While I would never envy any person who has inherited the problems left by the last administration and respect that REAL solutions take time, I would strongly encourage our federal government to act responsibly and close the prison at Guantanamo. I am confident that our prison systems and courts are competent and capable of dispensing justice in these cases. We cannot sustain any form of indefinite imprisonment or the denial of human rights and concurrently condemn other countries for similar abuses.

It is both shameful and humiliating that in the past fifteen or sixteen years, my nation's political leadership in all parties has abandoned the principles of due process, equal protection, speedy trials, anti-retroactivity and limited government. Both parties have endorsed elected officials who have contributed to, allowed, sanctioned and authorized actions for which we have in the past pursued and deposed foriegn leaders. I can no longer claim I am a citizen of the greatest country on Earth when my nation engages in behaviors such as those which ended with Guantanamo Bay.

While I am certain there are those who would say that if I disagree with my nation's practices at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere with respect to torture, indefinite detention or unlimited government, I should leave. This response has always been the traditional American reply to criticism of the government. However, I was raised to believe in a free and just republican democracy and a federation of the several states, united under liberty. To any person who disagrees with the above statements, who endorses torture under the disguise of 'interrogation' I would first ask if they truly or personally understand the concept of practices such as waterboarding, second I would ask what makes this nation different from Iran, China, Libya or any other nation that considers such to be 'standard procedure?'

Please close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and return my country to its principles.

Sam,

Thanks very much for your comprehensive and compelling note.
Obviously, I agree with you. With explicit, defined policies that
have now extended to kill orders for American citizens -- as
opposed to capture and bring to justice -- I fear we are still
moving in a wobbly direction that sacrifices our norms. But when I
see something like the DoJ website and the opportunity to weigh
in on these sorts of issues -- I feel that the future is not set.

all best, steve clemons

"This site seems could be useful in making some real progress in the right direction when it comes to knocking down some walls of what became under Bush/Cheney a very opaque national security state"

And it just continues under Obama. Is there anyone here that doesn't believe known crimes are being ignored by Holder? Known perjuries before Congress, at the very least, have occurred.

I will look at the site, but I am not optimistic that it is anthing other than typical insincere posturing on the part of this Administration. If they really intended to uphold the LAW, than they would be doing so. I imagine this is just a marketing campaign to silence the more uninformed among us, and convince them that Holder is something other than Obama's personal lackey.

Me? I'm not buying it. Stop with the bullshit feel-good websites and start enforcing the law. Thats what you were put in office to do, so, damnit, just do it.

ditto poa... legalized murder is what the usa has come to stand for, with no due process... meanwhile it seems to always get worse, instead of better no matter who the leadership.. as i have said before, their is an absence of political leadership with courage... they all seem to be sycophants wanting to be elected and nothing much more...

Well, I'm pretty convinced that the US of A is headed to hell in a hand basket -- at least the USA as we have known it. It feels very much like we are in a major transition that cannot help but permanently alter the nation.

Still, along with the nefarious and cowardly political landscape that I see, I can recognize an occasional good thing happening. And if this website indeed demystifies and makes more accessible information under the FOIA, that's good. So much can be learned about the inner working of the establishment by exploring and exposing it . . . given enough time to wade through a lot of material. And unless the whole classification system get's skewed to bury the bone deeper. Anyway, I'll give the site a look.

At DOJ in general, there are enough career lawyers still there having survived the draconian Bush regimes, that if the administration is so inclined, much democracy-destroying actions can be uncovered and addressed. Same can be said of just about any of the government departments and administrations. The career types know where the bodies are buried. And I expect the extent to which this may happen will vary by agency . . . and political sensitivity. That wont go away.

One can always count on Clemons and his consort nipple-fed intellectuals to misplace their soft heart to the side of the detainees at the expense of the innocent killed by these IRREMEDIABLE religious fanatics. This is the main reason that despite Clemons’ great and fervent desire to be a policy architect in geopolitical affairs will always be frustrated by the dictum of political NECESSITY that moves without the bits of one’s ‘humanitarian’ heart. Misplaced humanitarians have always the disposition to sacrifice life on the altar of their sanctimonious divinely unchanged norms.

kotz, you are the only IRREMEDIABLE fanatic that i know that also happens to hang on this message board as well... nadine is right up their too, but you already knew that!

