posted June 16, 2005 08:54 PM            

At a time when the administration is trying to mend fences with its European allies and heal wounds with the Muslim world over Iraq, the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Cuba is commanding more and more world attention.

It could put Bush in an awkward position next month in Scotland at the annual meeting of the world's leading industrialized nations. The president and the host of the eight-nation summit, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are both trying to get beyond Iraq and to focus on less controversial subjects such as alleviating poverty in Africa.

International human rights groups have decried U.S. prisoner-treatment practices and policies at Guantanamo Bay, with Amnesty International calling the prison "the gulag of our time" and former President Carter adding his voice to those seeking its closure.

Many Republicans in Congress readily echoed the administration in arguing to keep the prison open, asserting that instances of prisoner abuse were isolated and that many detainees were dangerous individuals bent on harming the United States.

Defending holding them indefinitely, with no charges being filed and with no rights to legal representation, has proved a harder concept to embrace and defend, even for Bush loyalists. It appears to violate cherished bedrock American tenants of jurisprudence.

"The overwhelming majority of the people at Guantanamo Bay have never been charged with any wrongdoing, they have never appeared before any court of law. ... They may be held for as long as the president sees fit under any conditions the military may devise," said Joseph Margulies, a Minneapolis lawyer who represented Mamdouh Habib, an Egypt-born Australian citizen recently released from Guantanamo after being held for three years.

Margulies testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday into legal procedures and practices at the prison.

The growing strains among Republicans became evident Wednesday as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Judiciary Committee chairman, scolded the GOP-run Congress for not doing more to clarify the rights of detainees.

"It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do. ... But at any rate, Congress hasn't acted," Specter said.

The Supreme Court ruled last June that prisoners seized as potential terrorists and held in Cuba may challenge their captivity in American courts. But subsequent actions by lower federal courts have resulted in a "crazy quilt," with few cases resolved, Specter said.

"It's going to be very hard, with those kinds of allegations out there, for Congress to stay out of it," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

Democrats seized on the issue as further ammunition against Republican leadership, calling the prison a legal black hole for some 520 detainees from more than 40 countries.

"Guantanamo is an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and remains a festering threat to our security," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's senior Democrat.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Wednesday that the administration has discussed whether it should stop holding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo. "That's a question that is evaluated, I would say, quite often," he told reporters during a trip to Sheffield, England.

Earlier, however, Gonzales said, "We can't release them and have them go back to fight against America." He said terror suspects could be detained "for the duration of hostilities."

He said he believed about a dozen people released from Guantanamo had later been killed or captured "on the battlefield" fighting against the United States. The U.S. has freed over 230 detainees from Guantanamo since the camp was set up.

"There will of course be an end," Gonzales said. But the attorney general said that would depend on Bush. He didn't offer any timeline.

"All of us know this war will not end in our lifetime," Leahy countered.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday that detainees at Guantanamo "are dangerous individuals who were picked up on the battlefield. They were picked up on the battlefield in the fight against American forces."

Specter noted that Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more conservative members of the court, had suggested in a dissent to the June 2004 ruling that the onus was on Congress for "intelligent revision of the statutes" to spell out rights of such detainees.

Specter said Congress has failed to meet that challenge and rejected suggestions that a commission be set up to study the issue of guaranteeing Guantanamo detainees due process.

"Before we ask someone else to come in, let's do our job," Specter said.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.

posted June 16, 2005 11:20 PM            

This partisan strategy is part of a larger mosaic, ranging from obstructing the confirmation of qualified appellate judges and other officials nominated by the president, to the Democratic lack of seriousness about reforming Social Security or health care, and finally, to their shrill backbiting about the administration's war efforts and policies during a period of wartime.

Aided by their liberal allies in the media, national purpose and will takes backseat to casting doubt about the president's leadership and motives. Finding fault – any fault – and magnifying it beyond all recognition is the tactic of choice: Abu Ghraib, the Quran flush, "abusive" prisoner interrogations and "international embarrassment."
Whipped up by the media and enshrined as Democrat talking points, a manufactured drumbeat of criticism becomes the D.C. buzz, picked up and amplified by the megaphones of pundits and other talking heads. Calls for investigations and/or Senate committee hearings follow – designed to put the majority party on the defensive and embarrass the president, making his task of corralling weak-kneed Republicans like Arlen Specter and achieving party unity all the more difficult.

