Equal Justice Under the Law?

Upon nominating Sotomayor, Obama highlighted the phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building: "Equal Justice Under the Law."

But do we have anything resembling that? We have people who are being detained indefinitely and we have people -- Bush and other government officials -- who have openly declared they broke the law who Obama is avoiding prosecuting.

"Chief Justice" John Roberts has stated that "What is morally just and right -- that's not my job." Therefore, as John Roberts and other members of the Supreme Court should not have the title "Justice", as in references to "Justice Souter's Retirement".

We in fact have neither law nor justice.

[originally published at husseini.org on May 26, 2009]

Powell Denies Knowledge of Torture-War Link


Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, recently wrote:

“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

“There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just ‘committed suicide’ in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”

This “evidence” provided by al-Libi was also used in Powell’s infamous speech to the UN shortly before the invasion of Iraq, so on Sunday, I asked Powell about this as he left the studios at CBS:

Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

Colin Powell: I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case.

SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?

CP: I don’t know that. I don’t know what information you’re referring to. So I can’t answer.

SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

CP: So what? [inaudible]

SH: So you’d think you’d know about it.

CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.

Former long-time CIA analyst and now member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Ray McGovern, who got more background from Wilkerson, puts it in the following context:

“For those of you distracted by the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) spotlight on ‘what-did-Pelosi-know-about-torture-and-when-did-she- know-it,’ please turn off the TV long enough to ponder the case of the recently departed al-Libi, who reportedly died in a Libyan prison, a purported suicide.

“The al-Libi case might help you understand why, even though information from torture is notoriously unreliable, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the sycophants running U.S. intelligence ordered it anyway.

“In short, if it is untruthful information you are after, torture can work just fine!”

Human Rights Watch “briefly met with al-Libi on April 27 during a research mission to Libya. He refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: ‘Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails.’ … A bipartisan report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that that al-Libi ‘lied [about the Iraq link] to avoid torture.’”

But Colin Powell, who delivered the speech before the UN, doesn’t know, or seem to care, about any of this. He is apparently waiting for the CIA to call him and tell him that torture was used on detainees who uttered the false words Bush administration officials wanted to hear. This as Powell attempts, with substantial success, to reconstruct himself.

Web and research help by Matthew Bradley, camera and editing by Mariam Abuhaideri. Special thanks to David Swanson.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on May 25, 2009; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

John McCain Questioned about Wall Street Money


Transcript:

Sam Husseini: “Senator, your five biggest funders are PACs and others related with Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan. Given the huge Wall Street bail-outs, why shouldn’t concerned Americans conclude that Wall Street has basically bought off not just you, but a large chunk of congress?”

John McCain: “Well let me just point out that it is clear that then candidate Obama got measurably more contributions than I did from Wall Street and hedge fund people. That’s just a matter of fact. In fact, I was disappointed that I didn’t get more financial support from [laughs] organizations that I thought fundamentally shared many of my principles. So the fact is that’s a very small percentage of the amount of money that I received, and I was one of the first who criticized the excesses of Wall Street. I, and others, were the ones that after an Inspector General’s report called for the regulation and bringing under control Fannie and Freddie who were the catalysts for the catastrophe that took place. We recognized it, we urged action, and unfortunately that action was not taken.”

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on May 10, 2009; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Ten Years after the Bombing of Yugoslavia

Ten years after the bombing of Yugoslavia, NATO is juiced up in Afghanistan and Holbrooke, who initiated the war, has the Afghanistan-Pakistan portfolio. Here's me questioning NATO spokesman Jamie Shea at the press club during the fiftieth anniversary ten years ago. The next day, the exchange was published in the Washington Post's "For the Record" column, which used to run atop the letters page. But no more, that might give a sense of accountability and history -- so the wise ones at the Post scrapped it. 

[originally published at husseini.org on March 23, 2009]

Sad State of the ARAB Media

Just yesterday I was emailing back and forth with my dad, who lives in Amman, Jordan. At one point I asked him about the reaction in the Arab media to Helen Thomas asking Obama about Mideast (ie, Israeli) nuclear weapons. My dad didn't know what I was talking about. I pointed himto the transcript of Thomas, the long-time White House reporter asking Obama if he knew of a country in the Mideast with nuclear weapons and Obama -- instead of acknowledging Israel's nuclear arsenal -- declining to "speculate". This after all the BS about Iraqi WMDs and continuing dubious drumbeat about Iranian nukes. Anyone paying any attention knows that Israel has a massive nuclear arsenal.

My dad told me that he'd seen no coverage at all of Thomas' question on al-Jazeera and or al-Arabiya or BBC or CNN International and my dad seriously watches them all. I was shocked. Of course, there was virtually no coverage on U.S. media, but I thought there would be substantial coverage of Thomas' question on those networks. I knew from reading As'ad AbuKhalil's "Angry Arab News Service" blog that al-Jazeera was increasingly pro-U.S. government and that al-Arabiya was particularly bad, but still, I was surprised by the lack of coverage of Thomas' crucial question.

Today in the Press Building I happened to bump into Hisham Melham, the D.C. bureau chief of Al-Arabyia, who recently gained much notoriety because he got the first interview with Obama as president. (I first met Hisham in the mid-90s when I did some work that helped expose Fouad Ajami. Hisham interviewed me on the show he hosted at the time for a Lebanese-based station. Since I moved to D.C. eleven years ago, we've mostly been on a shallow "hello" nod basis.)

So I asked Hisham why the story -- Thomas' question and by inference Obama's refusal to acknowledge Israel's nukes -- was ignored by al-Arabiya. Melham dismissed Thomas' question. "I don't like cute questions" he told me as we waited for the elevator. I said it was a crucial question and regardless of what he thinks, why wouldn't al-Arabiya cover it? He continued to be dismissive, telling me how he would have phrased it differently. (It was a ridiculous argument -- something isn't newsworthy because you wouldn't have phrased it the way Thomas did -- it's a partisan stance, not a journalistic one. Thomas asked an important question, Obama refused to acknowledge Israel's massive nuclear arsenal. That is news, particularly to an Arab audience who are the primary -- though not the only -- targets of said nukes.) It was his floor on the elevator by this time and I suggested that maybe he could start asking some tough questions himself.

Indeed it is a real contrast -- how complaint his interview with Obama was with how crucial Thomas' brief opportunity was.

This is how wars happen. Journalists get cozy with politicians so they can maintain "access" so the really tough questions don't get asked -- or are ignored on the rare occasions when they are asked -- so the real problems don't get addressed. It says alot about where Arab governments and media are that they are as susceptible to this as U.S. media.

btw -- I've asked several U.S. officials and politicians similar questions about Israeli nukes, with results similar to Thomas'.: Negroponte, Edwards. I'd recommend this question to anyone. When you see a top government official of either establishment party, ask them about Israel's nukes, if they can't forthrightly acknowledge them, they are up to some serious no good business. 

[originally published at husseini.org on Feb. 19, 2009]