Eric Holder's fit of moral purity destroyed the CIA's ability to interrogate terrorists, even when they fall into our hands by dumb luck, like the Undie Bomber did. If the next Undie Bomber manages to explode his Fruit of the Looms and take down the plane, it will take more than a pretty website to save Holder from the anger of the American people.

He knows it too, that's why he's waffling and backpedaling.

At the end of the day, he will try KSM by military tribunal at Gitmo, because all other options will be worse.

So.... American people will be angry id some "undie" bomber takes down and kills 300-500 Americans, but they are indifferent as to needlessly killing 145,000 because of a bullshit medical system? Does it no longer matter what is spent to get a certain benefit?

Too bad they didn't listen to Osama long before 9/11, when other folks got rather angry at Americans needlessly killing over 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 and explain that that sort of behavior is apt to cause a response.

So now we've spent over $3 Trillion dollars, to ensure our right to kill others as we see fit. As Clauzwitz has famously said, in the end it is hate and anger that drives war. Hate makes one mad, and madness is essentially insanity.

What an obsessive macho bully attitude our leaders have assumed. !!!! What BULLSHIT!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2irN1G5HiRo&feature=PlayList&p=9A904412DB7B4A48

It's one plane Nadine, and a few 100 on the ground. Given that
someone was filming L' affaire d' Undie I doubt it was a real
suicide mission because the video would have gone down with
the plane. Or maybe it would be a magic video like the magic
passport found in the rubble of the WTC.

What a pathetic bunch of sniveling wimps Americans have
become. We give up our Bill of Rights and expose our bodies to
additional radiation and pervy TSA thugs on the oft chance, what
would it be - certainly less than 1 million to one, that our plane
might be targeted by "terrorists."

And now the executive branch of the US govt. can kill American
citizens overseas "SUSPECTED" of being involved in terrorism.
Habeas corpus, where art though? Next it will be SUSPECTED
Americans in their living rooms.

Does anyone remember the TIPS program from the early years of
the Cheney Reich? It was proposed that people like gas and
telephone company employees (i.e., well trained intelligence
operatives) should be on the lookout for "suspicious" activities.

I had to have the gas company over here for a "suspected" leak,
which turned out to be nothing. And that's good -- at least the
gas company gives us the benefit of the doubt, unlike the US
govt. If the US govt. had been in charge they would have
probably blown-up the entire block under the guise of
protecting the neighborhood. Then blown-up the
neighborhood to save the city.

Anyway I was working on the news show at the time, so the gas
co. men got a whole earful most probably on the follies of US
foreign policy or Guantanamo or whatever was our topic for that
day because my office is next to the kitchen.

Now, I didn't get turned in then by the gas guys for suspicious
activities, despite also having all sorts of rubbish I collected
during my travels. Really scary things, like statues of the
Buddha, Krishna and Ganesh that would be easily identified as
non-Islamic by the noted art historians deployed as repairmen
for Southwest Gas.

But under Obama's "Justice" Department, the following is now
the definition of terrorist. I'll hand the mike over to "our"
Director of National "Intelligence" Dennis Blair, who said this at a
Senate hearing on Tuesday, purportedly talking about the
"terrorist next door phenomenon":

"“The motivations for such individuals are complex and driven by
a combination of personal circumstances and external factors.

These include FEELINGS OF ALIENATION, CONCERNS OVER
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, and ties to extremist Islamic groups
and “NEGATIVELY INSPIRATIONAL IDEOLOGUES."

Well, that's a pretty specific definition of how to spot a "home
grown terrorist" I mean, the capitalized parts pretty much sums
up the majority of regulars at just about every political blog I
read including this one. We are all terrorists now.

And with that I have to go pick-up eye drops for my dog. Are
eye drops explosive and under these new rules does having
more than one ounce of them in a car constitute a terrorist
threat?

