top 5 worst 9/11 memorials from vigilant citizen: 9/11 has inspired a myriad of memorials who are scattered all across America. Some of them are of questionable taste, others contain strange occult symbolism while others simply piss people off. Here’s the five most offensive... #5 Boston Memorial, #4 Polish Plaque, #3 All-Seeing Eye Memorial, #2 Teardrop Memorial & #1 Crescent of Embrace... 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, no matter who made it happen **cough** Rumsfeld **cough cough ** False flag terror ** cough**. Sorry, I don’t usually cough while typing. Since this event was the most terrible terrorist act committed on US soil, it is simply fitting that many memorials appear in honor of those who unjustly lost their lives. Some of them are very touching, inspiring and heartfelt. Others, not so much. Some even make you wonder if they were actually built for the victims or to serve an agenda. The monuments here are controversial, insensitive and slightly offensive…a little like this article. Enjoy.
lawyers can question 9/11 suspect in writing from ap: Lawyers for a Guantanamo Bay detainee will be allowed to question — in writing — accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a federal judge has ruled. The decision is a setback for government lawyers who had sought to limit the scope of detainee lawyers' challenges to the detention and prosecution of terror suspects. In a written ruling, Judge Ricardo Urbina says lawyers for detainee Abdul Raheem Ghulam Rabbani can submit written questions about their client to Mohammed. Prosecutors say he worked for Mohammed, but Rabbani's lawyers contend he was just a menial servant, not a part of any terror network. The ruling says prosecutors may review the answers before delivering them to Rabbani's lawyers to remove any national security information.
army judge: 9/11 lawyers can't see cia 'black sites' from miami herald: A military judge says defense lawyers for an alleged Sept. 11 plotter held at Guantánamo don't need to inspect secret CIA overseas prisons to determine whether the accused al Qaeda terrorist is competent to stand trial. Judge Stephen Henley, an Army colonel, ruled Monday that the so-called black sites have likely changed enough since 2006 that an inspection would be of no use to Ramzi Bin al Shibh's Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers.
torture evidence 'hidden from obama' from guardian: US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week. Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it. In the letter to the president [292kb PDF], Stafford Smith urges him to order the disclosure of the evidence.
progressives surprised by obama non-surprises from chris floyd: There is certainly a great deal of slack-jawed shock going around these days, especially in progressive circles, where pundits, commentators, analysts and kibitzers continually find themselves reeling from yet another "inexplicable" move by the Obama Administration to uphold the core principles of their predecessors: enriching the rich, extending the empire, and enhancing the authoritarian power of a thoroughly militarized state. For example, Glenn Greenwald and Scott Horton at Harper's (among many others) are deeply shocked by Team Obama's draconian maneuvers to quash a court case based on clear, abundant and credible evidence that American security forces - and their corporate accomplices - colluded to inflict horrendous tortures on a gulag captive (whose only "crime," it turns out, was reading a satirical magazine article). While Horton struggles to find some small justification for what he sees as an unwise decision, Greenwald is scathing and detailed in denouncing Obama's action, in which the new president seeks to uphold - and to seize for himself - some of the most egregious claims of arbitrary, tyrannical power once advanced by George "Unitary Executive" Bush. It is good to see these worthy gentlemen - lawyers both -- give us chapter and verse on this act of evil, yet one still must ask: why all the surprise?
video: leahy says truth commission may be only way to get truth from raw replay: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, wants to put together a commission to investigate possible Bush-era abuses. Leahy joined MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to talk about his proposal. After speaking with Leahy, Maddow concludes that most Democratic leaders in Congress support conditional prosecution of officials for crimes committed during the Bush administration. This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Feb 10, 2009.
video: turley pleads for prosecution of bush crimes from raw replay: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has suggested a bipartisan panel to seek the truth about accusations of criminal wrongdoing by the Bush administration. Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley discusses why Leahy wants this panel to have the power to grant immunity and serve subpoenas. This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Feb 10, 2009.
time for a civilian afghanisurge? from danger room: Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has a message for the State Department and other civilian agencies: It's time to step up to the plate in Afghanistan. Yesterday, the Obama administration kicked off a 60-day policy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy; options may include reinforcing the Afghanistan mission by sending as many as 20,000 to 30,000 more troops. Speaking Monday to soldiers at Fort Drum, N.Y., Mullen said it was time for a "commensurate surge" of diplomats and U.S. government civilians to reinforce stability operations and reconstruction. "It is not possible to win this or succeed in Afghanistan militarily alone," Mullen said, according to a Pentagon news item.
obama’s change: expanding the power of the nsc & shadow govt from kurt nimmo: On February 8, Karen DeYoung, writing for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, reported that “President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.” According to national security adviser and former Marine commandant James L. Jones, the “world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful.” Obama will issue a presidential directive that will “expand the NSC’s reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues and turn it into a much more elastic body.” So dangerous is the world now, according to the argument offered by Jones, the NSC will apparently encompass “the Energy Department, Commerce Department and Treasury, all the law enforcement agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, all of those things.” After Obama issues his directive, the NSC will strive to “embrace a broader membership” and roll these government agencies into the National Security State, initially created in 1947 when Congress passed the National Security Act. In addition to the NSC, this legislation created the CIA and institutionalized under the rubric of “national security” the justification for new weapons systems, huge military expenditures, and military interventions in the third world.
from ap: The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.
He said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.
"The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations," Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.
The CIA also decided to destroy the tapes in "the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them," Hayden wrote.
from reuters: Prime Minister Romano Prodi and his predecessor Silvio Berlusconi will not be called to testify on behalf of Italy's former spy chief, who is accused of helping the CIA kidnap a terrorism suspect, a judge ruled on Tuesday.
Prosecutors want to try 26 Americans, most believed to be CIA agents, for grabbing Muslim clericHassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off a Milan street in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Italy's former spy chief Nicolo Pollari, who risks indictment on suspicion of aiding the CIA mission, wanted Prodi and Berlusconi to defend him at a preliminary hearing since he says information proving his innocence is classified.
But Judge Caterina Interlandi ruled that the men's testimony was not relevant to her decision on whether there is enough evidence to warrant a trial, legal sources said.
She further ruled that state secrecy rules did not apply to the kidnapping case, despite Pollari's claims to the contrary.
If she orders a trial, as looks increasingly likely after Tuesday's ruling, it would be the first criminal procedure over renditions - one of the most controversial aspects of U.S. President George W. Bush's global war on terrorism.
The case is being closely watched all over Europe, where judicial authorities in several countries are investigating accusations of CIA secret prisons and secret transfers of U.S. terrorism suspects. A judge in Germany last week ordered the arrest of 13 people linked to the abduction of a German national who says he was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA.
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US needs hit squads, 'manhunting agency': special ops report*
