Obama Administration

Lynne Stewart: Heroic Human Rights Lawyer Jailed
By Stephen Lendman

On November 20, New York Times writer Colin Moynihan broke the news headlining:

"Radical Lawyer Convicted of Aiding Terrorist Is Jailed," then saying:

"Defiant to the end as she embraced supporters outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Lynne F. Stewart, the radical lawyer known for defending unpopular clients, surrendered on Thursday to begin serving her 28-month sentence for assisting terrorism."

Fact check:

Stewart did what all attorneys should, but few, in fact, do - observe the American Bar Association's Model Rules saying all lawyers are obligated to:

"devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel."

Also to practice law ethically, morally and responsibly to assure everyone is afforded due process and judicial fairness in American courts. Sadly and disturbingly, Stewart was denied what she did for others heroically, unselfishly, and proudly. More on that below.

Stewart (prison number 53504-054) is now jailed at:

The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won't)
By Tom Engelhardt | Tom Dispatch.com

Sure, the quote in the over-title is only my fantasy. No one in Washington -- no less President Obama -- ever said, "This administration ended, rather than extended, two wars," and right now, it looks as if no one in an official capacity is likely to do so any time soon. It's common knowledge that a president -- but above all a Democratic president -- who tried to de-escalate a war like the one now expanding in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and withdraw American troops, would be so much domestic political dead meat.

This everyday bit of engrained Washington wisdom is, in fact, based on not a shred of evidence in the historical record. We do, however, know something about what could happen to a president who escalated a counterinsurgency war: Lyndon Johnson comes to mind for expanding his inherited war in Vietnam out of fear that he would be labeled the president who "lost" that country to the communists (as Harry Truman had supposedly "lost" China). And then there was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who -- incapable of rejecting Johnson's war policy -- lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon, a candidate pushing a fraudulent "peace with honor" formula for downsizing the war.

Still, we have no evidence about how American voters would deal with a president who didn't take the Johnson approach to a losing war. The only example might be John F. Kennedy, who reputedly pushed back against escalatory advice over Vietnam, and certainly did so against his military high command during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In both cases, however, he acted in private, offering quite a different face to the world.

We know that there would be those on the right, and quite a few war-fightin' liberals as well, who would go nuclear over any presidential minus option in Afghanistan. Many of them will, in fact, do so over anything less than the McChrystal plan anyway. And we know that a media storm would certainly follow. But when it comes to how voters would react, especially at a moment when unhappiness with the Afghan War (as well as the president's handling of it) is on the rise, there is no historical evidence.

Sometime in the reasonably near future, President Obama will undoubtedly address the American people on whatever decision he makes about the war in Afghanistan. Every sign indicates that he will hew to Washington's political wisdom about what a war president can do in this country.

Ever since late September when someone leaked Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal's report to the president on the disastrous situation in Afghanistan and the counterinsurgency war he wants to wage there, we've been all but living inside Obama's endless comprehensive review of war strategy. After all, we get daily reports from "the front," largely in the form of a flood of leaks to the media, on just what's being considered -- from General McChrystal's estimated troop escalation numbers, to Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's private cables to the president suggesting no more troops be sent, to recent outbursts by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the president decrying all the leaks and rumors. Read more.

Last week: US Iraq casualties rise to 75,168
Compiled by Michael Munk | MichaelMunk.com

US military occupation forces in Iraq under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 14 combat casualties in the week ending November 17, 2009 as the official total since the 2003 invasion rose to at least 75,168. The total includes 35,047 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 40,121 (as of October 31, 2009) dead and medically evacuated from "non-hostile" causes.*

The actual total is over 100,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the more than 30,000 veterans whose injuries-mainly brain trauma from explosions - were diagnosed only after they had left Iraq.** In addition, ICC names eight service members who died of wounds after they left Iraq and are not counted by the Pentagon.***

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by occasionally reporting only the total killed (4,365 as of Nov.17), but rarely mentioning the 31,571 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 39,232 (as of Oct 31, 2009)*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,362 reported deaths include 889 (up three) who died from those same causes, including at least 18 from faulty electrical work by KBR and 196 suicides through Oct. 31.***

Key:

* The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesday).
** New York Times, Jan 26, 2009
*** http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/oif-total.pdf

Veteran Fasting Outside White House | Press Release

Thomas E. Mahany, a Vietnam War veteran (101st Airborne Division), now a stonemason and artist from Michigan, has been fasting in front of the White House since Veterans Day. He sent Obama the following letter the day after Veterans Day:

Dear Mr. President,

In May of 1970 I spent 29 days in Lafayette Square fasting for Peace in Viet Nam. I now feel that [it] is time to act once again. Accordingly, as of 0600 Hours, Nov 11, Veterans Day 2009, I have taken my last material sustenance other than water until specific action is taken by your Administration and our Military to stem the tragic and ever-increasing rise in the incidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is rapidly approaching epidemic proportions among our Fighting Men and Women.

