13 militants [sic] and 7 civilians in Pakistan's North Waziristan on Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. . . . Four women and three children were among the dead, said the officials.

Al Jazeera, today:

Yemen's government has sacrificed human rights to preserve security in its battle against Shia rebels in the north and al-Qaeda fighters in the south, a new report by Amnesty International has alleged.

Yemen's catalogue of human-rights abuses over the past two years includes unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest, torture, unfair trials and enforced disappearances, Amnesty said.

The report, "Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure," says that Yemeni authorities have bowed to pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia to deal harshly with the twin threats of Yemen's local al-Qaeda branch - al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - and the Houthi rebels in the north.

What's going on here seems fairly obvious.  The absurdity of escalating a war in Afghanistan by pointing to The Scary Al Qaeda Menace -- when there is virtually no Al Qaeda presence in that country -- is becoming increasingly apparent.  Just yesterday, a Washington Post article documented -- using the WikiLeaks war documents (which, remember, told us absolutely nothing worth knowing) -- that Al Qaeda is virtually non-existent in the war in Afghanistan.  So now, administration officials -- hiding behind the anonymity which these media outlets naturally provided -- fanned out to announce a new, Growing, Scary Al Qaeda Threat in Yemen, which, they boast, now needs its own escalated bombing attacks and CIA operations.  The goal is that the War never ends; the only variable is where it happens to increase on any given day.

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While Greenwald notes that with all the racist and prejudicial agitation against the proposed Park51 community center, misnamed by much of the press the "Mosque at Ground Zero," and the actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, drone bombings in Pakistan, and covert actions in a number of Muslim countries, your average Middle Eastern citizen could be excused for believing the U.S. is actually waging a war against Islam, statements by President Obama aside.

But this is no war against Islam (though there are some in the military and intelligence circles who may perceive it that way), but an expansion of imperial power in a part of the world that carries great oil and gas reserves, and where nationalist forces, often with an Islamic ideology, are resisting American rule. It is not different in kind from the expansion of the American military presence in Columbia, in the Balkan countries, and saber-rattling on the Korean peninsula, which is aimed at China, ultimately.

The U.S. is failing as a country to stand-up to its overly militaristic and imperialist-minded leadership in both political parties. We must oppose this war drive, carried on under Obama as it was under Bush.

Sartre on the "War of Fear"

As the Cold War began, a constant theme of Sartre’s was the danger of the belief that a Third World War was inevitable. This was to be one of the reasons for his subsequent membership in the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire in 1948-49. The following short piece is the first of many he was to write on the subject.

---

This war will be the war of fear. It is in fear that it is being prepared. People are allowing it to come on slowly, with a kind of ecstasy. They believe in it like they believe in chiromancy, like a confessor, like everything that releases them from forging their own destiny. They love their fear; it reconciles them with themselves, it suspends the faculties of the soul in the same way as sneezing and diarrhoea. And that threat that weighs on their heads conceals from them the empty heavens: it’s a roof. And in the meanwhile, the terrorized governments observe each other. When in a panic a nation will make too abrupt a gesture, the others will leap at its throat.

Then the abstract massacre will begin. Once we risked our lives against that of others; we saw the enemy dead up close, we could touch their wounds; from further away we fire without any risks, we’ll die for nothing. Technicians in Washington, in Texas, will prepare the mass graves of Baku and Leningrad without seeing them. Without even imagining them. No heroes, no martyrs: a cataclysm falling on panicked beasts.

I don’t believe in the end of the world, and I don’t even know if I believe in this war. Twenty years, perhaps fifty years will pass before it occurs. But if throughout this time we continue to expect it, if for fifty years we have to marinate in fear, if we convince ourselves that in order to live we have to await the end of the next conflict, we will then have rendered the atom bomb three quarters useless. There will no longer be any men to kill; it will already have been done.

Titled "The Time of the Assassins", this short essay by Jean-Paul Sartre was written in 1946. Written in the wake of the onset of the Cold War, and the ascension of an historical epoch ruled by "mutually assured destruction," this brief piece nevertheless speaks to us today, trapped in another version of endless war, decreed by the U.S rulers and their assorted allies to be a "war against terrorism."

Source: Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, Les Écrits de Sartre. Paris, Gallimard, 1970. (Originally in the review “Franchise,” No. 3, November-December 1946);
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor, 2008;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2008.

ICE Uses Threats of Deportation to Produce Terrorism "Intel"

Cross-posted from FDL/The Sentinel

It's bad enough we know that the government tortured Abu Zubaydah, Binyam Mohamed, and countless others in an attempt to produce false confessions, faked intel about Iraq, and in general hype up a "terrorism" threat that would justify the billions bilked from the U.S. treasury for the bogus "war on terror."

But now apparently the campaign to find terrorist boogie-men has come home with a vengeance. Just ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) informants Emilio and Analia Maya of Saugerties, New York. According to a fascinating Associated Press report by Helen O'Neill, on November 17, 2009, Emilio was surrounded by nine ICE officers in flak jackets with guns.

"We are deactivating you"

"We are deactivating you," the officers told their former Argentinian immmigrant informer. The prisoner, who recognized agents who some years earlier had recruited him, was taken to jail over 100 milies away, and held over two weeks without charges.

Emilio and his sister Analia had made a deal with ICE back in March 2005. They could get S visas, "often known... as the 'snitch visa'... because [it's] given to aliens who assist US law enforcement to investigate and prosecute crimes and terrorist activities."

But as O'Neill reports, quoting New York immigration lawyer Claudia Slovinsky, ICE and parent agency the Department of Homeland Security ever actually award anyone the S visa. Instead, "they use the most vulnerable people to do dangerous work, make them all sorts of promises and then just abandon them."

The AP story relates how the Mayas got involved with ICE, the dangerous missions they went on, the undercover work. When the brother and sister tried to back out of the informant game, they were told they had to continue or they would be deported. In fact, it turned out later that a deportation order for Emilio had been shuttling around ICE since December 2005, while for years they used him as an informant.

The Coerced Production of "Intelligence" on Terrorism

But the most interesting part of the story concerns what happened after Emilio and Analia had been working for ICE for some three years (emphases added):

In 2008, they say, the agents began demanding information on terrorism and guns - information the Mayas simply couldn't provide. The brother and sister continued offering tips about local activities, but they were no longer sent on undercover jobs....

At a meeting in the Price Chopper parking lot [in May 2009], Emilio says, agents bluntly told him that unless he delivered information on weapons and terrorism, his work permit would not be renewed and he would be deported.

What seems clear is that the government, failing to get the easily controlled Mayas to drum up some kind of terrorist plot in order to feed the agency's need promote itself and get a larger slice of the anti-terrorism funds sloshing around Washington, D.C., put the strong-arm on these immigrants, and when they couldn't get them to produce, has prepared to deport them.

It doesn't matter if a Congressman or a Senator intervened, as they did in this case. ICE and DHS apparently have little to fear from congressional inquiry. They are in a bureaucratic war to justify their existence, and in DC, it's still, in the Obama years, all about terrorism.

Take a look at ICE's own website, where it touts itself as "A Federal Leader in Combating Terrorism."