The charge of prisoner abuse at Gitmo is farcical. Can't Americans conjure up what real prisoner abuse is like? Perhaps they should watch old war movies like "13 Rue Madeleine," where Nazis work over Jimmy Cagney. Or the torture and abuse suffered by American drug smuggler Billy Hayes in a Turkish prison, depicted in "Midnight Express."

So, what are the indignities visited upon the Gitmo detainees? That the temperature of the interrogation rooms is not in the comfort zone? That a guard dropped a Quran? That a woman interrogator batted her eyes at a prisoner? This is sheer nonsense, especially in light of the fact that the ignorant religio-fanatic terrorists usually behead or shoot their prisoners and videotape these atrocities for public broadcast.

Instead, we learn that at Gitmo, the prisoners are served gourmet meals and are given material concessions to accommodate their religious belief, such as Qurans and prayer mats. In addition, they are allowed all sorts of special treatment to practice their faith, including celebratory menu alterations like figs and dates.

Remember, these are the intolerant louts who were part of the harsh and cruel Taliban regime, who not only oppressed their countrymen but also invited outside terrorists to set up shop on their soil to take up arms against the United States. They are part and parcel of the fanatics who flew the fateful jets into our buildings. Have we forgotten that prison is a warehouse for miscreants who lose their freedoms and must endure certain punishments, if necessary?

Most Americans probably believe that if they were running the prison, the Qurans and the prayer mats would go into the dumpster; the daily menu would change from honey-glazed chicken and rice pilaf to mystery meat, Spam and all the pork they could eat. And they might substitute a Three Musketeers bar for the figs and dates, if they were cooperative during interrogation.

What is most distressing about the "destroy Bush at all costs" strategy is that it ultimately weakens the U.S. in prevailing against those who would attempt to kill Americans, even upon our own soil. It is a replay of the Vietnam strategy: Sow discord throughout the country, undermine our foreign policy efforts and our military effectiveness, try to wrest power from the Republican majority.

It is a deeply dishonest and contemptible strategy, following the well-worn Democrat playbook of dividing Americans into opposing classes – and particularly loathsome during a time of war.

Americans would be wise to consider the high stakes that the future holds. Given the fanatic and hostile regime in Iran that is sending suicide bombers into Iraq, all the while pursuing the creation of a nuclear arsenal, our national interest demands stability in the Middle East. This cannot be accomplished by surrendering the region to the terrorists.

Since leading Democrats like Senators Durbin, Kennedy and Leahy have shown they will stop at nothing to discredit President Bush, even to the extent of undermining our war efforts, Americans should see through the empty rhetoric and the pseudo-philosophical posturings and reject their thoughtless remedies. We should strengthen our resolve and continue to do what is right.

posted June 16, 2005 11:39 PM            

By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
Updated: 8:31 p.m. ET June 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -

Tom Curry
National affairs writer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Senate hearing Wednesday on the detainees held at the Guantanamo Naval Base revealed that there is no consensus among senators as to what Congress should do in order to speed up the tribunals trying the prisoners held there, or whether it should impose a time limit on detentions.

Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter called the hearing “just the start of a lot of hard work by this committee to establish rules” to govern what should be done with the detainees.

“There’s a real question as to why Congress hasn’t handled it,” Specter remarked. “It may be that it’s too hot to handle for Congress, it may be that it’s too complex to handle” or that Congress is waiting for the courts to take the lead in designing detainee policy.

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But Specter complained that the Supreme Court in three rulings last June and the lower federal courts, in decisions since then, had created “a crazy quilt” of muddled case law.

Complaining that the appeals courts had been mulling over some detainee cases for months, Specter said his committee would consider approving a law imposing time limits on federal courts for settling detainee cases.

Need for Congress to 'buy in'
Another GOP member of the committee, Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, urged his fellow senators to consider legislation to clarify detainee policy, if only for the reason that Congress needed to “buy in” to the president’s effort.

“There’s not enough ‘buy-in’ by the Congress as to what’s going on at Gitmo” he said.

He suggested that “if Congress developed statutory provisions to define enemy combatant status and standardizing intelligence gathering techniques and detention policy, it would help our cause.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee argued that the allegations of abuse of Guantanamo detainees is causing Muslims to hate the United States and making it harder to win the struggle against al Qaida.

