Journalist Held At Guantanamo Freed After Six Years Without Charges

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 5:47 PM, May 1, 2008

The U.S. government has released a Sudanese cameraman detained in Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to al Jazeera. The only confirmed journalist to be imprisoned in Guantanamo, Sami al-Hajj was working for the satellite network al Jazeera when he was detained in Afghanistan by Pakistani troops, later being moved to Guantanamo. He is currently being flown to Sudan from the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The Committee to Protect Journalists applauded his release but expressed dismay at the U.S. policy that can keep a journalist, and others, locked up for six years without charges

"Sami al-Hajj is the latest journalist to be freed by the U.S. military after spending years behind bars on the basis of secret evidence and without formal charge or trial," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "We are delighted that Sami al-Hajj can finally be reunited with his family and friends. But his detention for six years, without the most basic due process, is a grave injustice and represents a threat to all journalists working in conflict areas."

Al Hajj has been detained since December 2001, when he was arrested traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan during the U.S. military assault on the Taliban. He was taken into Pakistani custody on the 16th, where after 16 days, he was handed over to U.S. troops. Al Hajj was held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where he claims U.S. forces beat him and accused him of working with al Qaeda. After another move to Kandahar in the custody of the US government, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay on June 16th, 2002, where he remained until his release.

Beyond the continuing concern about torture at the U.S.-run jail, al-Hajj has faced medical problems while in US custody. During his time at Guantanamo, he reportedly received 130 interrogations, which mostly focused on his involvement at al Jazeera and its relationship to alleged terrorists. Since January 2007, he has been on a hunger strike against conditions in the prison leading him to lose over 50 pounds, and Reporters Without Borders claims that he has throat cancer that has gone untreated in his time at Guantanamo.

The exact cause of al-Hajj’s long detention has never been determined. He has been accused of running money for Chechen rebels when at a previous job working for the soda company Union Beverages. When questioned at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the order leading to his arrest referred to the number of a Sudanese passport al-Hajj lost two years previously, raising the possibility of a mistaken identification.

An ongoing US crusade against the al Jazeera network has attracted speculation as a cause of his apprehension. During an interview with Democracy Now! , al-Hajj’s brother said that “Sami Al-Haj is a victim of a political operation against Al Jazeera, which Washington does not approve of.” The US has twice bombed al Jazeera stations during military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq , and President Bush publicly accused the outlet of supporting terrorists.

Top 10 Reasons Why NSA Wiretapping is Bad For America

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 1:00 PM, April 7, 2008

It’s high noon for the Bush Administration’s program of wireless wiretapping. The administration is currently in secret negotiations with the House of Representatives over the issue of legal immunity for telecom companies that cooperated with legally dubious wiretaps. A new book by New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau — one of the reporters who broke the original story on warrantless wiretapping in 2005 — poses some tough questions for the administration and its conduct in the War on Terror. Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice explains how the Bush administration's spying techniques are ineffectual as well as illegal, describing what the FBI labeled “Pizza Hut Leads”: terror leads gleaned from NSA call data that led to pizza deliverymen and other dead ends.

On February 12th, the U.S. Senate authorized a new version of the Protect America Act that gives legal ground to President Bush’s National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program as well as retroactive immunity to telecom companies, such as AT&T and others, that assisted the National Security Agency in widespread electronic surveillance. After a secret session, the House of Representatives rejected telecom immunity on March 14th. Negotiations on the issue are ongoing, but it appears that a permanent wiretapping bill is imminent.

To paraphrase that great patriot Donald Rumsfeld: There are knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. The wiretapping program is a little like that. There are things we know and things we can only speculate about the wiretapping program. The number of customers affected by the surveillance remains secret, but the AT&T call-record database contains 1.88 trillion call records. Right now, the NSA program theoretically tracks only communication between foreign callers and callers in the US. Considering the complexity of global communication systems, we believe the distinction between domestic and foreign calls will be harder and harder to maintain, and the NSA wiretapping program has potential to become a full-fledged domestic spying regime.