I was going to get some bagels too. What about bagels? When
they get hard enough they can be used as weapons. Or lox -- I
can let the lox spoil and then take it to the next PTA meeting
thus bringing down an entire cafeteria full of yammering,
"helicopter" parents.

Homegrown terrorism a growing concern for US intelligence
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100205/ts_csm/278330

Well, so much for that piece of shit fluff website.

Last night I took Steve's advice, and placed a civil and polite comment up on the "Share Your Ideas" page, and commented that I would prefer to see them actually uphold the law, instead of dispensing the law at the whim of the President, in the tradition of Gonzales. I pointed out that known perjuries before Congress have occurred, and asked why we are not seeing indictments.

The comment was there last night, now it is gone. I just wish these assholes would for once be honest, and stop with the insincere feel good tactics that are pure unadulterated horseshit, along the lines of the pure unadulterated horseshit that last Administration fed us. Seeing the Justice administration, under Holder, put up a website like this is a friggin' joke. They must think we are ALL idiots. If they meant to administer the law evenly and justly, as outlined in the Constitution, they would be doing so, without the need for these fluffy marketing campaigns aimed at idiots.

Heres a comment I found there this morning....

"This section is labeled "Public Feedback" and yet you have already relegated my first and only other post to some "off topic" dustbin that I cannot seem to find. Apparently, you are not actually interested in public feedback?"

The "moderators" response was condescending doublespeak. Typical. If these jackasses don't want our feedback, than why go to the expense of this fluffy dingleberry of a website?

In addition, apparently the "Share your Ideas" website is NOT a governmental endeavor. If you are on the "Open Government at The Department of Justice" website, and you click on "Share Your Ideas", you recieve this disclaimer....

........

The United States Department of Justice

You are now leaving a Department of Justice Web site

You are about to access:

http://www.opendoj.ideascale.com

The Department of Justice does not endorse the organizations or views represented by this site and takes no responsibility for, and exercises no control over, the accuracy, accessibility, copyright or trademark compliance or legality of the material contained on this site.

Thank you for visiting our site.

........

Yet the moderator at the "Share Your Ideas" site labels himself as "Department of Justice Moderator".

Someone needs to comment here, and explain exactly WHO is moderating the site, and in what capacity.

I wish our government, and their lackeys, would quit playing these silly games. Its horsehit like this that has robbed the American people of all trust in their government.

So, I check my email, and I find this....

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

Topic/Idea: Return to the rule of law......

Comment:
This idea has graduated to the OpenDOJ Off Topic panel (Idea #10)

Posted By : Site Administrator

http://dojofftopicm3fg.ideascale.com/a/dtd/19226-
7191

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

When I click on their link, I find this......

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

Invalid Link

The link you have clicked is invalid. There could be multiple reasons for this :

Make sure you copy/paste the entire url

The sender of the email message has cancelled his account

http://dojofftopicm3fg.ideascale.com/a/dtd/19226-7191

I'm surprised someone as normally astute as you bit at this "sting" operation,POA. Now you are on their blacklist.

Did you really think DOJ gives a flying fuck what you or I think in terms of justice? Did you think someone that whitewashed the AT&T/NSA spying operation and blew off Mark Klein and Sibel Edmonds, won't prosecute Heather Wilson, Pete Domenici, and the rest of the white collar political criminals is REALLY interested in Justice?

BTW, did you know Brad Friedman's "Brad Blog" entry on wikipedia makes no mention of Sibel Edmonds?

What is your take on the cozy relationship between Google and NSA? Hope someone tracks what happens with the FOI request EPIC filed with NSA.

http://epic.org/privacy/nsa/foia/NSA-Google_FOIA_Request.pdf

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'm already on their "blacklist" undoubtedly. Do you really think there is no one at the NAF that wouldn't gleefully share my email address with the DOJ? That jackass Pinkerton comes immediately to mind, followed closely by Katcher. And if someone at NAF wasn't willing, I bet that shrew Taylor Marsh would be more than eager.