As the second largest federal contributor to the nationwide network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plays a critical role in protecting the country against the threat of terrorism. With agents assigned to counter-terrorism investigations across the United States and around the world, ICE lends its expertise in enforcing immigration and customs laws to the over 100 JTTFs to investigate, detect, interdict, prosecute and remove terrorists and to dismantle terrorist organizations.

What are the JTTFs?

Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are small cells of highly trained, locally based, passionately committed investigators, analysts, linguists, SWAT experts, and other specialists from dozens of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is a multi-agency effort led by the Justice Department and FBI designed to combine the resources of federal, state, and local law enforcement.

The picture is clear: ICE wants its seat at the table with the other 40 or so agencies now associated with the national JTTFs. It's like a big assembly line feeding raw intel to the FBI and Department of Justice, and what matters is that you keep producing. The quality of the intelligence, as evidenced by the attempt to squeeze "terrorism" "tips" out of the hapless and unconnected Mayas, is evidently not so important. What is important is that everyone get paid and the gravy train keep rolling.

"We're Going to Change Your Brain"

The saddest thing in the O'Neill story is to read about the impotence members of Congress have when soliciting the protection of their constituents with agencies from the executive branch.

But the scariest thing is to reflect upon similarities between the ICE/Mayas case and the torture of prisoners in the "black sites", rendition hellholes, Guantanamo and Bagram. Rather than the use of blackmail and extortion to coerce informants to produce bogus reports about terrorism, the U.S. abroad has resorted to outright torture.

The torture of prisoners like Binyam Mohamed -- much in the news lately with the revelations by UK judges that Mohamed was subjected to CIA "enhanced interrogation technique"-style torture as early as March 2002 -- was not about, or at least not solely about, the collection of information. It was about the manufacture of information, including false confessions and fingering others for prosecution or further torture. In an interview a few years back with Binyam Mohamed's attorney, Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve:

Binyam explained that, between the savage beatings and the razor cuts to his penis, his torturers “would tell me what to say.” He added that even towards the end of his time in Morocco, they were still “training me what to say,” and one of them told him, “We’re going to change your brain.”

This emphasis on brainwashing -- for that is the popular terminology for such an assault on the psyche of a prisoner -- is a key component of the kind of psychological torture that was researched by both the United Kingdom and the United States in the years following World War II. It highlighted the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, stress positions, manipulation of the environment, of food, the use of humiliation and both sensory deprivation and sensory overload upon the prisoner. The idea was to overwhelm the nervous system and make a human being collapse without a blow being made, without scars, without evidence usable in court.

In an article at Truthout by H.P. Albarelli and Jeff Kaye, the connections between the old CIA mind control and torture research programs and those of today are documented. The conclusion is that radical change is needed if these crimes are not to consume our nation:

The allegations of drugging by Mohamed and other prisoners are redolent of the use of hallucinogenic and other powerful mind altering drugs by the U.S. in its Artichoke, MK-ULTRA and other programs....

The CIA has been accused of involvement in continuing interrogation experimentation upon prisoners. The recent release of the previously censored summary of Mohamed's treatment in Pakistan notes that "The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed." As Stephen Soldz notes in an article on the British court revelations, "Why were these effects being 'carefully observed' unless to determine their effectiveness in order to see whether they should be inflicted used upon others?".... The role of doctors, psychologists, and other medical professionals in the CIA/DoD torture program has been condemned by a number of individuals in their respective fields, and by organizations such as Center for Constitutional Rights and Physicians for Human Rights....

This country needs a clear and definite accounting of its past and present use of torture. Like a universal acid, torture breaks down the sinews of its victims, and in the process, the links between people and their government are transformed into the naked exercise of pure sadistic power of rulers over the ruled. The very purpose of civilization is atomized in the process. We need a full, open and thorough public investigation into the entire history of the torture program, with full power to subpoena, and to refer those who shall be held accountable for prosecution under the due process of law.

Birth of a Whitewash: Who Testified at Leahy Commission Torture Hearings?

There has been plenty of controversy on the issue of conducting a Congressional or independent investigation into the interrogations policy and torture activities of the Bush administration over the last seven or eight years.

One of the primary worries by those who oppose a "truth and reconciliation"-style investigation is that it would preempt possible prosecutions, or at worst, be a cover-up of some of the worst crimes involved. Those who favor such an investigation believe that is only with a broad investigation will all the information really be unearthed.

The hearing today by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- "Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry" -- chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), was called to explore options for investigating past torture and counter-terrorism policy. The committee called six witnesses, some for, some against such an investigation. But a close look at the backgrounds and affiliations of even most of the pro-investigation witnesses should give us deep pause, and ask what kind of commission are we being set up for?

The witnesses included some out and out conservatives, or individuals dubious about the investigatory process -- men like David B. Rivkin, Jr., who opposes the investigation, and supported most of Bush's program, such as suspension of Geneva rights for "enemy combatants", and Jeremy Rabkin, who wrote, After Guantanamo: The War Over the Geneva Convention" in a collection of essays edited by cold warrior ex-CIA chief R. James Woolsey.

The other four witnesses were a mixed bag. They appeared to believe the Bush administration had gone way overboard after 9/11, at least when it came to treatment of prisoners. Three of the four witnesses have background that make them dubious reporters, and argue, as well, that they may have another agenda they wish to advance. These three -- Thomas Pickering, Vice Admiral Lee Gunn (Ret.), and John J. Farmer, Jr. -- all have either gone on the record with far-right views on the "war on terror", or have associations with actions by the government that themselves are associated with torture.

Let me provide what evidence I have collected in a relatively short period of time. It is not definitive, but I think enough to give serious pause to consider just how this most important discussion is proceeding at the congressional level.

Our Man in El Salvador: Death Squads, Rigged Elections, and Iran/Contra

Thomas Pickering has a history as a reliable agent for murderous U.S. foreign policy. This is from an op-ed at the Council of Foreign Relations (all emphases in this posting are added, unless otherwise noted):

Thomas Pickering, who was ambassador to El Salvador from 1983 to 1985, says that, while it was U.S. policy to publicly denounce the death squads, their “kind of tactics [were] tacitly supported by the U.S. government, even though [they] were freelance.” Other analysts are more blunt. “We did back the guys who went after the bad guys,” says Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985. “And [we] defined ‘bad guys’ pretty broadly.” According to William Leo Grande, a professor at American University and the author of a major study of the conflict, Washington knew that the intelligence it passed to the Salvadoran government eventually made its way to the paramilitaries. “We did support the guys who organized them,” he says, “so it’s a little precious to deny that we supported the death squads themselves.”

Pickering also got caught up in a dispute between mob political cliques in the U.S. and El Salvador, when Sen. Jesse Helms, who was aligned with his protege the torturer Roberto D’Aubuisson and his ARENA party, spilled the means on a CIA election manipulation to put their man, Jose Napoleon Duarte in as president, during a raging civil war with tens of thousands targeted by death squads and torturers.

As a result, enraged D’Aubuisson supporters plotted to kill U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Mr. Helms sent a letter to these partisans that said:

Ambassador Pickering has been the leader of the death squads against democracy. Mr. Pickering has used his diplomatic capacity to strangle liberty during the night.

Senator Helms was censured by the Senate for conducting his own foreign policy. Luckily, Ambassador Pickering escaped murder.