Republicans on the panel didn't seem to buy this argument.

“We’re doing real badly,” said Sen. Joe Biden, D- Del. “It’s a disaster.... We’ve got ourselves a communications problem.”

Biden called for an independent commission to investigate treatment of detainees and to make recommendations for changes in policy.

Biden also raised two crucial questions: when will the war end and should detainees be held until it does end?

When will war end?
“If there’s no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever that these folks are held at Guantanamo Bay,” Biden said. “Has anybody at the Justice Department defined when is the end of the conflict?”

Earlier in the hearing, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, the legal advisor to the Office of Military Commissions, which is in charge of trying detainees, testified under questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that “I don’t know how long this war is going to last” and that the United States could hold al Qaida members at Guantanamo “as long as the conflict endures.”

He added that the Defense Department set up annual review boards to review detainees' cases, “releasing them if they no longer present a threat.”

One Republican on the committee, Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio complained to Hemingway that the military was using a “horribly slow process” to decide which detainees to put on trial, which to keep, and which to let go.

In his reply, Hemingway said that until military interrogators finished questioning a detainee and decided he had no more information to provide, they didn’t turn him over for possible trial before a military commission.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R- Ala., expressed impatience at Democrats who called for more legal rights for detainees. He said the newly constructed facility at Guantanamo was on “a beautiful site” and “would make a magnificent resort.”

As for the detainees held there, “some of them need to be executed,” Sessions said.

Alleged torture in Egypt
One witness who testified before the committee, Chicago attorney Joseph Margulies, represented a Guantanamo detainee named Mamdouh Habib.

Margulies said Habib had been seized in Pakistan by police who turned him over to U.S. custody. The U.S. government sent Habib to Egypt where, Margulies said, he was tortured. Later he was sent on to Guantanamo.

Eventually after a Washington Post story detailed the torture allegations, the Bush administration released Habib.

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The Defense Department’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), which provides a panel of military officers to assess each detainee’s case, is “a sham,” Margulies said.

“The CSRT relied on Mr. Habib’s statements given in Egypt to support its conclusion that he was an enemy combatant,” Margulies said. “Any process that relies on information secured in this way (through torture) is just not worthy of American justice.”

The most adamant defender of the Bush administration at Wednesday’s hearing was William Barr, who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993, during the George H.W. Bush presidency.

“There’s nothing punitive about it, this is not a legal proceeding, there’s no need to bring charges, they are being held because they were identified on the battlefield as threats to our forces,” said Barr. “The Supreme Court cases say that foreigners outside the United States with no connection to the United States do not have due process rights.”

But what Barr did not mention is that in Rasul v. Bush, decided last June, the Supreme Court said that detainees at Guantanamo had a right to a habeas corpus hearing before a federal judge.

Comparison to World War II
Barr noted that during World War II, over 400,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war were held in camps in Utah, Texas and Arkansas.

“We seized a lot of Eastern Europeans and Asians who had been fighting in the Soviet Army, then captured by the Germans and conscripted into forced labor battalions” by the Nazis. Once captured and in the United States, many of them claimed that they weren’t really German soldiers and ought to be set fee.

“They didn’t get into U.S. courts, they didn’t get lawyers, they didn’t get hearings as to ‘are you a member of the Wehrmacht or not?’ They were detained until the end of hostilities,” Barr said.

He contended that the CSRT process created by the Bush administration was more than sufficient.

“I hear a lot of pontificating about the Geneva Convention, but I don’t see what the issue is.” Barr added. “The Geneva Convention applies to signatory powers. Al Qaida hasn’t signed it. They are not covered by the Geneva Convention.”

© 2005 MSNBC Interactive

posted June 16, 2005 11:47 PM            

Coddling the Enemy
David Limbaugh
Friday, June 17, 2005

How can we successfully prosecute the War on Terror when one of the two major political parties in our nation seems to have no concept of the nature of the war or the enemy we are fighting?

What the Democratic Party leadership obviously fails to recognize is that we are in a war of global reach, and there's no end in sight – literally. And our enemy would be no less committed to our destruction if we immediately withdrew from Iraq or gave every Gitmo prisoner daily bubble baths.