But at least, upon testing the waters at that dingleberry of a website, "Share Your Ideas", I was able to demonstrate that it is EXACTLY what I opined it would be.

What I expected you to say. ;-) And right on target.

OT,
Best of luck with the 30" snowfall to those who have to deal with it.

"Welcome to the OpenDOJ Off-topic Ideas Portal
The goal of the Open Government Dialogs is to promote healthy conversation about increasing transparency, participation, collaboration and innovation. Ideas submitted to the site that do not directly relate to the Open Government Directive and distract from conversation, but do not clearly violate the Terms of Participation, will be moved to this portal. In order to maintain full transparency, this portal allows you to read the ideas that fall into this category; it does not, however, allow additional voting, commenting, or the submission of new ideas"

http://dojofftopicm3fg.ideascale.com/

What are these people afraid of? That the comments they deem "off topic" might garner more support and response than the comments that simply tell them what they want to hear?

"New Transparency", my ass. The website is little more than a propaganda tool. It wouldn't suprise me in the least if Justice Department trolls will be providing the bulk of the "comments". Nor will it suprise me if Olberman and Maddow follow Steve's lead, and see if they can't herd the sheep into this fluffy bit of shameless and insincere departmental marketing. The people involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.

Check this out....

"Collaboration: How should we collaborate with individuals, businesses, non-profits, other agencies, or state/local governments? What kinds of prizes/contests should we consider to attract others in working with us? What top problems should we tackle together?"

http://opendoj.ideascale.com/a/ideafactory.do?discussionID=11892

Ya gotta love it, doncha???

"Prizes/Contests"????

Are you friggin' kidding me!!!???? This is the "Justice Department" coming up with this insane shit???

Good Lord. I want Gonzales' and Yoo's "prize", to be relegated to the ranks of those that are held above the law.

All of their emails are ended with....

--------

Manage your notification settings at

http://dojofftopicm3fg.ideascale.com/a/pmd/102438-7191

--------

Which is a dead link.

Governmental competence at its best, eh?

What a joke. I'm suprised, honestly, that Steve marketed this pathetic and propagandistic endeavor.

Now, if I can just figure out how to unsubscribe to their emails, I have seen all I need to see to reach a common sense conclusion about the veracity of this obvious sham.

poa

"Check it out.

This site seems could be useful in making some real progress in the right direction when it comes to knocking down some walls of what became under Bush/Cheney a very opaque national security state.

-- Steve Clemons"

not..............

I see that since my initial post this morning, they have stopped using the monicker "Department of Justice Moderator", and instead are now using "Site Adeministrator" or "Moderator".

Apparently we will not get to find out who, exactly, is moderating this site. Whether they are a private entity, or actual Justice Department employees. What, these people don't think this is relevant information? They don't think we should have the information necessary to determine possible motives or agendas behind the "moderation" of the site?

Don't these clowns realize that the way they are administering this endeavor only undermines their assertions about what they purport themselves to be doing?

I simply set up my email account to immediately identify their emails as spam, and delete them.

I've seen all I need to see.

By the way, yesterday I heard on the radio that a "study" has determined that excessive internet usage is a sign of severe depression.

Due to this revelation, I've decided to devote the next six years of my life to surfing the internet in a search for a cure to this affliction.

Or you may spend those years writing on the internet about how excessive radio listening is a
sign of severe paranoia and lack of brain cells.

Good idea, I think I'll test your theory by making the resolution that I will no longer surf the internet without donning my earphones and tuning in to Rush Limbaugh. I want the FULL benefit of the experience.

POA,

Thanks for your trial run. I was thinking about trying it but figured something like your experience would happen. It's my impression that Obama administration on this "talks the talk" but really only wants to listen to those who already agree with them. And I didn't think they'd want to reconsider single payer as an option

If anybody saw last night Bill Moyers Journal with Margaret Flowers, M.D. for Physicians for National Health Plan (single payer), she's another example of how little they listen and how closed their minds are.

We caught Moyers' interview with Flowers. A solid citizen. She's got a full fledged organization behind her and still the administration quite obviously did not want to listen, or even to make the appearance of listening. Like Obama says . . . at least to republicans . . . "if you've got a better idea, let me know . . ." Sure, Barack, we'll just do that. Have a nice day.