Thomas Pickering started his career working in the intelligence field. “Between 1959 and 1961, Ambassador Pickering served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department…” (State Dept bio)

Note that in a 1988 New York Times article, Pickering was fingered as one of the Iran-Contra enablers, passing along appeals for weapons from the Contras to Oliver North, and never reporting it, despite the fact such assistance was supposedly illegal at the time. Pickering was then ambassador to El Salvador, and up to his ears in death squads, CIA electoral manipulations, and a counter-insurgency bombing campaign that killed thousands and made refugees of many thousands more.

Pickering and his ilk are not men to be trusted. They are brought in here for one reason only: they are “fixers”, like the guys the mob brings in to clean up the mess after the hit’s been done. Nell, whose initial comment at Emptywheel's live blogging diary at Firedoglake spurred this entry of mine, put it this way:

Leahy has lined up respected establishment operatives (aka reliable tools of imperial foreign policy) to push for a commission of inquiry. I actually agree with most of Pickering’s testimony, especially about leaving the door open for prosecution and therefore being very sparing with grants of limited immunity.

But Pickering’s presence, particularly as he appeared today to represent the outermost limit of opinion among this crop of witnesses, signals to me as strongly as anything can that this commission will play the same role as “plucky reformer” Napoleon Duarte’s “fragile democracy” played in El Salvador during Amb. Pickering’s stint there: a crowd-pleasing facade created to hide the continuation of the same poisonous policy.

More of the Usual Suspects: Gunn

Vice Admiral (ret.) Lee Gunn is presented to the committee as President of the American Security Project. He also is president of their Institute of Public Research at CNA Corporation, a federally funded research and development center in Washington, D.C. [CNA stands for Center for Naval Analyses, as I discovered elsewhere; it doesn't say so at their website.] IPR-CNA works on nice and reform-like programs, though a large part of IPR's work is consultation on "homeland security operations and strategic policy development." That would include papers done under Gunn's division, such as "SMART Policing":

As part of the recent paradigm shift towards counter-terrorism, police are adopting intelligence led policing strategies (sometimes referred to as “information-led policing”) which have sought to use information analysis and intelligence more strategically to guide leadership decision making and law enforcement operations. And more recently, police departments in the higher risk urban areas have also begun to make more extensive use of electronic surveillance....

Many jurisdictions are already employing some SMART policing approaches, such as the use of new technologies for more efficient data collection and display, information sharing, and data analysis. SMART policing programs can be grown in law enforcement agencies across the country through a comprehensive, federally-driven, national technical assistance program.

This kind of "policing", highlighted by pervasive use of cameras, ethnic profiling, data mining, attacks upon the Fourth Amendment, and "Electronic surveillance technologies that employ software capable of identifying behavioral anomalies," among other police state techniques.

But Gunn's association with CNA bespeaks even more troubling associations. Down the hall from IPR, so to speak, at CNA’s Stability and Development Program, part of CNA Strategic Studies, we find some interesting connections with major counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dr. Carter Malkasian, formerly assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) as an advisor on counterinsurgency, directs the Stability and Development Program, which focuses on counterinsurgency, irregular warfare, and post-conflict reconstruction. The team provides objective, analytic perspectives—grounded in an understanding of actual operations—to support decision-makers charged with planning and conducting security and development operations.

The range of issues includes: insurgency and counterinsurgency, ethnic conflict, development of indigenous forces, economic development of war-torn states, “Phase IV” reconstruction efforts, and the establishment of political institutions.

The team most recently spent time on the ground in Afghanistan advising Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).

What are PRTs?

The Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are “non-kinetic” operations carried out jointly by small number of lightly armed military personnel and civilian staff from the diplomatic community and development agencies to promote governance, security and reconstruction throughout the post-9.11 Afghanistan and Iraq. PRTs can be characterized in two ways: one as a miniature of multidimensional peacekeeping operations or “peacekeeping-lite,”and the other as an extended civil-military operation center (CMOC) or “super-CMOC.”

And the PRTs have some questionable activities, beyond humanitarian work:

The PRTs have critics in the international aid community. A recent analysis from the think tank Overseas Development Institute, said “In Afghanistan, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) were perceived as blurring the lines between humanitarian and military action.”

Amnesty International ran across some shady operations conducted by some of the PRTs that involved torture:

Amnesty International is concerned that ISAF troops from New Zealand operating in Afghanistan and particularly the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) could be involved in transferring detainees to Afghan security forces.

While New Zealand was not one of those countries surveyed in the AI report, NZ is a participant in the ISAF and has a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan.... “The NZ PRT (107 personnel as of October 2007) Bamyan is tasked with maintaining security in Bamyan Province. It does this by conducting frequent presence patrols throughout the province.”, [sic] may apprehend and transfer detainees,” says Amnesty International Spokesperson Gary Reese.

In March this year, Amnesty International raised our concerns to Hon Phil Goff, Minister of Defence, that the 50-70 detainees handed over to U.S. forces by the NZ SAS could be subject to torture at Guantanamo Bay or other secret detention centres in a third country (through the US practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’).

What happens to those transferred from PRTs operating in Afghanistan to Afghan security forces? They are almost certainly tortured.

Scores of NDS detainees, some arrested arbitrarily and detained incommunicado, that is without access to defence lawyers, families, courts or other outside bodies, have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including being whipped, exposed to extreme cold, deprived of food and shocked with electrical probes.

Saying all this does not mean that Vice Adm. Gunn is somehow personally involved in torture. But his connection with an agency that is directly involved in activities advising military activities that themselves have been associated with torture makes him a dubious witness, to be sure. At least someone on the Judiciary Committee should have asked him about such links. No one did.

In any case, what we are witnessing is a corralling of all establishment criticism of the interrogations torture, and other crimes of the Bush administration by individuals highly invested in maintaining the legitimacy of U.S. military policy as a whole, including its pacification operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is precisely these operations that involved the mass round-up of prisoners, thousands of whom were and many still remain imprisoned, and an untold number tortured.

More of the Usual Suspects: Farmer

The last of today's witnesses to be examined here is John Farmer, Jr.

Why is this guy testifying? Because he knew how to keep criticism of Giuliani toned down at the 9/11 commission? What’s his view on imprisoning “terrorists”? Does anyone remember his op-ed in the New York Times last year? In the name of reform of how “terrorists” have been treated by the criminal courts, and understanding how the Bushistas twisted criminal law into something unlawful, Farmer doesn’t propose an end to that only. No, he wants to create a new system of preventive detention!

A closer look at the Padilla case and other terrorism prosecutions reveals, to the contrary, that the continued reliance on our criminal justice system as the main domestic weapon in the struggle against terrorism fails on two counts: it threatens not only to leave our nation unprotected but also to corrupt the foundations of the criminal law itself.

The use of the criminal law in terrorist cases has never been an easy fit. After all, the primary purpose of counterterrorism is the prevention of future acts, while the criminal law has developed primarily to punish conduct that has already occurred. The question raised by the Padilla trial is whether a case about an attack that never actually happened can be tried in the criminal courts without transforming the nature of that system itself.

The answer is no. In order to make the criminal justice system an effective weapon, we have already started extending the reach of criminal statutes to conduct that has never before been punishable as a crime….