It is mystifying, maddening and outrageous that people like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are demanding a date certain that we will withdraw from Iraq. It's as if they believe we can turn this war on and off with a spigot simply by removing our troops from Iraq.

Even apart from the monumental waste of American lives and resources, and the catastrophic consequences for Iraq, democracy and the Middle East our precipitous withdrawal would cause, we must understand that pulling out of Iraq will do nothing to end the enemy's war against us. Indeed, such a move would doubtlessly embolden the enemy, encouraging them to hit us harder because they would know we don't have what it takes to endure this war.

Democrats scoffed before when President Bush and others said that if we weren't fighting the terrorists in Iraq we would be fighting them somewhere else. They can laugh all they want, but it happens to be true. To suggest that enemy forces in Iraq are merely Iraqi insurgents, as opposed to part of an international band of terrorists, including Saddam's Iraqi holdovers and terrorist imports from Iran, Syria and every other imaginable place, is sheer folly.

The Iraqi people themselves have embraced freedom and democracy, as they demonstrated in spades by their historic turnout at the polls despite the risk to their lives in doing so. Iraq happens to be the primary venue of the War on Terror currently because international terrorists – extremist Muslim fanatics – have enormous incentive to prevent the development and spread of democracy there and elsewhere in the Middle East. If it can blossom there, it can blossom anywhere – and that doesn't portend well for their vision of a global Muslim theocracy.

Given these realities, the Democrats' call for a specific withdrawal date from Iraq is incomprehensibly reckless. What American or Iraqi benefit can they conceivably imagine from our telegraphing such a date?

Has this once-honorable party completely forgotten what happened on 9/11, when we were attacked without provocation – before we attacked Iraq, by the way? Do they think the terrorists will declare a cease-fire even if we cede Iraq to them?

If they truly understood the nature of the enemy, would they coddle them as if they were their pet criminal defendants on the mainland of the United States? Would they insist on mischaracterizing – to the detriment of America's image and the demoralizing of our troops – the conditions at the prison camp at Guantanamo?

It is hard to overstate the egregiousness of Dick Durbin's suggestion that we are torturing and abusing prisoners comparable to the Soviet Gulags, and worse, implying that we are doing so as a matter of Bush administration policy.

Bulletin to Dick Durbin and like-minded America-bashing appeasers: These enemy combatants are not criminal defendants; they are not criminals at all. They are part of an incorrigible war enemy. But they are unlike any enemy we've faced before, because they are unattached to any nation state that could be made to surrender. Their cause transcends rationality and will survive the fall of any nation.

If Democrats understood the nature of the enemy, they would know that it is not only not unreasonable for us to hold terrorist enemies in perpetuity, but also utterly mandatory. These people – those of them we can confirm through military tribunals are indeed enemy combatants – can never be released back into the world as long as this war continues, and there's no reason to expect that it will end in the next 50 years.

I'm completely serious about this. Whether we like it or not, the war is going to continue as long as there are significant numbers of Muslim extremists in the world to prosecute it, and there will be, irrespective of whether we do everything we can – short of converting to a Muslim theocracy – to make them like us.

Besides, the Gitmo prisoners, in effect, have the keys to their own jail cells because it is their allies in terror who will decide when to quit waging war against civilization. Until that happens, we cannot afford to give them liberty and a license to come back and kill us.

posted June 17, 2005 02:06 AM            

Oh, I see now. Rush is a pundit there. They've left other of their own pundits testimonials up, but not Rush's. Now the only name I truly recognize on the testimonials page is Michael Savage:

quote:

---

NewsMax is my favorite connection to words in print. I use NewsMax to make certain others in talk radio do not take credit for what I create on The Savage Nation.
— Michael Savage, Talk Radio Host
Talk Radio Network, San Francisco, CA

---

posted June 17, 2005 06:30 AM            

House Panel Limits Growth of Democracy-Building Fund
Thursday, June 16, 2005


WASHINGTON — Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development.

Under the Millennium Challenge Account (search), countries are eligible for extra aid only if they control corruption, invest in health and education and encourage trade and private investment.

In 2002, Bush called for "a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations."

He requested $3 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Thursday recommended $1.75 billion, which is $262 million more than last year.