“The NSA is basically having drag-net surveillance of all this activity, regardless of whether it’s domestic or international calls” said Rebecca Jeschke, media coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Some of the problems below are based on what we know about the program, and some are problems we can only speculate on. With that in mind, here’s a handy list for understanding some of the potential issues with the NSA program.

“Top 10 Reasons Why NSA Wiretapping is Bad For America”

10. Total integration of corporate and government power — By gathering telecom data, the executive branch has in effect enlisted communication companies as irregular officers in the War on Terror. "We can't do this mission without their help," the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told NPR. "Currently there is no retroactive liability protection for them. They're being sued for billions of dollars." If retroactive immunity goes through, it will usher in even more increased cooperation between corporations and the government in an age of the imperial presidency.

9. Phone companies aren’t your friends. Ever try breaking a cell-phone service contract? Go over your allotted minutes on your phone? Now you are going to paying these companies for the privilege of having them spy on you. The Senate isn’t your friend either: previous legislation would have authorized a minimum of $1000 per-person payouts for privacy violations by telecoms.

8. Say Bye Bye to Net Neutrality: Industry consolidation has created an unprecedented level of power in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of companies. Close cooperation between the government and telecom companies could spill over to the industry’s next big agenda item: net neutrality. The companies that control Internet data ‘pipes’ want legal authorization to give priority to certain higher-paying subscribers’ information, and to slow down other users’. Net Neutrality is hugely popular, and has become a rallying point for blogs like boingboing and presidential candidates.

7. Robert Hanssen, hackers, and spies — The NSA isn’t the only one after your personal data. It's useful to any number of governments or marketers. “The security mechanisms in place are interested in protecting NSA, but what happens to the phone companies? This is a new linkage, and there are bad people in the intelligence agencies — think Robert Hanssen — this is a vulnerability that didn’t exist before, when you create new linkages you create new vulnerabilities” said Steven M. Bellovin, a professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. The NSA program creates a new problem of spying on the spy-ers — a situation that imperils everyone.

6. Watergate — There will be no need for break-ins for the purposes of political espionage. The government will have all that information on-hand. Just think about the dopey government contractors who rifled through Barack Obama's passport files.

5. Wiretap data will be personal information archived by the government, and the government is not good at safeguarding private information.

4. AT&T = Scooter Libby — Both have benefited from George Bush’s strange sense of justice. Dick Cheney’s perjuring Chief of Staff had his sentence commuted at the last minute by President Bush. Now that same President has used the threat of terrorism to push through post-hoc immunity for telecom companies that also broke the law and violated the public trust. “It’s a fact that Americans had their rights violated and now, by closing the courtroom door, they may be left with no recourse. The Senate failed us with this vote. It is a major step backward both for Americans’ privacy and the Constitution” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office in a press release.

3. A worse Internet — know what its like to try to go to the post office to get a letter sent in your lunch break? Imagine that on the internet. Marc Klein – a former AT&T employee who blew the whistle on Big Bell’s collaboration with the NSA – described a drop in digital signal quality on lines where NSA monitored data in an interview with PBS. The digital filter used to siphon off data from AT&T’s main-pipeline to NSA database acted like a ‘checkpoint’ that weakened data signals and made info loss more likely.

2. Pornography — Internet pornography is a venerable American tradition. The NSA program has expanded wiretapping to monitoring internet traffic. Do you want the government checking up on your solo-lovin’ habits as evidence of deviant/terroristic behavior?

1.It’s Facebook Beacon but more waaay invasive — A few months ago, Facebook created a privacy fiasco by posting user’s personal information on advertiser’s websites without permission. The problem was that Facebookers had to ‘opt out’ of the program – called “Facebook Beacon” – by going out of their way to say they didn’t want to participate. It seemed like people everywhere expressed outrage at Facebook’s privacy disaster, and the issue stuck around the media for days.. The program authorized by the Senate puts Facebook on steroids. NSA wiretapping combines phone records with social networking information to track who your friends are. “Facebook Beacon was one level of disclosure about your personal life, while information about who you emailed, what was in it, is far more intrusive” said Rebecca Jeschke from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

So why aren’t more people freaking out about this?

Winter Soldier Testimony

Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:12 PM, March 25, 2008

Of all the accounts of war given last week by GIs at the Winter Soldier hearings (which are now up on YouTube), I was struck by the story of Hart Viges who enlisted in the Army and requested an Airborne assignment after 9/11.