It is time to stop pretending that the criminal justice system is a viable primary option for preventing terrorism. The Bush administration should propose and Congress should pass legislation allowing for preventive detention in future terrorism cases like that of Mr. Padilla. It is the best way to ensure both the integrity of our criminal law and the safety of our nation.

Rivkin, Rabkin, Pickering, Nunn, and Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr. Besides Schwarz, who works with the distinguished legal civil liberties-oriented Brennan Center for Justice, this was a stacked list of witnesses, with the majority supporters of the "war on terror" and "homeland security" schemes that are anti-democratic. In the case of Pickering, we have some implicated in collaboration with those who committed exactly the same types of crimes the commission is supposed to address. What a farce! I cannot think of words of base calumny strong enough.

If this is the direction this commission is headed, then it should be boycotted. While I can support the direction an organization like Physicians for Human Rights wants to take such a torture investigation (see their letter to Sen. Leahy, PDF, from earlier today), I think that establishment human rights organization and liberals in general underestimate the entrenched nature of the powers who allowed torture to take place, and have great investment in maintaining the inviolability of the right of the state to use coercive force.

My case study for this -- and it's starting to look less like a cause, than now, sadly, a case study -- is the indifference with which the political elite treated the exposure of the Army Field Manual as riddled with abusive interrogation techniques, amounting to torture. Outside of a handful of blogs and commentators, and a few human rights organizations, including PHR and Center for Constitutional Rights, the issue has gone dead in the water. No one in Congress seems interested. They'd much rather listen to Thomas Pickering, or even David Rivkin.

I recommend my readers go to CCR's webpage on Prosecutions and Accountability and follow the action steps there. They include a letter that can be signed to Sen. Leahy:

We are also calling upon Sen. Patrick Leahy, who is holding a hearing on March 4 of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss a “truth commission” to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration, to support prosecutions for those government officials who violated the law. Sign a letter to Sen. Leahy and the Judiciary Committee calling for them to support prosecutions, and to oppose any immunity for the architects of these torture programs.

Five Remarkable Interviews in "The Warning"

The producers of a unique documentary sent me a DVD copy of their independent documentary, "The Warning." They hoped they would get a good review, and they needn't have worried.

"The Warning," written, produced, and directed by Joseph P. Sottile, consists entirely of interviews with five well-known liberal authors (see below). Rather than questions and answers, the interviewees are allowed to speak for themselves. Occasionally, they even read appropriate selections from their works.

But rather than a boring word fest, the seriousness of the work gives it a riveting feel. The subject is nothing less than the descent of the United States into a ruthless totalitarian state, which relies on state torture, an imperial executive, widespread surveillance, the conscious use of fear-laden propaganda, a docile press, and the influence of a radical Christian core of believers to spread the program in institutions throughout civil society.

If we are not yet a fascist state -- and the film steps back from going that far -- we are clearly moving towards that. I would add that the election of Barack Obama may have slowed that descent, but to date, all the factors behind it remain in place, particularly what Kennedy in the film calls "the merger of state and corporate power."

The following text comes from the film's website (emphases in original):

Terrorism. Cronyism. Surveillance. The suspension of basic Constitutional protections. The Patriot Act. Pre-emptive War. Bad intelligence. Torture. Corporate power. Mercenaries. Occupation. The Unitary Executive. Neo-Cons. A never-ending war against "terror."

Something very strange has happened in America. Since 2001, America has taken a radical turn.

Five authors stood up and spoke truth to power, exposing shocking trends towards a police state, an accelerated corporate integration with the state and the blatant subversion of the U. S. Constitution.

Five mavericks asked questions the mainstream media refused to ask, and looked into the dark corners of a closing democracy, a changing economy and growing empire.

* Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
* Naomi Wolf: The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
* Chris Hedges: American Fascists; the Christian Right and the War on America
* Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
* Joe Conason: It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush

They expose the forces at work in the transformation of our democracy into a Unitary Executive that uses fear, emergency powers and the supremacy of military command to gather power into the office of the Presidency. The Warning traces the radical steps America had taken toward a new, wholly unconstitutional form of American government.

* The rise of super-patriotism
* Disdain for the importance of human rights and the rule of law
* Use of torture and secret prisons
* Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
* Suppression of dissent
* A controlled mass media
* Obsession with national security
* Religion and ruling elite tied together
* Power of corporations protected
* Rampant cronyism and corruption
* Fraudulent elections

These steps lead to a potential tipping point, from democracy to something different. Something ominous.

T2PTV has created an affiliate program for the film for interested webmasters. I have chosen not to participate, in part because I want to keep this website ad free, but also because I'd rather all monies for this film go to its intrepid makers and marketers. The film is one I can recommend honestly, and because its message is important.

More Government Fear-mongering: "The World at Risk"

The world has been at risk since the reckless U.S. rulers decided to unleash the atomic bomb on tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, they have built the most mighty arsenal of destruction as the world has ever seen. But then, this short essay is about the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism.

As the BBC reported:

The bi-partisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism was set up after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Its report is due to be presented to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday, but its contents have already been widely reported in the US media.

It says terrorists are "likely" to stage a nuclear or biological weapons attack somewhere in the world in the next five years.

Without urgent action, "it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013," the commission says.

The sharp analysts at Moon of Alabama noticed that the cracker-jack folks who put together the report, to be delivered today to Jack Bauer of CTC Vice-President-elect Joe Biden, forgot to provide corroborating evidence for their claims about near-term terrorist attack.

The 132 pages include not one paragraph or line which makes a calculation, quantitative or qualitative, that would allow one to come to the conclusion that the executive summary asserts....

It makes for scaremongering headlines as the media, like usual, do not care to really look into these issues.

Good headlines... and paperback book sales! Vintage Books, a division of Random House, has announced an "instant" book will be published of the report. At $10.95, it will only be, uh, $10.95 more than the free version published online.

Better reading than the report are the commissioner and staff biographies of those who worked on this document. They are almost all drawn from the orbit of the defense and intelligence industries. A fair number have personal or organizational ties to the GOP, Paul Wolfowitz, and right-wing think tanks. Here's a sampling:

Chair: Republican Senator Bob Graham, a 10-year member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Vice Chair: Republican Senator Jim Talent, an eight-year member of the House Armed Services Committee, and currently "a Distinguished Fellow at the Washington, DC, based Heritage Foundation where he specializes in military readiness issues and welfare reform"

The other commissioners include Robin Cleveland, "a former close advisor to Paul Wolfowitz," and caught up in the Wolfowitz World Bank Scandal; Henry Sokolski, who "worked on nonproliferation issues under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz"; former GWB assistant secretary of state Stephen G. Rademaker, and also "Policy Director for National Security Affairs and Senior Counsel for Sen. Bill Frist".

Of course, there are some Democratic Party types, drawn from its Clinton-centrist wing, like Ambassador Wendy Sherman, and former Congressman Tim Roemer, a former member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and now president of the Center for National Policy.

The work of these commissions is really done, as everyone knows, by staff, and it is worth perusing who some of these staff members were (not inclusive):

Evelyn Farkas, Ph. D, Executive Director
Former Professional Staff Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Associate Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University.