Overall, lawmakers are proposing only a tiny increase in U.S. foreign aid in the coming budget year, rejecting an 11 percent jump requested by Bush.

Decrying what they said were difficult choices needed to keep overall spending down, members of a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday approved and sent to the full panel a bill for $20.27 billion that included health, education, counter-narcotics and military aid to poor nations.

It is only $730 million above the $19.54 appropriated in fiscal year 2005 and slashed more than $2 billion from Bush's request of $22.82 billion.

Democrats lamented the relatively small amount to be allotted for aid programs compared to the estimated $350 billion military budget being considered -- a figure that doesn't include emergency funds for the continuing wars.

"It always amazes me that people are willing to shove huge amounts of money out the door" to pay for wars, "but are often unwilling to provide tiny amounts to prevent them," said Rep. David Obey (search), D-Wis.

----------------------------------

Appears Bush wanted to have heart, Republicans wanted to curb to crazy spending of this administration (maybe Bush was behind this as well), and Democrats are bummed that wars get more money than nations in need.

----------------------------------

What's up with FoxNews putting AP articles on their site? Guess the AP doesn't get the NY Times treatment.

I highly recommend listening to O'Reilly's rant on the NY Times. His whining is very reminiscent of ________(not naming names). Bill's feelings have clearly been hurt by Al Franken, and he's just relentless in his pursuit to put him down while in the context of exposing the evil of a media source (NYT) pushing it's political views.

posted June 17, 2005 10:03 AM            

Viewers continue to desert the networks, the leftist cable stations and the leftist print media. Only 21% of readers believe what they read in the NY Times, 79% have wised up.

Fox News is doing pretty well...better than the Clinton News Network and MSNBC combined.
O'Reilly would appear to be doing pretty well on Fox with the number 1 cable show.

That's the price the left is paying for lying through their teeth to the American people. Keep up the good work.

posted June 17, 2005 04:07 PM            

LOSING THEIR HEADS OVER GITMO
June 15, 2005

I guess Bush should have backed Katherine Harris, after all. Sen. Mel Martinez, the Senate candidate Bush backed instead of Harris, has become the first Republican to call for shutting down Guantanamo. Martinez hasn't said where the 500 or so suspected al-Qaida operatives currently at Gitmo should be transferred to, but I understand the Neverland Ranch might soon be available.

Maybe Sen. Arlen Specter — the liberal Republican Bush backed instead of conservative Pat Toomey, which still didn't help Bush in Pennsylvania — will step forward to defend the Bush administration. That Karl Rove is a genius.

Martinez explained his nonsensical call for the closing of Guantanamo by asking: "Is it serving all the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it, or can this be done some other way a little better?"

There are Arabs locked up at Guantanamo, no? Admittedly, not enough. (And not under what any frequent flier would describe as "harsh conditions.") Still and all, Arabs are locked up there. That is what we call a "purpose."

By becoming a focus of evil for human rights groups, Martinez suggested, Guantanamo has become a recruiting tool for al-Qaida: "It's become an icon for bad stories," Martinez said, "and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio." (I've been wondering the same thing about Mel Martinez.)

This is preposterous. NBC's "The West Wing" is an icon for bad stories; Gitmo is a place where we keep an eye on evil, dangerous people who want to kill us.

Martinez was borrowing a point from Sen. Joe Biden — which is always a dangerous gambit because you never know who said it originally. The "Biden" version was: "I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo."

So if people around the world believe that if they try to kill Americans they might go to a bad, scary place called Guantanamo, that will make them more likely to kill Americans? How about doing a cost-benefit ratio on that analysis?

Let's also pause to ponder the image of the middle-of-the-road, "centrist" Jihadist who could be "recruited" to Jihad by reports about abuse at Guantanamo. You know — the kind of guy who just watches al-Jazeera for the sports and hits the "mute" button whenever they start in about the Jews again, already.

Liberals want us to believe such a person exists and that he is perusing newspaper articles about Guantanamo trying to decide whether to finish his coffee and head off to work or to place a backpack filled with dynamite near a preschool.

Note to liberals: That doesn't happen.

What happens is this: There are thousands of Muslim extremists literally dying to slaughter Americans, and only three proven ways to stop them: (1) Kill them (the recommended method), (2) capture them and keep them locked up, or (3) convince them that their cause is lost. Guantanamo is useless for No. 1, but really pulls ahead on No. 2 and No. 3 (i.e. a "purpose").