At the about 8:20-mark in the video, Viges, who is now a conscientious objector, describes a moment when he had his sights on an Iraqi with an RPG strapped to his back, and didn't pull the trigger.

"When I looked at his face, he wasn't a bogeyman, he wasn't the enemy," Viges recalled. "He was scared and confused, probably the same expression on his face I had on mine during the same time. He was probably fed the same bs I was fed... to put myself in that situation. I seen his face ... it took me back, and I didn't pull the trigger and he got away."

John Edwards Backs the 'Iraq/Recession' Campaign

Posted by John DeSio at 4:13 PM, February 25, 2008

Though he’s officially left the race for the White House John Edwards is still hoping to shape the debate, lending his name to a new “out of Iraq” movement and targeting John McCain for defeat.

Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and twice-failed candidate for Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has signed up along with his wife Elizabeth to help launch a new effort that will present the war in Iraq as fiscally irresponsible, and place much of the responsibility for the war on Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The “Iraq/Recession” campaign, led by a coalition of unions and activist groups such as SEIU, Move On, and the Center for American Progress, will look to tie economic troubles at home to military spending abroad. It will also look to highlight the choice between an anti-war Democrat and a pro-war Republican. Edwards reeled off a laundry list of issues — from healthcare to the mortgage crisis to the potential recession to the number of Americans living in poverty — as symptoms of overspending in Iraq.

“All these things are made much worse by concern about what’s happening in Iraq,” said Edwards in a conference call with reporters. “The war in Iraq, at least from my perspective, needs to be brought to an end for a lot of reasons.”

Edwards criticized McCain's support for the war and his recent statements that he would be willing to stay in Iraq for “100 years,” if that’s how long it takes to win.

“This is not what the American people want to see,” said Edwards. “If they see a direct connection between the spending in Iraq, the economic anxiety caused by that, the price of oil, the price of gasoline, all those things, and this ongoing war in Iraq. For that reason, among others, they want to see this war brought to an end."

The $20 million initiative will target not only McCain but several Republican senators facing tough reelection battles this year. But it was clear from Edwards’ comments that the McCain is the top priority of the effort.

“We want to make certain that the American people know that they have a very clear choice in this election,” said Edwards. “And that choice is between a Democratic nominee for president that will end this war and who will focus on all these issues that are creating economic anxiety and insecurity among so many Americans, because that’s what the American people want to see; and the other choice being Senator McCain, the Republican nominee, who intends to continue the war, to continue the incredibly failed policies of George Bush.”

Edwards added, “The American people deserve that choice. I think it will be absolutely clear what the voters want when that choice is presented to them.”

GITMO Tapes Uncovered by NJ Law Students

Posted by Duncan Meisel at 12:17 PM, February 19, 2008

Could the CIA have recorded all 24,000 interrogations that were said to have taken place at Camp Gitmo?

A group of Seton Hall law school students recently uncovered evidence in official military reports that suggests Guantanamo Bay interrogations have been extensively videotaped. Despite the Department of Defense's protestations to the contrary, Army Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley wrote in a declassified report that nearly all of the interrogations were taped, according to Seton Hall's latest report on Guantanamo. (scroll down for link)

The tapes, similar to the ones recently revealed as destroyed by the CIA, could provide conclusive visual evidence of the use of torture by US military officials in the War on Terror.

Video evidence of torture could hurt the Bush administration by delaying the recently announced military trials of 9/11 suspects, the timing of which have been called into question as politically motivated.

Considering the near absurdity of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession coerced with the use of waterboarding, evidence of abuse could further discredit the military commission judicial process at Guantanamo Bay.

Telecom Immunity: Just Say No

Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:26 PM, February 15, 2008

"If we are allowed to sue the giant telecom companies for violating our rights, then the terrorists have won." [Video from Stranahan.com]

NYCLU to Host Real ID Act Forum

Posted by Michael Clancy at 4:30 PM, January 24, 2008

The New York Civil Liberties Union will host a forum Thursday on President Bush's controversial Real ID Act, which would establish a national ID card that, according to the NYCLU, "will become an internal passport for Americans and part of everyday life—a way to keep track of your movements, your activities and your lifestyle."