Eric Fanning, Deputy Director
Former Senior Vice President for Strategic Development at Business Executives for National Security, and special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Raj De, General Counsel
Partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the international law firm Mayer Brown LLP. Former Counsel to the Special Bi-Partisan Staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the “9/11 Commission”)....

Stephen Heil, Professional Staff Member
Senior Intelligence Officer for the Counterproliferation Support Office at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Joseph Helman, Ph.D., Director for Intelligence
Member of the Senior National Intelligence Service in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Adam Jones, Professional Staff Member
Former Chief Speechwriter in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Abraham Kanter, Staff Assistant
Former research consultant for Department of Defense-funded analysis research institute. Served with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Neal A. Pollard, Director for Counterterrorism
Former Dynamic Planning Branch Chief and Deputy Group Chief, Global Engagement, National Counterterrorism Center. Adjunct Professor of Microbiology, and former International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Co-founder and former Board Director, Terrorism Research Center....

William Reed, Professional Staff Member
Analyst and Presidential Management Fellow in the Department of Homeland Security Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation. Former submarine officer in the U.S. Navy.

Constance T. Rybka, Chief of Security
Detailed from the Intelligence Community. Former senior chemical and biological warfare analyst. Retired U.S. Army Officer.

Wade R. Sharp, Security Officer
Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, providing security support services to the Office of Security & Counterintelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Gathered from the intelligence and security/defense worlds, populated by right wing Republicans and centrist and right-wing Democrats, the outcome of the commission's "report" was foreordained. To have expected anything different or unbiased from this crew -- whose paychecks depend on the perpetuity of the "war on terror" and fear-mongering -- would be akin to an expectation that the foxes would vote themselves out of the hen-house.

The timing of the publication of this report, set as December 2008 some time ago, was meant to both escape influencing the presidential election, but also to orient the incoming president, whoever that was to be, about what his or her marching orders were to be when it came to financing and staffing the myriad departments, offices, and committees whose existence depends on keeping the mighty U.S. war and intelligence industries chugging along.

A major section of the report describes the problem of nuclear proliferation. No major change in policy is noted, as the report argues for greater cooperation with Russia on the issue. It also argues that Iran and North Korea nuclear weapons programs, whatever they may be, constitute a serious danger and must be stopped. (When it comes to terrorism, Pakistan is marked as the most dangerous state.)

If you want a short-hand version of how the U.S. elites see the world, this is an interesting report. If you want to know about how the world really is, and who or what constitutes a threat, then don't read this fairy tale. You'll find nothing in it about threats of NATO expansionism even further into the former Soviet Union, about placing forward missiles in Poland, or advanced radar systems in the Czech Republic. You'll read nary a word about the largest stock of nuclear weapons in the world, and held by a country, furthermore, that has shown a readiness to use them.

But you can read about it here:

The United States has produced about 70,000 nuclear weapons of 72 major types since their invention. At the end of the Cold War in 1991 the United States had an active arsenal of some 23,000 weapons of 26 major types. Since that time actual nuclear warhead production has been completely shut down in the U.S., although warhead modification, retrofit, and maintenance activities continue. Much of the original nuclear weapons manufacturing infrastructure has been dismantled, and the focus of the remaining nuclear infrastructure has shifted to maintaining and extending the life of the remaining weapons, as well as dismantling surplus weapons.

The only strategic arms treaties still in force between the U.S. and the Russian Federation is the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (also called "the Moscow Treaty," the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT) and the START I treaty, which will expire in December 2009....

Actual production of new warheads halted in 1989. In January 1997, the first new weapon modification since the production shutdown entered service - the B61 Mod 11 (B61-11) ground penetrating ("bunker busting") bomb. This was a modification of B61 Mod 7s that were already in the stockpile. Remanufacture and updating of subsystems of existing weapons is on-going as part of a stockpile Life-Extension Program (LEP).

Of course, the nuclear weapons programs of Russia, Great Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan and India -- and now North Korea -- remain dangers to the world, though the size of the U.S. arsenal and its newer "tactical" weaponry, like the bunker-buster nuclear device, remain among the most dangerous proliferation weapons in the world. The smaller states have nowhere near the number of weapons as the U.S. and Russia, but remain dangerous nonetheless.

It's U.S. policy to be supreme in warfare (masqueraded by the word "defense"), and that includes nuclear weapons. As long as the world political system is made up of competing nation-states, based on an exploitative system that ensures the perpetuation of mass poverty, and human nature remains what it is, the destruction of the world through nuclear war remains the number one threat to humanity, and much of life on earth. While only a whisper of a hope at this point, the idea that the world will forgo competition and take up a cooperative transnational socialist system with a planned economy, and the aim of enhancing the lives of all of earth's denizens, remains our only hope. But the elites will never simply forgo profits and the insanity of power. Ultimately it will have to be taken from them, and only a mass democratic socialist party will have the power and wherewithal to do that. And that still remains, as previously noted, a whisper of a hope, wrapped in a dream.

A Woman Buried Alive: Update on the Siddiqui Case

More details are emerging on the news that purported Al Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Arrested last summer, and wounded after supposedly grabbing for a U.S. soldier's rifle, Siddiqui was given a Forensic Evaluation Report at FMC Carsville Texas Hospital, where she is currently held. This former neuroscientist is now said to be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings before her, and to be openly delusional.

The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Siddiqui's case denied in court NGO claims that the former MIT and Brandeis alumna was tortured or abducted by U.S. forces. He maintains there's not "a shred of evidence" Dr. Siddiqui was abused in any way.

He said it was more likely that Siddiqui disappeared in 2003 because she went into hiding after marrying an al-Qaida operative who helped facilitate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and because she knew 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

[Prosecutor David] Raskin spoke at a hearing Wednesday to discuss a psychologist's conclusion that Siddiqui, 36, is mentally unfit for trial. She is being held at a Texas facility after she was brought to the United States in August to face attempted murder and assault charges.

Raskin also denied the U.S. had anything to do with the disappearance of Siddiqui's three children. He claimed a 12-year-old found with Aafia at the time of her arrest in Afghanistan was her oldest son. While this boy is said to be now with his grandmother, the U.S. attorney was vague about the others, saying only the government denied they had been abducted.

We don't know what really happened to Dr. Siddiqui's children. They are missing, thousands of miles away, or dead. Yet according to her attorney, Aafia is under the delusion that two of her children are with her, that she lives with them.

According to the AP report (linked above), Dr. Siddiqui's attorney, Elizabeth Fink, says her client's oldest son is "heavily medicated because he is seriously disturbed and under the care of a psychiatrist." The second oldest is believed dead, and the fate of the youngest child is unknown. (Siddique's attorney, Fink, is a well-known civil liberties lawyer, a protege of William Kunstler. Most recently, she "persuaded a judge to spare Lynne Stewart, the radical attorney convicted of conspiracy for passing messages for [an accused] terrorist client, of a lengthy prison term.")

Meanwhile, Associated Press of Pakistan has reported that the Pakistan embassy in Washington has asked the United States to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui to Pakistan for health and rehabilitation purposes. According to another paper out of Islamabad, the request is considered a long-shot. It's not clear that Siddiqui would be treated well in Pakistani custody either, given the accusations of connection, or even her relation by marriage to Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

That family connection between Siddiqui and KSM raises large question marks concerning her treatment by U.S. forces and the legal system. In the mind-boggling mistreatment of this devoutly religious woman, the U.S. (and perhaps their Pakistani allies) may wish to make a statement to the jihadists that not only will they be hunted down, but any sympathetic family members will be as well. And if innocent children get in the way... well, who knows? Who knows, for instance, what happened to the children of KSM himself, taken from his house when he was arrested and disappeared under CIA/Pakistani custody? Who in America, obsessed otherwise with missing children and Amber Alerts, really cares what happened to these children?