I am done with The Washington Note.

This most recent post praising a new DoJ website as a "... a good new resource..." is the final straw.

Steve,
The DoJ is FUBAR when they regularly ignore and cover up blatant crimes against the Constitution, and yet your best effort at addressing their operations is to simply direct your readers to your friend’s disfunctional new DoJ website that may or may not actually be a component of the DoJ! Wow! I hate to say it, but I think the Obama Kool-Aid has taken its full effect on you.

Your credibility to me as an insightful and well meaning DC insider just took a fatal blow. No substantive insight or analysis here at TWN anymore. TMZ does deeper background checks than TWN does.

Dan E,
Did you not discern the tone Steve seems to have written with? A thanks to a friend, a wondering if this whole thing is for show given the Gitmo situation, and invitation to give it a try. Note he says "at first glance" to modify "good resource."

Governments that purportedly depend on popular sovereignty are always reluctant to make use of the same. Just as teachers welcome parental involvement and really can't stand parents, so the government of by and for... is really of bureaucrats, by and for them as well. So of course they want participation but they can't stand participants. It goes with the territory!

Would anyone really welcome the kind of monitoring? You want your clients to question every tool, every nail placement, every vote, every keystroke or whatever? No, of course not. But you need to seem as if you welcome it since they are the "bosses" even if they are not the experts.

DOJ officials would have a hard time functioning if they really had to do every contradictory thing that every citizen demanded. Note that for all the people around here who want domestic criminal court trials and Miranda rights and high priced lawyers for every suspect, there are probably equal numbers who want summary executions in the public square.

Real transparency isn't a website with citizen suggestions (I think Aristotle actually discusses this issue of citizen-based innovations minus the computer technology).

Real transparency comes from having names and dates, watchdogs and whistleblowers, a commitment to the real risks of procedure rather than outcome. And it probably can't happen in the face of the VRWSM, and those who joyfully demagogue justice.

So, though Steve's friend is involved in the website and he's kind to announce it, he's properly skeptical of the worth of it. Maybe the push will be felt, and likely not. And even if the site were for real, what could it possibly do with the vast array of opinions about what the right course of action is?

"DOJ officials would have a hard time functioning if they really had to do every contradictory thing that every citizen demanded. Note that for all the people around here who want domestic criminal court trials and Miranda rights and high priced lawyers for every suspect, there are probably equal numbers who want summary executions in the public square"

You really don't get it, do you? Its about THE LAW. We are simply demanding the DOJ do its job, and the President and the AG simply respect and adhere to their Oaths Of Office.

And apparently you have as little respect for it as these political lackeys at the DOJ do. But no suprise there, you made that clear a long time ago.

What's with everybody? Come down on Steve for, whatever. Come down on DOJ for being a bunch of half stepping stooges. Come down for pointing out that DOJ acts like a bunch of half stepping stooges. Come down on Obama for just talking the talk.

. . . and that's just on this thread! Weirder things are happening elsewhere, eh? (above is kind of light-hearted, ok?

But this is not so light-hearted. Following up on Steve's highlighting, in his reply to Sam @5:30, the chilling notion of " . . . explicit, defined policies that have now extended to kill orders for American citizens . . . .", we have this follow on from Emptywheel, riffing and extrapolating on a Newsweek article:

-- the President does not have to specifically sign off on the kill order, thus giving plausible deniability, a la Cheney/Bush. There is an unspecified committee of decision makers for the kill order

-- no specific kill order for the (wink, targeted) American citizen is required if s/he just happens to be conveniently sitting next to some other high value target that is not American

-- excuse of targeting high value foreigner, even when perpetrator of crime s/he supposedly committed was already in custody, has been used.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/02/06/the-president-himself-does-not-have-to-sign-off-on-kill-orders/

I don't know about the rest of you, although I have my guesses about how some would respond, but the idea of a committee sitting around the table discussing the assassination of American citizens
alone leaves me dumbfounded, before even getting to questions of evidence, proof, due process, or other apparently quaint notions of due process.