Among the speakers expected to discuss the plan at The New York Society for Ethical Culture are:

Donna Lieberman and Udi Ofer, of the New York Civil Liberties Union
Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute
Valerie Lucznikowska, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Ed Ott, New York City Central Labor Council
Susan Lerner, Common Cause NY
State Sen. Eric Schneiderman, D-New York

The forum starts at 7 pm. The New York Society for Ethical Culture is located at 2 W. 64th St.

How Many Times Did the Bush Team Lie About Iraq?

Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:15 PM, January 23, 2008

Have you ever wondered how many times the Bush administration lied to the American public, and the world, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq?

At least, 935 times and counting, according to the Center for Public Integrity, which cataloged the lies in a searchable database. It's really a staggering amount of lies.

From THE WAR CARD: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War:

"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

It would be easy to joke about it, and say who could forget the one about those "aluminum tubes?"

A Scrawled Commentary on the iPod

Posted by Michael Clancy at 12:27 PM, November 29, 2007

From a construction site near Lafayette and Great Jones

Barrett Talks Rudy's Terror Sheikh Ties on MSNBC

Posted by Michael Clancy at 10:03 AM, November 29, 2007

Keith Olbermann said of Wayne Barrett's story in this week's Voice "the term must-read is overused but this one one of those stories."

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Wayne Barrett discusses "Rudy's Ties to a Terror Sheikh" which which MSNC says "connects the dots between Rudy Giuliani, his firm GiulianiPartners, and a member of the royal family of Qatar believed to have harbored a 9/11 mastermind."

Watch the video (sixth item down.)

Email from Pakistan: 'We Were Taken to the Central Jail'

Posted by Michael Clancy at 8:00 AM, November 7, 2007

Former Voice staffer Jim Sosnicky passed along this email from his friend, Alia Ali, an Oxford-educated doctor living in Lahore, who was rounded up and locked down in Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's state-of-emergency military crackdown on his opposition.

Ali wrote from detention:

On Sunday 3 November 2007, around 70 people collected peacefully inside the human rights commission office in garden town Lahore to discuss the declaration of emergency the day before. The group included lawyers, educators, doctors, and civil society members. The premises were surrounded by heavy police force. First the journalists were removed from the meeting room, then the rest were arrested. One activist, Ayra (female), and Iqbal Haider (secretary HRCP) were manhandled. We were taken to model town jail. No one seemed to know what would be done with us. No charges were made, but we were detained. The state of the station and toilets was deplorable. My phone was taken after i talked to the BBC and GeoTV very briefly. Some people managed to hide cell phones on them and would send and receive news periodically.

We were to be removed to another location but there were people outside with a candle-lit vigil who did not let the vehicles enter and they were forced to return.

Later we were removed at 4 am to three houses under house arrest. The next morning we were taken to court before a magistrate and denied bail—for bailable charges. And we were taken to the central jail where all criminals are taken.

After a harrowing many hours we are back in house arrest. We have women ranging from twenties to sixties. Men from thirties to seventies. We are all peace-loving professionals, decent citizens—concerned with the prevailing state of things. All we want is:

reversal of emergency

return of civil rights and liberties

release of innocent citizens

I don't know how long i will have Internet access, so i cannot add the color and the personal stories as I want word out asap. Please pressure your governments and the Pakistani government to release innocent people, and reestablish civil rights.

Judge Compares DeVecchio Case to the War on Terror

Posted by Michael Clancy at 3:46 PM, November 1, 2007

The FBI gave Greg Scarpa Sr. a wad of cash, a gun, and instructions to find out where three slain civil rights workers were buried in 1964, according to Linda Schiro. Those killings formed the basis of the film Mississippi Burning, which told quite a different story.

With the charges against the former G-Man dropped, the world will never know how Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin L. Reichbach would have ruled in the case of the People of the State of New York versus R. Lindley DeVecchio. As noted earlier in the Voice, the former FBI agent put his fate in the hands of Reichbach, a former Sixties student activist at Columbia, rather than try his luck with a Brooklyn jury.