A Ghost Prisoner?

According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report on "Ghost Prisoners" of the CIA:

The Pakistani authorities have made no secret of the fact that they have handed over several hundred terrorism suspects to the United States, boasting of the arrests and transfers as proof of Pakistan’s cooperation in US counterterrorism efforts. While the majority of these detainees were transferred into US military custody in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo,49 or were transported to third countries via the CIA’s rendition program,50 some substantial number of them disappeared into CIA custody.

Was Siddiqui tortured unto insanity in at Baghram or at a CIA black site prison? Here's an account from earlier this year, prior to Siddiqui's "recapture" (emphasis is added):

Dr. Afia Siddiqui left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, Punjab province, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.

A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. The mother of the victim, Mrs. Ismat (who has since passed away) termed the NBC report absurd. She went on to say that Dr. Afia is a neurological scientist and has been living with her husband, Amjad, in the USA for several years.

On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia’s arrest he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding....

Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.

Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley [link added], called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Is it any coincidence that we hear "Prisoner 650" had "lost her mind" and the fact that a U.S. state forensic examiner has found Dr. Siddiqui unfit mentally to stand trial? Those who know the judicial system know that is very rare to receive that diagnosis and escape, or be denied, trial. You have to be very, very mentally impaired for that to happen. How did this brilliant woman become a hallucinating ghost of a human being? What tortures did she endure? Was she Prisoner 650, raped repeatedly in a CIA prison? Recent events surely strengthen that hypothesis.

It sickens the heart and chills the soul to think that such things can happen, and that the country I live in helped perpetrate such crimes, and that the millions of citizens who inhabit this country would stand by and let this and equally horrific crimes go unanswered in court of justice or in the halls of its representative Congress.

"Murder will out," Shakespeare famously said. The tell-tale heart we read about in Edgar Allen Poe's famous story beats in us all, and the shards of a broken conscience are scattered across the landscape of our society's recovery. There will be no "change," they cry out, not until we have rendered justice and restored law, and taken our victims out of the torture pit, and tried to restore them to life.

"The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui" (Updated)

I've been meaning to write my own essay on this important story for some time. Being strapped for time these days, I'm thankful to Alexa at Never In Our Names for doing a great job in her rendition of The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Dr. Siddiqui was "a MIT and Brandeis alumna, originally from Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. In 2004, she was accused by the United States Government of being "associated with al-Qaeda". In March 2003, Siddiqui went missing along with her three children." Siddiqui essentially disappeared, along with her children -- probably "ghost prisoners" of the CIA -- and then surprisingly turned up under arrest in Ghazni, Afghanistan, although the circumstances of her appearance and arrest are a subject of much dispute.

I continue, quoting from Alexa's story (which should be read in its entirety):

Five years after she vanished from her parents' home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui appeared in a New York court in August, accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan.

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ.

The Official Story is that Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor's office in Afghanistan's Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book "Anarchist's Arsenal" and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the (PDF) Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor's house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, "thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her". The boy remained in police custody.

Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions, especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003, human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities strongly denied Siddiqui was in custody, and according to the New York Times, military and intelligence officials believed her to be in Pakistan until her arrest in Afghanistan in July.

Protests have taken place in Karachi, Lahore and even outside the court in Manhattan where Siddiqui appeared. The anger is directed as much, if not more, at the Pakistani government and its agencies who are accused of handing over Siddiqui to the United States as at Washington itself.

There are online petitions seeking Siddiqui's release and others warning this is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many others at risk. Comments on blogs reflect anger, shame and helplessness to undo what many see as a terrible wrong done to her.

Count me in on that. Aafia went to MIT and Brandeis, married a Brigham and Women's physician, made her home in Boston, cared for her children, and raised money for charities. Aafia Siddiqui was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist.

Everything about the Siddiqui case smells. Alexa quotes defense attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, courtesy of Cage Prisoners:

"We do know she was at Bagram for a long time. It was a long time. According to my client she was there for years and she was held in American custody; her treatment was horrendous."

The story continues:

On September 3, Siddiqi, 36, was produced before a federal grand jury in New York, which indicted her for possession of handwritten notes referring to a 'mass casualty attack' at various prominent locations in the US, such as Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge.

However, activists and her family believe that she is being targeted. "An ordinary Pakistani [has been] wrongfully taken to a foreign country without established judicial processes," said Dr Fouzia Siddiqui, Aafia's elder sister. Even the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has insisted that she was picked up by a Pakistani intelligence agency and handed over to the US authorities.

The picture that was released when she was brought to the court in New York showed a woman who seemed to have experienced years of torture - a broken and badly fixed nose, made up teeth, and crumbled lips. The HRCP described her as a person "almost as if on the deathbed". Gaunt, wounded, she was unable to even walk by herself....

... Aafia has been suffering and in pain in US prison for more than three months now. There are fears that she is now being brainwashed in order to render her incapable of giving evidence against any atrocities that might have been committed against her....

Two children of the victim are still missing. If they are still alive then it is possible that they are being used as hostages to pressure her. Allegations of her illegal detention, rape, etc, and the abduction of her children, are going unaddressed. Can she get justice from the US legal system?

That question will arise only after a case is brought up to seek justice for her.

The case of Aafia Siddiqui is especially heart-rending and infuriating. Nothing speaks to the inherent racism of the U.S. treatment of people from the Middle East and East Asia than the brutal indifference accompanying the disappearance of this mother's children, lost in U.S. custody, and likely held hostage. Where is the outrage in the U.S. press, who cried crocodile tears not so long ago about the way Michael Jackson held his child out a window to an admiring throng? Whose T.V. sets are filled with stories about dangers to "our" children, with "Amber Alerts", and fake concern about children and drugs? Siddiqui and her children are invisible to the Americans.

I thank Alexa at Never In Our Names for keeping hope for Dr. Siddiqui alive, and shining a bright light of anger and indignation into the darkest shadows of the U.S. "war on terror."

UPDATE: Not long after posting this article, ABC News reported that a mental health examination of Dr. Siddiqui in conjunction with her trial in New York federal court found the doctor to be mentally unfit to stand trial.

According to a Nov. 6, 2008, confidential forensic examination from a federal medical center in Carswell, Texas, mental health professionals have concluded, "Ms. Siddiqui is not currently competent to proceed as a result of her mental disease, which renders her unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense."

An excerpt of the evaluation was mentioned in the judge's order calling for a Wednesday hearing to address her mental health to stand trial.

My god, what has happened to this woman? How have they destroyed her?

Americans should demand an immediate investigation into the handling of the investigation, arrest, treatment under custody, and judicial hearings around Dr. Siddiqui.