Let's just hope aspiring Jihadists are not reading past the headlines and discovering that what Amnesty International means by "the gulag of our time" is: No Twinkie rewards for detainees!

That's not a joke. As described in infuriating detail by Heather MacDonald in the Winter, 2005, City Journal, interrogators at Guantanamo are not allowed to:

— yell at the detainees, except in extreme circumstances and only after alerting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — and never in the ears;

— serve the detainees cold meals, except in extreme circumstances;

— poke the detainees in the chest or engage in "light pushing" without careful monitoring and approval from the commander of the U.S. Southern Central Command in Miami;

— reward detainees (for example, for not throwing feces at the guards that day) with a Twinkie or a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich in the absence of express approval from the secretary of defense. (I suppose it goes without saying, "supersizing" their order is strictly forbidden under any circumstances.)

Without careful monitoring, interrogators aren't even allowed to subject the detainees to temperature changes, unpleasant odors or sleep cycle disruptions. But on the bright side, they are allowed to play Christina Aguilera music and feed the savages the same food our soldiers eat rather than their usual orange-glazed chicken. That isn't sarcasm; these are the rules.

No cold meals, sleep deprivation or uncomfortable positions? Obviously, what we need to do is get the U.S. Army to serve drinks on commercial airlines and get the airlines to start supervising the detainees in Guantanamo.

posted June 17, 2005 06:21 PM            

The Anti-Defamation League blasted Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin on Thursday, demanding that he apologize for comparing U.S. troops at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis."

"Whatever your views on the treatment of detainees and alleged excesses at the Guantanamo Bay facility, it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners," ADL chief Abraham Foxman wrote in a letter addressed to Durbin.

"Suggesting some kind of equivalence between their interrogation tactics demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his regime actually perpetrated," Foxman added. "We urge you to repudiate your remarks and apologize to the American people for distorting an important issue with an inappropriate comparison to Nazi tactics," the ADL chief said.
Earlier on Thursday, Sen. Durbin said he was standing by his remarks, insisting instead: "This administration should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions."

Last week the ADL called on powerful House Democrat Charlie Rangel to apologize, after Rangel compared the Iraq war to the Holocaust.

Rather than comply, Rangel charged that Mr. Foxman had a history of targeting African-Americans like himself.

posted June 18, 2005 11:13 AM              

yes...rush limbaugh refers to newsmax farticles often on his show....

posted June 20, 2005 06:35 PM            

Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:18 p.m. EDT
Defiant Durbin: No Apology Necessary

Hours after Sen. Dick Durbin issued his so-called "apology" for comparing U.S. troops to "Nazis," the Illinois Democrat turned defiant over the blunder - declaring flat out that he has nothing whatsoever to apologize for.

"It's not that my remarks were wrong or that there's any need for apology," Durbin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Friday. "It's the fact that [my critics] have successfully twisted them out of context."

Durbin blamed conservatives for his troubles, saying that he refused to be "intimidated by the right-wing message machine."
"If I'm going to back off every time they decide they're unhappy with my statements, then I really won't be doing my job."

Durbin vowed to pursue his investigation into Nazi-like abuses perpetrated by U.S. troops, telling the paper: "We're going to continue to follow this [and] demand that the administration be held accountable."

The comments were a far cry from the No. 2 Senate Democrat's contrite-sounding press release issued earlier in the day.

posted June 20, 2005 06:38 PM            

Vice President Dick Cheney slammed No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin on Friday, saying his comparison of U.S. troops to Nazis was so "appalling" that he had to watch his language while discussing it.

Asked about Durbin's outburst, Cheney began by telling WWTN Nashville radio host Steve Gill: " I'm sure [this is] a family program, Steve. I have to be careful what I say."

Then the VP leveled both barrels at the Democrat's reckless complaint that Guantanamo detainees are subject to Nazi-like treatment.
"I thought Durbin was totally out of line," Cheney said. "For him to make those comparisons was one of the more egregious things I'd ever heard uttered on the floor of the United States Senate. ... It was so far over the top that I'm just appalled that anybody who serves in the United States Senate would even think those thoughts."