Others?

My honest guess, and guess it is since I'm not a lawyer, is that there's a little more ambiguity in all of this than you'd like. War muddies a lot of things, definitions of "enemy combatants" and the like are probably less clear cut, the threat a little more real, the lawful treatment of people a little less easy to discern.

POWs don't get court dates; they're held til the end of the war. What's different here is that the "war" is unclear, the "enemy" is unclear, and so the law is unclear. The lack of institutional and definitional clarity is certainly a problem. The desaparacidos (sp?) at Gitmo deserve far better than they are getting, but we don't really have institutions in place to deal with the mess.

What DOJ should be doing is working to help set up some kind of tribunal system that can cope with the torture mess, the top secret spy games, and somehow set some reasonable middle ground between what we usually think of as "justice" and what we've actually been doing.

So, no, I don't lack respect for justice, I don't think indefinite detention and assassination programs are particularly good policy. BUT the policy we can put in place isn't necessarily serviceable at this point either.

It's a real dilemma. And it's a real dilemma for someone who generally feels more Kantian (principles matter) than utilitarian, (outcomes matter) especially.

In restoring the Kantian moment, then, we must build institutions that can cope bring principle back in even while keeping security.

Erichwwk

Just one example, was it “hate and anger’ that drove the war against the Nazi axis? To place all wars under the rubric of “hate and anger,” and to misinterpret Clausewitz like you do, is doltishly foolish. But in the end for leftists and centre left inclined like Clemons, empirical reality is spurned in pure, noumenal politics. The heart stands in moral judgment over the intellect. Facts do not stand in cognitive judgment over romantic ideas.

My take, basically, is the the GWOT, which the Obama admin has seemed to adopt in all but name, is an over hyped excuse for extending military primacy into the unforeseeable future, and a fatal stab to balance in the American polity -- aided and abetted by most politicians, most media, and federal administrative agencies. The default position is deny rights and process now, and stave off any political consequences later (or never).

It's not a question, for me, of ambiguity of issues, principles over outcomes. It's a matter of raw political blood and bubbled politicians, and the continuing loss of respect for common sense, balance, and principles of law. It's not as if the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, is packed with radical liberals.

"My honest guess, and guess it is since I'm not a lawyer, is that there's a little more ambiguity in all of this than you'd like. War muddies a lot of things, definitions of "enemy combatants" and the like are probably less clear cut, the threat a little more real, the lawful treatment of people a little less easy to discern"

Oh STFU. You gotta be kidding me. With arguments like that, we shouldn't at all be suprised when Israel won't need to kidnap the likes of Cynthia McKinney, because if she should attempt such a stunt again, these fascist sacks of shit in DC will simply vaporize her ship, with her on it.

The problem of course is that we don't entirely know for totally sure just what the gwot is. There's certainly a part of me that's pretty convinced DonS that you're right that it's overhyped. But there's also a part of me that has been working oh so slowly on Steve Coll's book and has read some other stuff that makes the terrier thing a leeetle bit more than pure fantasy. I don't really have a decent context for how much is crazed and how much is real. But I'm guessing that there's something a little more going on than just raw militarism or military contracts or congressional districts and job creation or some imagined need to replace the commies with 'Islamofascism'. But I will admit that I don't know how much this is the case.

I'm not a bin Laden denialist, or a MIHOPper or LIHOPper, so I assume that there are some real objections out there to the existence and flourishing of the US (and not merely to the presence of the US on mideast soil or its alliance with Israel). I assume that it's highly profitable for some instigators to push for attacks on the US, and some of those attacks are going to be successful over time.

So we have this tangled mess of some sort of attacking and defending system in which the conduct of the two sides has transcended the kinds of institutions we had in place to deal with previous attack and defend systems. We need to play institutional catch up.

I'm no historian, so I'm asking -- what did we ever do during the Cold War with the equivalent of enemy combatants and spies and assassinations? How much of what we're doing now is really Cold War stamped with a seal of approval? How much of this disappearance stuff is really new?