How You Can Help: A Letter to the Convening Authority, Guantanamo

The following letter has been faxed to the defense counsel of Mohammed Jawad, currently due to stand trial as part of the military tribunal process at Guantanamo. A juvenile when arrested in Afghanistan, Jawad's likely innocence, and his abuse at the hands of both Afghan and U.S. captors has been well documented. His attorney, Major David Frakt, is asking interested individuals and organizations to write similar letters on his client's behalf.

There is also a petition covering the primary details of the case, and asking for withdrawal and dismissal of charges against the former teenage combatant. I urgently ask my readers to at least consider signing the petition. A great wrong can be undone, if you help and take action.

The text of my letter:

September 7, 2008

The Honorable Susan J. Crawford
Convening Authority
Office of Military Commissions
1600 Defense Pentagon
Washington DC 20301-1600

Dear Madam Convening Authority,

I am writing in regards to the case of Mohammad Jawad. It is my understanding that you are currently considering a defense request for withdrawal and dismissal of charges on Mr. Jawad. I strongly support the defense motion.

This case has particular interest for me, as in my professional role as a licensed psychologist, I have worked with victims of torture from multiple countries around the world, both as a psychotherapist, and in a forensic role. I have been certified as an expert witness in the immigration court of the Department of Homeland Security.

According to multiple sources I have perused, Mr. Jawad has suffered from coercive interrogation and abusive conditions of incarceration, including during such time as he was a minor. I am not accusing the authorities of deliberately abusing Mr. Jawad at this time, but I am concerned about his mental condition. I believe he is held in solitary confinement in a windowless cell, subjected to 24-hour lighting and constant observation.

The following is my understanding of the treatment Mr. Jawad endured since his capture as a child soldier in Afghanistan in December 2002:

According to a recently released report by Amnesty International, USA: From ill-treatment to unfair trial. The case of Mohammed Jawad, child ‘enemy combatant', Afghan police coerced a confession out of the 16 or 17-year-old prisoner. He was transferred to U.S. custody at Baghram Airbase, where he put his thumbprint to a confession written in a language (Pashto) he could neither speak nor write. Jawad then, as a teenager, was "subjected to isolation, sleep deprivation, cruel use of restraints, hooding, forced standing, stress positions, and physical assaults as part of the interrogation process." Transferred to Guantanamo Naval Air Base, he was placed in isolation and repeatedly interrogated, all without recourse to legal counsel.

As a psychologist myself, I was horrified to read that young Jawad endured multiple episodes of 30-day isolation upon the "recommendation of a psychologist with Guantánamo’s Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) who suggested that he was feigning homesickness and depression as a technique to resist interrogations." Even after Mr. Jawad reportedly made a suicide attempt in December 2003, he was subjected to Guantanamo's "frequent flyer" program, which, according to a Washington Post article I read last month, consisted of moving Jawad and other prisoners "repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation."

While I am not an attorney, Madam Convening Authority, there are elements of the law under which Mr. Jawad is held that seem to advocate for a withdrawal of charges against him. I have heard that the Acting Chief Prosecutor responsible for swearing and forwarding the charges against Mohammad Jawad has testified he was unaware of any abuse of Mr. Jawad at the time charges were initially sworn, and has said since that, as a matter of personal ethics, he would not swear charges against someone he believed to have been tortured.

Then, there is the matter of Mr. Jawad's status as a child at the time the alleged crimes took place. (I say "alleged," since recent events call into question whether Mohammad's very culpability. Additionally, the charges were only filed against him five years after his incarceration.) Under international law, child soldiers are considered primarily to be victims of war, not war criminals (even unto age 18). The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasized that the right to be promptly charged and brought to trial within a reasonable time is something that should be especially emphasized in the case of a child. Mr. Jawad's rights have been violated as function of U.S. detention policy.

Nor is there any reason to believe Mr. Jawad is a "war criminal" (the primary purpose of the Military Tribunals being to prosecute "war crimes"). As the Amnesty report cited above makes clear, throwing a grenade is like any other attempt to kill a soldier in an armed conflict. It is not a crime of war unless the attempt to murder is "hors de combat," that is, against someone "not engaged in military action as a result of illness, injury, capture or surrender, or unless the method used to carry out the attempted killing violates the law of war." While I am no soldier, I believe use of a grenade, by whatever side of an armed conflict, against an armed opponent, is not a war crime.

Finally, I respectfully ask that you consider the following points:

· Mohammad Jawad is the only person charged under the Military Commissions Act (MCA) who has not been charged with terrorism, nor material support for terrorism, or even with conspiracy.

· Unique among those charged under the MCA, Mohammad Jawad is the only person is not even alleged to have any affiliation with al Qaida or the Taliban

· No one died in the attack allegedly perpetrated by Mohammad Jawad.

It is difficult for me to understand what purpose the prosecution of this young man currently serves. I believe the defense motion to withdraw and dismiss charges against Mohammad Jawad has legal merit, and certainly makes sense from a humanitarian point of view. I further hope that the Convening Authority will respond fairly and reasonably in the matter of any new evidence that comes to light which casts doubt on earlier decisions.

I thank you for your attention in this matter, and am confident that when you review all of the matters in extenuation and mitigation of Mr. Jawad's case, you will rule in favor of withdrawal and dismissal of charges.

Sincerely yours,

J---- K-----, Ph.D.
San Francisco, CA
September 7, 2008

Please, don't wait. GO SIGN THE PETITION NOW. And please note, if you are moved to write your own letter, please do not send it directly to Susan Crawford at the address I've noted in the letter. Instead, letters are to be sent to:

Major David Frakt
Office of Military Commissions - Defense
1099 14th St. NW. Ste 2000D
Washington DC 20005

Major Frakt will be delivering all materials, including letters and petition signatures directly to the Convening Authority after Friday, September 12 (the deadline). Letters can be faxed to (202)761-0510 (Attn: Major Frakt).

Sobriety & the U.S. Presidential Race

No, this is not a post about alcoholism, and the only drunkenness to which it might refer is the manic inebriation that comes with the exercise of great power.

As the U.S. presidential race settles into its pattern of opposing camps supposedly at great odds, especially every four years -- of conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, progressive versus reactionary -- it is good to be reminded that underneath all of the hullaballoo (and I agree it's hard not to be caught up in it, as detestable as Bush's GOP has been these last seven years), that nothing about this race will really change how the U.S. is run, or rather who runs it.

Along those lines, I'd like to refer to a succinct statement of this issue from Chris Floyd, who himself quotes the insightful Gore Vidal. Reading the following, inspired by Floyd's coverage of the U.S. intervention into Somalia and the subsequent human rights disaster that has followed, is like a splash of cold water, of stone cold sobriety regarding both the festivities and inanities of the past two convention weeks.

It's clear that no nation on earth will be allowed to organize its own society as it wishes, or work out its own internal conflicts, if the American elite decides they have some financial or strategic interest in the matter. The only nations immune to this power-mad interventionist philosophy are those who can strike back hard enough to upset the elite's apple cart. And thus we have Bush's "war on terror" -- which is, as we've often noted, simply an escalation of the long-running, bipartisan foreign policy of the "National Security State" that has ruled America for 60 years.

This year marks the anniversary of this coup d'etat: the 1947 "National Security Act." Writing on the 50th anniversary of this supplanting of the Republic, Gore Vidal wrote:

Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders.

Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media.

Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues... we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."