Cheney said that Durbin couldn't be more wrong about how the GI prison guards behave.

"The fact of the matter," he told Gill, "is the situation at Guantanamo is being very well handled by our military. ... [The terrorist detainees] are well-housed. They're well-fed. Their religious needs and desires are catered to. They're not being tortured or mistreated, but they are a major source of intelligence for us. Plus, we need to keep them off the streets."

Cheney reminded the Nashville audience that the Guantanamo guards have to handle some pretty rough customers.

"Remember what's happened here," he told Gill. "These are terrorists, these are bomb-makers ... these are hard-core terrorists is the only way to describe them. They're unlawful combatants. They're out to kill Americans. And if you put them back on the streets, that's exactly what they'll do."

The VP said it's clear that Durbin's comments have his fellow Democrats squirming, and hinted that he thought the scandal may force the top Democrat to walk the plank.

posted June 20, 2005 06:40 PM            

Vice President Dick Cheney became the highest-ranking Bush administration official yet to castigate Sen. Dick Durbin on Friday for comparing U.S. troops to Nazis.

And Cheney's words were, by far, the harshest yet uttered against the top Democrat by any senior elected Republican.

But so far, at least, mainstream reporters have steadfastly ignored Cheney's remarks - perhaps because they know that the VP's reaction ratchets the story up to Defcon 3 level, and covering it would make it impossible for Democrats to continue their silence.
In an interview Friday with WWTN Nashville radio host Steve Gill, Cheney said he was so angry he had to watch his language while discussing Durbin's comments, calling the outburst "one of the more egregious things I'd ever heard uttered on the floor of the United States Senate."

The vice president even went so far as to suggest that Durbin was unfit for his office, saying the Illinois Democrat's remarks were "so far over the top that I'm just appalled that anybody who serves in the United States Senate would even think those thoughts."

Media reaction? A LexisNexis search shows not a single newspaper, wire service or TV news show covering any of the above quotes.

Compare Cheney's words with Sen. John McCain's more tepid reaction to the Durbin outrage, which garnered widespread coverage.

"He should certainly apologize," McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press," saying that Durbin had done "a great disservice to the men and women in the military who are serving honorably down there."

A "disservice"?

McCain doesn't sound anywhere near as "appalled" as the vice president was - making his reaction far more appealing to big-media reporters who also aren't particularly appalled by what Durbin had to say.

Still, the cover-up of Cheney's comments - which remain posted on the White House Web site, by the way - represents yet another milestone in mainstream media bias.

posted June 28, 2005 10:09 AM            

WASHINGTON - Two Democratic senators, just back from Guantanamo Bay, said Monday that Congress should come up with concrete rules for handling detainees at the U.S. prison there.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Ben Nelson of Nebraska said more precise rules would help ensure that prisoners would not be abused and that the United States would not suffer further embarrassments because of the way detainees were treated.

Wyden and Nelson made the comments after a three-day trip to Cuba that included a tour of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and extensive meetings with top U.S. officials and rank-and-file soldiers and sailors. The lawmakers also met with a top Cuban agriculture official in an effort to promote trade of cherries, peas and other crops grown in their states.

"The Bush administration is correct when they say these are unique circumstances" at Guantanamo, Wyden said at a Capitol news conference. "We are in a war. These are not your garden-variety criminal defendants."

But that "does not mean there should not be any concrete rules" for prisoner treatment, Wyden said. "Even in a war, reasonable Democrats and Republicans on a bipartisan basis ought to be able to ... establish a precise legal status for these and future prisoners."

Wyden and Nelson declined to offer specifics, but they said they hoped to work with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) and other Republicans to draft language clarifying the rights and legal status of more than 500 terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo.

Critics, including Amnesty International, have condemned conditions there as inhumane and complained that some prisoners have been held for more than three years without criminal charges.

Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, scolded the GOP-run Congress earlier his month for not doing more to clarify the rights of detainees.

"It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex ... or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do. But at any rate, Congress hasn't acted," Specter said.

Wyden, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and Nelson, of the Armed Services Committee, said they were impressed with Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo Bay. They came away from their visit convinced that prisoners are being treated fairly, the senators said.

"There was not torture, not deprivation," Nelson said, adding that he based on his comments on his own observations and on conversations with troops from Nebraska.

