“The State party should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process or release them as soon as possible, ensuring that they are not returned to any State where they could face a real risk of being tortured, in order to comply with its obligations under the Convention.” A day after an ugly prisoner uprising, the UN Committee Against Torture implores the US to close the prison at Gitmo. The report (PDF) also calls for the US “to expressly ban controversial interrogation techniques, and to halt the transfer of detainees to countries with a history of abuse and torture.“
Category: The Dubya Era
Hayden Right?
“Unlike so many of the hacks placed in charge of important government agencies during the past six years, Hayden possesses powerful qualifications for the job…By the admittedly dismal standards of the Bush administration, then, Hayden is an unusually good appointment.” As former NSA head and probable CIA director-to-be Michael Hayden navigates the confirmation process (leaving all his Snoopgate-related answers for the secret session), he procures an endorsement from an unlikely source: Salon‘s Joe Conason: “[D]espite his military uniform, Hayden is likely to be more independent of the Pentagon and the White House than Goss was. It will help that, unlike Goss, he actually knows what he’s doing.” Hmmm. Update: Hayden is through committee on a 12-3 vote. (Feingold, for his part, voted no: “Our country needs a CIA Director who is committed to fighting terrorism aggressively without breaking the law or infringing on the rights of Americans.”
Garden of Freedom.
“‘We are engaged in a battle with people who hate our team and our way of playing basketball,’ Thomas said in an interview Tuesday. ‘We cannot afford to second-guess ourselves. You are either with the New York Knicks or you are against them.’” It is as we feared. As The Onion reports, Isiah Thomas has no exit strategy for the New York Knickerbockers.
Oh, those records.
“Everybody knew that Judicial Watch had gotten the shaft. It just wasn’t clear how. Well, here’s how: the Secret Service doesn’t have the records – the White House does. That’s because the Secret Service transfers their more comprehensive visitor logs, called WAVES (Workers Appointments and Visitors Entry System) records, to the White House every 60 days.” TPM‘s Paul Kiel explains why the Secret Service records of Abramoff came up basically blank. (Via Now This.)
Senate Fencing.
“What we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics, a fence between America and Mexico.” Following up on Dubya’s speech Monday night (which, to be honest, I totally missed — late night at the library), the Senate wrangles over immigration reform, voting, as per conservatives’ wish list, “to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and to block access to a new guest-worker program by lawbreaking illegal immigrants, even those guilty of misdemeanors or ignoring a deportation order.”
The Softer Name of Revenue.
“‘If you want to look at why the Republican Party is down in the dumps and why the president’s numbers are down in the dumps,’ Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said this afternoon, ‘it’s that the American people are beginning to understand that when they talk about tax cuts, they’re not talking about helping middle-class people. They’re talking about helping the wealthiest corporations and individuals among us.’” True, that. And, since Dubya signed the dividend tax giveaway extension into law this afternoon, the Dems now have another potent issue in their arsenal through November. “‘Today’s really a good day to be a millionaire, but it’s a bad day if you want to be a millionaire,’ Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) said at a news conference minutes after Bush signed the bill.”
Pyongyang Redux?
“It’s ironic that President Bush is now endorsing a diplomatic stance toward Iran so similar to the stance that President Clinton took toward North Korea. When he first took office, Bush so feverishly opposed the Agreed Framework with North Korea in large part because Clinton had produced it.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan wonders whether President Clinton’s Agreed Framework with North Korea might help to contain Iran. The verdict? Possibly maybe, particularly given that we have no real alternatives.
Chinese Phone Tag.
Even more Snoopgate fallout: As last week’s bombshell story in USA Today makes the covers of the major newsweekies, two ABC reporters say their calls to sources are being monitored. “A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. ‘It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,’ the source told us in an in-person conversation.”
McCarthy McCarthy’ed.
“‘When the president nominated Porter Goss [as CIA director in September 2004], he sent Goss over to get a rogue agency under control,’ Steven Simon, a colleague of McCarthy’s at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999, said Goss’s aides told him. Simon said McCarthy’s unusually public firing appeared intended not only to block leaks but also to suppress the dissent that has ‘led to these leaks. The aim was to have a chilling effect, and it will probably work for a while.‘” The WP delves deeper into the firing of CIA officer Mary McCarthy last month, and discovers it may well have been due to both her opposition to secret gulags and her anger over CIA lies on the subject.
Dick’s Last Resort?
“Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an amb to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?” A new court filing by Patrick Fitzgerald finds Dick Cheney fretting over Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame in his handwritten notes on Wilson’s article, further substantiating that the felonious leak likely emanated from the veep’s office…if not ordered by the vice-president himself. “Fitzgerald’s filing states that Libby learned of Plame’s name from Cheney, in the course of discussions by the vice president’s office about how to respond to a June 2003 inquiry from Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson’s trip to Niger. Fitzgerald asserts that those conversations — and earlier ones sparked by a May 2003 column about the trip in the Times — help demonstrate that Libby’s ‘disclosures to the press concerning Mr. Wilson’s wife were not casual disclosures.‘”