But in the judge's four-page decision to accept the District Attorney's motion to drop the charges, Reichbach offers a fascinating coda on a case in which the lines between G-Man and gangster became entirely blurred.

Reichbach salutes the FBI agents who put their career on the line to say that DeVecchio had grown too close to his informant Greg "the Grim Reaper" Scarpa, while he excoriates the FBI brass who turned their eye from obvious criminality for tips that were of a questionable value.

Commenting on Linda Schiro's testimony that Scarpa traveled south in 1964 at the behest of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to strong-arm witnesses to find out where three slain civil-rights workers were buried, Reichbach said it paralleled some of the techniques being used in the war on terror today.

"That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information regarding the death of civil rights workers in the south in the early 1960s is a shocking demonstration of the government's willingness to employ criminality to fight crime. It is redolent of the current mindset of some in the government who argue that the practice of terror and torture can be freely employed against those the government claims are terrorists themselves: that is permissible to make men scream in the name of national security."

Reichbach's opinion is certainly worth a read and you can download all four pages of the document here, here, here, and here.

National Mobilization Against the War

Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:35 PM, October 26, 2007

On Saturday, concerned patriots will take to the streets of eleven cities across the nation as part of United for Peace and Justice's National Day of Mobilization against the war. The New York march begins at 23rd Street, where people will gather starting at noon, and ends at Foley Square near City Hall.

From UPJ:

Let Ahmadinejad Defend Himself in Academic Court

Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:21 PM, September 24, 2007

By Adrian Haimovich
Columbia University sophomore
and President of the Roosevelt Institution at Columbia University.

President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University on Monday won’t generate any sensational stories—not the questions posed, nor the canned responses generated, not even the protests staged. The import of the speech is not in what happens, but that it happens.

In January 1941, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt stood in front of Congress and spoke of his vision of the future. “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms…freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world…the freedom to worship everywhere in the world…the freedom from want everywhere in the world…and the freedom from fear anywhere in the world.”

Columbia University is standing up for the First Amendment of this great nation’s Constitution as well as one of FDR’s essential freedoms. The greatness of this fundamental part of democracy lies in the right to speak, be it in a university auditorium or national assembly, and to challenge the ideas found intolerable using the powers of reasoning and debate.

As University President Lee Bollinger wrote, “It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas.”

Those who argue that listening to Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust or tirades against the Western world somehow legitimizes him have missed the point altogether. His power is wholly derived through the subjugation of his people and the suppression of ideas. In Iran, Ahmadinejad reigns supreme. At this academic forum, he does not. He is among equals in this conversation, among students and faculty who seek to confront his basic tenants.

That such a debate could take place on a university campus and that the people of this academic community are willing to openly challenge, through dialogue, ideas they find abhorrent is the key principle of this day.

In defending Ahmadinejad’s basic freedoms, we have, in the very same voice, called for him to do the same for all others. In his land, the government has denied the place of thought at the table of progress and has quenched the right to worship freely. More alarming yet, Ahmadinejad has been a force in the rapidly increasing international tensions of this day. Ahmadinejad has denied his people their essential freedoms.

In today’s world—a world that has stressed isolation from ideas uncomfortable to us—this event is a milestone. Columbia University is proud to stand with a watching America and challenge President Ahmadinejad to defend himself in this academic court.

The Wit and Wisdom of Bernie Kerik

Posted by Michael Clancy at 12:56 PM, September 10, 2007

Kerik blames Hollywood for the frustration many Americans feel over the war on terror.

Just in time for the sixth anniversary of 9/11, this essay from Bernie Kerik landed in the Runnin' Scared inbox. Without further ado, we present the thoughts of the former NYPD top cop, corrections commissioner, and failed nominee for Homeland Security director, who is presently awaiting a pending federal indictment on income tax invasion.

On Hollywood:

I understand the frustration the American people may have with the war on terror and the battle in Iraq, but I’m stunned by those in our own country that feel the need to portray us as the bad guys. Hollywood is running short on film at the rate they are producing movies and documentaries against our troops and our government. Why isn’t their focus on the radical Islamic movement against the west or the millions of stories behind each one of Saddam Hussein’s murder victims or those he displaced?