"I know I can trust Nebraskans to tell me the truth," he said. "I'm comfortable that the mistakes of the past have been corrected."

Wyden agreed, but he said Congress still has a responsibility to set standards for prisoner treatment into law.

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Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this story.

posted June 28, 2005 05:35 PM            

The United States Congress has no role in defining the status of captured terrorists to POW or anything else.

Further, running military prison camps is a function of the United States Military which is an Executive Branch function.

Grandstanding dimocrats and weak kneed republicans need to butt out and let the military do it's job. Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the corrupt Marxist Progressives are finished as a force in American policy. Giving aid and comfort to America's enemies...well, we call that treason.

posted July 01, 2005 05:44 PM            

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) commissioned the report from its human rights representative, Belgian senate president Anne-Marie Lizin, and will vote next week whether to accept its findings.

"A generation of young Muslims, fed on the images of Abu Ghraib, of the treatment reserved for the Guantanamo detainees and rumors about profanation of the Koran, will have filled the al Qaeda ranks and those of other extremist groups," said the report made public on Friday.

"The longer the detention is in the camps the more the hatred against the U.S. and the West becomes anchored in hearts and minds," it said.

"Being fully aware of the U.S. authorities' dilemma between national and world security and long procedures, we recommend terminating the Guantanamo detention facility by announcing a calendar of closure."

In June, the U.S. military described cases of mishandling of the Koran by U.S. personnel at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, including splashing it with urine and kicking it. Muslims view the Koran as the literal word of God.

U.S. UNDER PRESSURE

The U.S. government, increasingly under pressure at home to close the prison down, has said it is key to protecting the country from further attacks. Last week it said it was addressing abuse claims and holding prison staff to account.

The OSCE, consisting of 55 member nations from Europe, North America and the former Soviet republics, is an organization that aims to maintain security and flag conflicts and human rights issues in its region. The United States is a member.

Guantanamo mostly holds prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan during the U.S. offensive there in retaliation for the Sept. 11 al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

Human rights groups as well as institutions such as the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have criticized the United States for holding detainees there for indefinite periods and not assigning them "prisoner of war" status.

Instead, suspects are labeled "enemy combatants," something the new report called a legal nonentity under international law. If charged with crimes, they stand in front of a military tribunal which can demand capital punishment.

On Thursday, Lizin made news this week when she canceled a meeting in Brussels with the Iranian parliament speaker after the visitor, a strict observer of Islam, said he would not shake hands with the female senate president.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050701/pl _nm/security_guantanamo_dc;_ylt=AuRVrDKlZi4TJ7BF.He6VvUa.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
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AG's opinion

Since you seem to want it so much Jwhop I'll comment.

America historically has always endeavored to hold itself to the highest possible standards.

Articles like this are being disseminated throughout the world, and they are hurting our great or formerly great name. Our government should address this perception quickly. The danger of letting these articles go unanswered is that they will serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists.

posted July 01, 2005 06:10 PM            

There is and always has been a policy in force at Gitmo for treatment of terrorist prisoners.

We also don't need leftist Senators telling Bush who he should nominate to the Supreme Court vacancy.

I suppose the thoughts to provide help for the administration come from the same source. The mistaken notion leftists, reporters, Saddam supporters and leftist Senators are in some way in charge of events in the Bush administration. The quicker they are weaned off this absurd notion the better.

Rove was right, the left, including reporters think terrorists should be indicted and given an understanding group hug. After all, it is America's fault terrorists attacked America all during the 90's and also in 2001 and we need to change their perceptions. Right.

posted July 01, 2005 06:57 PM            

Terrorists are at Gitmo for a reason, it's not Club Med and they aren't there for a relaxing vacation. They are being treated far better than I would treat those who believe they can and even must kill Americans because some idiot cleric says they can or must. Non Muslim Americans are by definition, infidels. What about that don't you understand? It is the sheerest idiocy to believe terrorists are fazed by American treatment of captured terrorists, considering their own barbaric treatment of people they've captured. They are more influenced by idiots like Durbin and Kennedy to believe they are on the right track to victory over the Great Satan.

Lastly, it's my opinion terrorists are doing exactly what we need for them to do. Flood into Iraq to make a stand in the Middle East so we can kill as many of them as possible.