I served in Viet Nam and I also lost a brother-in law to suicide caused by PTSD. He had two young sons. I have seen firsthand what this can do to a family.

In taking my action, I hope to elicit for you, from the peace loving people of this nation, moral support sufficient to spiritually bolster you as you make your decision concerning our military presence in Afghanistan.

By Dave Lindorff

If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you’ve chosen to sit amongst your bone-headed, slacker friends, don’t turn to them for help when you can’t figure out of any of the answers. They may all tell you the same thing, but they’ll all be wrong.

That’s the situation President Obama finds himself in today in the White House. Having surrounded himself with the very Wall Street con men who set up the crooked game that led to the current financial crisis and economic collapse, and finding that the lousy advice they have been giving him since last January has left the country still mired in deepening economic decline, with the banks still not lending and unemployment still mounting, and with growing signs that instead of bottoming out and starting to recover, the economy is threatening to fall a second time, to new lows and higher unemployment, Obama has turned to the same rotten advisors for answers.

Media Disseminated Myths about Obamacare
By Stephen Lendman

Pro or con, major media spin distorts, exaggerates, and lies to avoid key truths on this critically important issue. After the House passed HR 3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act, a November 11 Nation magazine editorial (likely by editor, publisher, and part-owner Katrina vanden Heuvel) admitted the bill's faults, yet praised it saying:

"something remarkable happened on November 7 when the House voted 220-215 for legislation that the Congressional Budget Office says will extend insurance coverage to 36 million uncovered Americans....in the House bill there is certainly something to work with, and something to fight for."

Earlier on MSNBC's Morning Joe, she hailed the moment as "a historic day....a victory in Congress....this is the most important piece of legislation we've seen in decades."

Nato chief promises Afghanistan will get 'substantially more forces'
By Julian Borger | Guardian.co.UK

Nato and its allies will order "substantially more forces" into battle in Afghanistan over the next few weeks, the alliance's secretary general said today.

Speaking in Edinburgh at a Nato parliamentary assembly meeting, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said: "In a few weeks, I expect we will decide, in Nato, on the approach, and troop levels needed, to take our mission forward."

Barack Obama is expected to make a long-awaited declaration on US troop levels and strategy in the next few days. But Rasmussen pre-empted the president by predicting the alliance as a whole would pursue a broad counter-insurgency approach, requiring many more soldiers, rather than the narrower focus on counter-terrorism – such as targeting suspected jihadist leaders – advocated by the US vice-president, Joe Biden.

"I'm confident it will be a counter-insurgency approach, with substantially more forces," Rasmussen said, and promised there would soon be "new momentum" behind Nato's beleaguered Afghan mission. Read more.

Part 1: President discusses economy; wants health care reform 'done as soon as possible'; explains difficulty of closing Gitmo

Part 2: Obama on importance of U.S. relationship with South Korea - Click "Read more."

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
ABC News Finds the Location of a "Black Site" for Alleged Terrorists in Lithuania
By Brian Ross and Matthew Cole | ABC News

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. A full report on the can be seen on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson tonight.

"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004. Read more.

North Alabama Peace Network says ... It's Obama's War Now!
By Linda Haynes

(Huntsville, Alabama -- Sat. Nov. 14, 2009) Today's North Alabama Peace Network rally focused on the fact that while President Obama inherited a bad situation, he has not pulled troops out of Iraq and has expanded the war in Afghanistan. He's even considering sending additional troops to Afghanistan in the coming weeks. And, Pakistan has become another war front.

These are President Obama's wars now. He owns them, over one year after winning the presidency. Alabama peace activists demand that President Obama bring our brave soldiers home now!

International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials
By Daphne Evitar | Washington Independent

The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.

So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation to prosecute the leaders in the U.S. government responsible for the “torture, cruel and inhuman treatment” of detainees during its own “war on terror.”

“Investigations and prosecutions should focus on the engineers of official policies that were the basis of illegal abuses, to send a clear signal that the absolute prohibition of torture and the ban on cruel and inhuman treatment will be respected by the United States,” the report said, adding that if the U.S. government fails to initiate prosecutions, then other countries will take up the cause. Italy, for example, recently convicted 23 Americans for their involvement in “extraordinary renditions.”

“Failing to hold accountable the architects and overseers of a policy of abuse undermines the U.S. justice system and the fundamental idea that law provides a check on power,” Alex Boraine, acting president of ICTJ, said in a statement today. “As we have seen in countless examples around the world, abuse of power by allowing torture and cruel treatment can tear down what the law and democracy have built.” Read more.