Defining our enemies:

The enemy is not the United States or the Muslim religion.

A lot of people confuse radical Islamists with Islam itself, but did anybody need any clarification that the U.S. is not the enemy?

This enemy is using our frustration and our own Constitution against us

On winning in Iraq:

I believe that many of our political leaders have given up, or let’s say given in, politically, only emboldening our enemies both here and abroad. They believe it is better to cut and run and act like all is well

Did Kerik do his part in Iraq? Here's what former Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, had to say on Democracy Now about Kerik's performance training the Iraqi police force

What did the White House do? It sent just one guy. It sent Bernie Kerik. And when Bernie arrived in Baghdad, his top priority was going on television and saying, 'Things are better than you think they are. Things are improving here.' He really was doing a lot of PR work. And then he would go off on very sort of showy overnight raids to try to bust up some kidnapping gangs, doing some sort of street police work, and he didn't really do a lot of this in collaboration with the military police officers who were assigned to secure Baghdad. So there was always a lot of tension going on there between, you know, the people who were really responsible for security and what Bernie's guys were doing.

But what this really meant, Amy, was that because he was up all night, during the daytime, when the important job of training and vetting the Iraqi police was to happen, he was off in his trailer resting. And, you know, we now can agree that the most important thing that American personnel should be doing in Iraq is helping to train Iraqi security forces to be self-sustaining, to be able to secure that country on its own and to vet and remove the bad apples. It’s something, you know, we're finally starting to do now with focus and intensity. Well, we should have been doing that from the very beginning, and we lost several valuable, crucial months, because Bernie Kerik and some of the people that worked with him did not devote enough attention and resources to this really important job.

Here's Bernie's full 9/11 letter:

At 9:03AM on the morning of September 11th, 2001, I stood in the middle of West Broadway in lower Manhattan, just one block north of the World Trade Center, watching in disbelief as United Airlines Flight 175 exploded through the north side of the tower above me. The only thing more frightening than the massive explosion was the sight of innocent civilians jumping to their death from the two mammoth towers. Over the next 48 hours, I remember the feelings of horror, denial, anger and desire to hunt down those responsible.

Three days later on September 14th, I stood with President George W. Bush and Mayor Rudy Giuliani just yards from what the world would come to know as Ground Zero, the enormous crater caused from the implosion of Towers I and II. As the President thanked the first responders, he promised every one of them that he would never forget; he would do everything in his power to go after those that attacked us and he would try to prevent an attack like this from ever happening again on U.S. soil. In the days, weeks and months that followed, I escorted members of the US House and Senate, heads of state from around the world and international corporate leaders to Ground Zero to see the aftermath of the attacks. During their visits, just about every one of them endorsed and agreed with the President’s promise.

So here we are six years later and it horrifies me to think that with the exception of our President and a few others, there aren’t many left standing by that promise. Granted, it hasn’t been easy… fighting an enemy we can’t see and don’t understand, the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq competing with the battles in the halls of Congress, the lack of international support and an imperfect war against terror that the political pundits use today to fuel fires that will keep the 2008 Presidential race ablaze. At the end of the day, as we approach the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against our country, I suppose my biggest question is: Do we have the resolve to win this war and defeat an enemy that is by far, the worst this nation has ever seen.

I believe that many of our political leaders have given up, or let’s say given in, politically, only emboldening our enemies both here and abroad. They believe it is better to cut and run and act like all is well… I suppose then we could return to the comfort we all had on the morning of September 10th 2001. We weren’t in Afghanistan or Iraq, we weren’t aggressively pursuing Osama bin Laden and we weren’t doing much at all to combat the terror threat against us, and yet we suffered the most substantial terror attack in world history.

For all those that endorsed and called for the invasion of Iraq only to cower to the intensified fighting that rages on there today, I would remind them that our principal enemy there is Al Qaeda and radical Islamic fundamentalists, who, like those on 9/11, still follow the calling for Jihad by bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, the same men that masterminded the 2001 attacks against us.