Here's another link for the Vidal quote. And for those who forgot what it's all about, here's another link to a time and place we forgot, but never left.

For more on Somalia, see my piece from earlier this year, Worse than Darfur: U.S. Proxy War in Somalia

U.S. Unfolds Gestapo-like Raids at GOP Convention

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies....

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the "federal agencies" acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Amy Goodman's article continues:

The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the Republican National Convention, as well as journalists and videographers documenting police actions at protests. Groups directly affected by the raids include Food Not Bombs, the RNC Welcoming Committee, I-Witness Video and Communities United Against Police Brutality.

By late afternoon, Goodman herself was under arrest in St. Paul, and reports were coming in that rubber bullets and tear gas were being used on a crowd at the SEIU Take Back Labor Day concert. The victims are said to include women and children. Meanwhile, a number of those arrested preemptively remain in jail. Bruce Nestor Nestor from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild explains how the preventative detentions were organized:

The raids were carried out by [Ramsey County] Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had been arguing for months that there needed to be a stronger law enforcement response, and he was being told that wasn’t necessary. And so, he sent his officers in, after doing intelligence gathering and infiltrating these groups.

And then, really what he did is he took common household items that you would find in any home in Minnesota—a hatchet, rope, glass bottles and rags—attached the label “anarchist” to the people who are living in the homes, and then raise this public fear that the anarchists were threatening violence, public disorder. But really, it’s taking a common household item, something you’d find anywhere, calling it an edged weapon and then attacking people for their political beliefs, that then is used to generate this public fear and keep activists detained...

Both the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed a motion with Judge Mark Wernick asking for "injunctive relief to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.”

Domestic Spying is a Danger to Democracy

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has detailed the role of domestic spying and the use of informants in the run up to the police assaults on demonstrators' homes:

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing....

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone.

The police actions in the Twin Cities follow the penning of protesters in Denver at the Democratic Party convention, and the resulting mass arrests and pepper spraying of demonstrators there. From Indymedia:

As the Democratic Party listened to speeches inside the Pepsi Center on the opening day of the convention, a few hundred protesters had gathered to march. The police arrived in riot gear, surrounded the protesters, blocking them in and firing pepper spray into the crowd. Some protesters tried to flee across the park, but they were met by dozens of police officers who boxed them in there, and nearly a hundred people were arrested.

The Denver police actions targeted not only leftists and other anti-capitalist protesters, but included ABC producer Asa Eslocker, seized for, as the Glenn Garvin at the Miami-Herald put it, "the crime of taking pictures of big-ticket Democratic Party donors."

Eslocker's camera crew was on a sidewalk outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, shooting video for a series of reports on the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention to air on ABC World News. The hotel told Eslocker to beat it; when he didn't, the cops handcuffed and hauled him off to the slam where he was charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order -- taking pictures of rich plutocrats evidently being against the law in Denver.

From Infomercial to Police State

The preemptive attacks against organizers of protests is a new tactic by the FBI and its police lackeys, upping what was already a serious escalation of repressive measures against lawful protest and demonstration. To put it plainly, they are, as Glenn Greenwald noted, "redolent of the worst tactics of a police state."

I would put it even more finely, they are the actions of a police state in ovo, or in its embryonic, beginning stages. This implies that such actions are not an aberration, but the initiation of sharper era of government repression. The St. Paul raids, as the arrests at the Democratic Convention in Denver, were meant to spike any large scale demonstrations against the two political parties that brought the world a war in Iraq that has killed over 600,000 Iraqis, over 4,000 U.S. dead, and over two million refugees.

One wonders if the raids aren't only meant to quell political protest, but also hide the fact that these giant, expensive party conventions are nothing more now than ersatz infomercials for the two political parties. The mini-drama over the roll call vote for the Democratic presidential nomination -- whether it would include the votes for Hillary Clinton, or not -- played out on the canvas of profound national historical ignorance.

Before 1980, most national conventions featured some kind of battle over a party's nomination, including a roll call of votes. Today, a banal totalitarianism of schmaltzy theme music and branded nominee roll out has replaced the rough-and-tumble of an earlier day of U.S. national party politics. But this is a banality backed by the policeman's truncheon and the informer's sinister ratting out. It is not banality, but the image of blandness in service of a deadly reality.

The reality behind the conventions is revealed in the white phosphorus-torched bodies of Fallujah, the tortured ghost prisoners of Baghram and Abu Ghraib, the now walled-off neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the decaying superstructure of America proper.

It is also revealed by the choice for GOP Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. With nothing to recommend her but her far-right wing credentials -- she opposes abortion for the raped or the victim of incest, she advocates teaching creationism, and, of course, she is for oil drilling in the disputed ANWAR territory in Alaska (while opposing federal protections for polar bears). The Palin nomination clearly shows it doesn't matter who is president, as the ruling powers in Langley, at the Pentagon, and at the board tables of America's energy, finance, and war-making industries, call the shots in the former land of the free.

A small crew of would-be protesters planning not insurrection, but to march with signs and chants against war, globalization, or whatever issue they felt important, were too threatening to the potentates running the United States, so they would have to be tear gassed, pepper gassed, penned in, rounded up and arrested, and finally, their homes invaded to prevent any protest from even taking place.

The simulacrum of democracy in America is now as fragile as the make-up on an aging dowager's face. Even a smile of irony could break the mask of placid self-assurance and smugness that has settled upon U.S. politics. Hundreds arrested at the conventions, and no protest from Barack Obama, or from supposed left-wing Democrats like Kucinich. To hope a Republican politician would speak up would be to invoke a science fiction world.

Hope Talk, War Talk

The war talk about Georgia and Russia, with its manifold lies and posturing, almost guarantees that aggressive U.S. foreign policy will continue, as Obama talks about escalating the Afghan war, and meanwhile, Cheney readies another trip to new NATO would-be vassal states, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine. The "war on terror" means a war on political dissent at home.

A lot of people are putting hope in the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. It is clear that he is not simply a man to be manipulated, as was George W. Bush, or his purported successor, John McCain (and his new running mate, Palin). But everything so far points to a Obama presidency that would try and effect some reforms at home, while engaging U.S. allies abroad to support the American imperial impulse abroad. The more aggressive the latter campaign, the more important quelling protest at home will become. Of course, the ruling powers would prefer a compliant puppet from the GOP ticket, but some within those same ruling circles would prefer someone smart, who has his or her pulse on the population, who wouldn't let the hubris of the rich and powerful go unchecked, and hurdle the U.S. down a reckless road. That's a good way to lose power, as French historians well know.

Those famous clips showing the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 -- in a city and state run by Democrats, during the presidential administration of yet another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson -- demonstrate that state repression is not the monopoly of one party alone.

All must demand the freeing of those arrested in Denver and St. Paul, and an immediate investigation into who ordered the police abuse.

UPDATE, 9:45pm:

The Washington Post is reporting that after three hours in policy custody Amy Goodman was charged with a misdemeanor and released. Her two Democracy Now! producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are still being held. Both are said to have been injured. Goodman is quoted:

"I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested," said Goodman. "I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in"....

"They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."

Democracy Now has published the following appeal, evidently prior to Goodman's release:

Ramsey County Sherrif Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

H/T to Jessical and feline at Docudharma.