Afghan Lessons from the Iraq War
By Ray McGovern

You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?”

It is the same question that policymakers and generals were grappling with three years ago with respect to Iraq. Let’s hope they learned the right lessons from that experience, but it’s doubtful since the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has been no help in shedding light on what actually happened.

If you remember, President George W. Bush had been voicing lots of optimism about the Iraq War and Vice President Dick Cheney had claimed the enemy was “in its last throes.” But it was becoming increasingly clear by 2006 that sectarian violence was ripping Iraq apart, that the death toll of American troops was rising, and that U.S. defeat was looming.

But Bush and Cheney were hell-bent on preventing defeat from happening, at least on their watch. Nor did they want the neo-con dream of a U.S.-dominated Iraq to die.

However, many in Washington – especially in the military – recognized that the Bush/Cheney war couldn’t be open-ended and that hard decision would have to be made for a gradual withdrawal to begin.

White House reports billions of improper payments in 2009
By Tom Cohen | CNN

The federal government made $98 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2009, and President Obama will issue an executive order in coming days to combat the problem, his budget director announced Tuesday.

The 2009 total for improper payments -- from outright fraud to misdirected reimbursements due to factors such as an illegible doctor's signature -- was a 37.5 percent increase over the $72 billion in 2008, according to figures provided by Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget....

In total, Orszag listed 99 agencies and programs that received $1.98 trillion in 2009, with $98 billion of the money -- or 5 percent -- in improper payments.

Some of the larger figures for improper payments were:

• $24 billion for Medicare fee-for service, out of a total of $308 billion
• $18 billion for Medicaid health care for the poor, out of a total of $188 billion
• $12 billion for Medicaid Advantage, out of a total of $77 billion
• $12 billion for unemployment insurance, out of a total of $119 billion
• $12 billion for the Earned Income Tax Credit, out of a total of $48 billion Read more.

Biggest State Party to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan
By Norman Solomon

There's a significant new straw in the political wind for President Obama to consider. The California Democratic Party has just sent him a formal and clear message: Stop making war in Afghanistan.

Overwhelmingly approved on Sunday (Nov. 15) by the California Democratic Party’s 300-member statewide executive board, the resolution is titled “End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan.”

The resolution supports “a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel” and calls for “an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties.” Advocating multiparty talks inside Afghanistan, the resolution also urges Obama “to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid.”

Images are copylefted and formatted to fit on a single sheet of letter sized postcard stock with no margins. Postage is only 28¢ each.

Universal, Single Payer Postcards-Front
Universal, Single Payer Postcards-Back

Note: Chris Cook recorded some interesting audio of Malalai on her current book tour as well as some of the Question & Answer period.

Opinion: U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya | Mercury News

As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country.

Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media.

In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.

The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the "moderate Taliban" and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government.

Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai's own brother is a well known drug trafficker. Read more.

Obama to Retain ‘Safe, Secure, Effective’ Nuclear Overkill Capacity
by John LaForge | Anti-War.com

The U.S. and Russia, which together possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, announced this summer an agreement to someday reduce their nuclear arsenals by up to one-third.

The proposed treaty could cut each state’s long-range thermonuclear weapons – known in military jargon as "strategic" weapons – to between 1,500 and 1,675. Mainstream news reports said this was down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012."

In fact, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the US had 9,938 warheads in 2007 and is obligated under the 2002 Moscow Agreement to reduce this to 5,470 by the end of 2012.

Maintaining a total of 1,500 warheads, at 335 kilotons each (today’s Minuteman III missile warheads), is equivalent to 502.5 million tons of TNT, or 502 "megatons" of nuclear firepower.

How much overkill power is this? There are currently 188 cities on Earth with over 2 million people. With 1,500 warheads, the Pentagon could still explode seven H-bombs on each one, setting massive fires whose smoke would block sunlight and could plunge the world into nuclear winter – according to new research from the Univ. of Colorado. Read more.

High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War
By Christopher Drew | NY Times

While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.

Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, appears almost constant.

So even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian style control over information.

Dozens of Gitmo detainees finally get day in court
By Pete Yost, AP | Yahoo! News

In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.

The judges have found the government's evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number could rise significantly because the judges are on track to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.

Scooped up along with hard-core terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, these 30 detainees stand in stark contrast to the 10 prisoners whom the Obama administration targeted for prosecution Friday for plotting the Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.

More detainees are expected to soon be added to the prosecution list. But there will still be plenty of cases left among the 215 detainees now at Guantanamo to keep the judges here busy as they work to clear a legal morass the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once promised Guantanamo held "the worst of the worst." The judges here have rejected pleas for release from eight detainees, but they have concluded the government doesn't even have enough evidence to keep 30 other detainees behind bars. Read more.