In an attempt to walk a fine political line, many now say that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified but Iraq was not, based on flawed intelligence. They conveniently ignore Saddam’s history of violations with the UN Security Counsel, his funding of terror, and the fact that he used chemical weapons on his own people; atrocities that he was tried, convicted and hanged for.

It’s ironic that many of the critics of the invasion of Iraq today are the same people that are calling for an invasion of Darfur and an end to a regime that is committing atrocities and genocide of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions. Saddam Hussein was doing exactly that and yet the critics against Iraq use the intelligence argument as a reason why the invasion was wrong, or as their justification to cut and run. Are Iraqi lives any cheaper than those in the Sudan? I don’t think so but unfortunately for the people dying in the Sudan, these days many of our political leaders don’t have the courage to make a decision without first taking a poll to decide whether they should do the right thing, life or death included.

I understand the frustration the American people may have with the war on terror and the battle in Iraq, but I’m stunned by those in our own country that feel the need to portray us as the bad guys. Hollywood is running short on film at the rate they are producing movies and documentaries against our troops and our government. Why isn’t their focus on the radical Islamic movement against the west or the millions of stories behind each one of Saddam Hussein’s murder victims or those he displaced?

The enemy is not the United States or the Muslim religion. It is not the people in the Arab region or Gulf States, but rather groups of Islamic radical fundamentalists that promote their hatred for the west and those that disagree with their beliefs through a distorted interpretation of the Quran. It is an enemy that has not only attacked the United States and other western targets around the globe, but also their own in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other predominantly Muslim countries.

This enemy is using our frustration and our own constitution against us, and has proven that they have far more patience than we do as they have demonstrated in the past, dating back to the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut; the Al Khobar Towers, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, and the “93” bombing of the World Trade Center. We ignored their threats and their acts and sat patiently by as they planned the September 11th attack.

Today as we reflect on the attacks of 9/11 and the six years that have past, let us remember the patriots we lost on that day… the first responders and the innocents. Let’s not forget the brave men and women of New York City’s Police and Fire Departments, the Port of Authority Police and other first responders who conducted one of the greatest rescue missions in our country’s history. We should also extend our thanks and gratitude to those fighting in this war both here in the United States and around the world and pray for those that have made the ultimate sacrifice and for the families they have left behind.

But most importantly on this sixth anniversary of 9/11, let us use this as a reminder that we are still very much at war in Iraq, Afghanistan and in other parts of the globe with the very same enemy that attacked us on that September morning. Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals continue to call for spectacular attacks against us and for the death and demise of our country. Retreat in this war will only embolden them and give them encouragement and the time they need to plan their next assault.

There has never been a more important time for our political leaders and our country to unite to achieve victory, for without victory in this battle and against this enemy, our country as we know it today will never be the same.

Military Recuiters Gone Wild: Report

Posted by Michael Clancy at 5:57 PM, September 6, 2007

The Department of Education is not doing enough to protect students from the aggressive tactics of military recruiters in high schools, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and the New York Civil Liberties Union charged in a report released Thursday.

The core of the report, titled "We Want You(th)," is an unscientific survey of nearly 1,000 students at 45 public schools where military recruitment was thought to be most prevalent.

Among the reports findings:

Nat Hentoff's Recommended Reading

Posted by Michael Clancy at 2:47 PM, August 24, 2007

Monster exposes secrets about Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and more.

"Nat Hentoff's Recommended Reading" is a new feature here on Runnin' Scared that takes an occasional look at the books, articles, and stories that Nat Hentoff is reading these days.

For his first recommendation, the celebrated Voice columnist has chosen Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War by Tara McKelvey.

Nat says the subtitle says it all.

Heavy Metal for Soldiers' Heavy Mentals

Posted by Michael Clancy at 1:35 PM, June 28, 2007

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, there was no shortage of protest songs that sought to steer the nation off a post-9/11 collision course with a country that had nothing to do with the attack. The Beastie Boys, Cat Power, Thurston Moore, John Mellencamp, R.E.M. and Zach De La Rocha were among the many artists to release anti-war numbers.

Today as the Iraq war spins out of control and many of the 1.5 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan return home from long deployments with mental health problems, Paul Rieckhoff is finding it hard to get that same pop culture support for legislation aimed improving health care for vets.

“We've been around a long time and you'd think everyone would be calling us up to do concerts at Madison Square Garden but that hasn’t happened,” says Rieckhoff, an Iraq war vet and executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a non-profit that advocates for veterans issues. “One in three veterans are coming home with mental issues; there’s a backlog of claims; the suicide rate is up; the divorce rate is up; unemployment rates are up. The mental health toll is going to be the hidden cost of this war.”

One of his victories thus far was when Henry Rollins invited Rieckhoff on his IFC channel program this month to discuss veterans issues. Now Rieckhoff and the IAVA have made an unlikely alliance with Drowning Pool, a heavy metal band, and Lizzie Palmer, a 15-year-old girl whose self-made tribute to Iraq war veterans, “Remember Me,” became a YouTube sensation getting 13 million views since she posted last November.

It's not Drowning Pool first association with the war, an earlier single "Bodies" with the lyrics "Let the bodies drop" became an unofficial anthem for those thirsty for blood after 9/11. YouTube is rife with homemade videos of Middle East destruction — bodies dropping! — to the metal screamer.

The trio are launching a petition at thisisforthesoliders.org where people can urge Congress to pass the Lane Evans Mental Health and Benefits Improvement Act. To get an idea of just how poor mental health treatment is for returning troops, check out the story of Chris Packley, a Marine who returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder, and was kicked out of the Marine Corps for leaving his base and smoking pot, thereby cutting him off from the mental health treatment for his PTSD that he'd been trying to self-medicate in the first place.

The Growing GWOT Target List

Posted by Jarrett Murphy at 6:22 PM, January 10, 2007

All the excitement over Wednesday night's presidential address on Iraq means little attention is being devoted to the U.S. airstrike on Somalia. Normally, it's a big deal when the U.S. bombs a country ... OK, maybe not always (How many times did the U.S. bomb Iraq in 2002, the year before the war: A. Zero times, B. 10 times, C. 100 times [answer here]). But it's usually a big deal when the U.S. bombs a country where Americans last recall their sons' corpses being dragged through the streets.

And with all the talk about escalation in Iraq (er, "surging"), it's worth noting that Somalia joins a list of at least five countries where the U.S. has engaged in military operations of some type since 9-11 and the launch of the GWOT: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and the Philippines. In addition, Americans involved in Operation Enduring Freedom have been killed or wounded in Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan—though those casualties could have been the result of operations to stage attacks on Iraq or the other known combat zones.

Meanwhile, the U.S. alliance with Ethiopia goes un-analyzed. The Somali Islamists were apparently real bastards in imposing Islamic justice. But check out the State Department's own report on human rights in Ethiopia:

The following human rights problems were reported: limitation on citizens' right to change their government; unlawful killings, including alleged political killings, and beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention of thousands of persons, particularly those suspected of sympathizing with or being members of the opposition; detention of thousands without charge, and lengthy pretrial detention; government infringement on citizens' privacy rights, and frequent refusal to follow the law regarding search warrants; government restrictions on freedom of the press; arrest, detention, and harassment of journalists for publishing articles critical of the government; self-censorship by journalists; government restrictions on freedom of assembly including denial of permits, burdensome preconditions or refusal to provide assembly halls to opposition political groups, and at times use of excessive force to disperse demonstrations; government limitations on freedom of association; violence and societal discrimination against women, and abuse of children; female genital mutilation; exploitation of children for economic and sexual purposes; trafficking in persons; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities, and discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities; government interference in union activities.

Perhaps after 3,008 dead (that's the latest count) in Iraq, Americans are just happy to have a nice, clean surgical strike where someone else—maybe even an al Qaeda bigwig—dies.

After all, no one likes casualties, or the administrations that allow them. Back in 1993, in the aftermath of the U.S. deaths in Mogadishu, former President Bush told a classroom: "If you're going to put somebody else's son or daughter into harm's way, into battle, you've got to know the answer to three questions: [the mission], ... how are they going to do it" and "how they're going to get out of there." Dick Cheney also took a shot at the Clinton White House. According to a Times piece at the time, "Mr. Cheney said the Clinton team seemed to be 'lacking' in 'intellectual rigor and tight co