I think it was Jane Mayer who was suggesting a new court system that could deal with the terrier issue, and that has always seemed utterly rational to me. I don't know what to do about those whom the Bush (and Obama??) admin/s tortured. There's yet another good reason to avoid torture. It creates a class of people for whom there can never again be justice. That's a pretty wicked deed, in a real sense of "wicked."

POA, feel free to post a link or two that show that POWs all around the world get court dates during the war in the country that is holding them. Or post some links that explain the whole murky mess of enemy comabatants with such clarity that I no longer can think there's a murky mess. Send some legal definitions. I'm happy to read and update my views.

Near as I can tell, though, the main objections to the holding of "enemy combatants" this time around is that this would seem to be a war without end rather than a brief foray.

What this says to me is that we need some sort of institution that can deal with infinite or indefinite war. We need new definitions, new ways of dealing with the people we grab off the streets.

Probably, we need to be grabbing a lot fewer people, too.

The conflict is murky, the definitions are murky, the actions of people are murky. We are holding people we don't know how to grant justice to because we've tortured them. We are holding people whose convictions in open court might honestly cause some security problems. We are holding some people who are completely innocent but we don't quite know what to do about that fact.

We have released some, others are being processed. But there will be a core (the Gitmo 50) whom we cannot manage within our institutions. We have work to do.

But it's pointless going back and forth with you because you're convinced that I'm wicked and want wickedness in the world. And I'm convinced that you're in need of nuance and beta blockers.

"POA, feel free to post a link or two that show that POWs all around the world get court dates during the war in the country that is holding them. Or post some links that explain the whole murky mess of enemy comabatants with such clarity that I no longer can think there's a murky mess"

If you were involved in the discussion in a matter other than your usual prattling BS, you would know that I have NOT raised or addressed the issue of enemy combatants, until your last bit of obsfucating crap. Look at the DOJ website, that is the topic, and note my primary "gripe" is the DOJ's failure to indict crimes committed by government officials.
But if you are so hopelessly thickheaded that you think some governmental committee, secret, and subject to no legal oversight, should be able to order assasinations of American citizens, then you are not only a long winded fool, but you are also certifiably daft.

Sorry POA, my mistake. DonS and I were going around on the gwot issue, and I should have kept things a little more straight. My mistake. Thank you for pointing it out in such charitable terms.

Questions,

this "illegal combatant" and legal limbo stuff have actually been recurring issues since Napoleon attacked Spain 200 years
ago and fought against guerilla fighters. It's not an ordinary POW issue, since many of the fighters are irregular combatants.
It was an issue in the French-Russian (Napoleonic) war, (Tolstoy wrote about it), and on many occasions since then.

Carl Schmitt wrote a lucid little book about this issue around 1962, "Theorie des Partisans". I think it's translated to English
recently. The has been much debated in US universities in connection with Yoo and Addington. Joshka Fisher (former
German Foreign Minister) was among the many eager leftwing readers of that book when he frequented revolutionary
terrorists around 1968.

When you read papers by John Yoo with that book by Schmitt in mind, you realize that they are dealing with exactly the
same issue - Yoo in a contemporary perspective with certain political aims; Schmitt from a historical and ideological
perspective. Read up on Schmitt - it's highly recommended. Those who wrote the Geneva Conventions were also highly
aware of these issues - the author often refers to it.

Questions, you are going to bed tonight without the slightest expectation that you life or you slumber will be disrupted by some terrorist related event that specifically impacts you, physically, not that my just impacts your psychological well being . . .

How much does the govt reach into your wallet for each day and grab to support the entire infrastructure of military (now justified as mostly anti terror) spending. And how much overkill, waste, and irrelevance is part of that military grab?

And why doesn't this fact have any salience in Washington? Do the neocons and bedwetters -- and MI complex -- really have that much control over the rest of us? Or are the rest of us just a sorry bunch of schmucks who are so easily lolled into idiocy?

"Questions, you are going to bed tonight without the slightest expectation that you life or you slumber will be disrupted by some terrorist related event that specifically impacts you" (DonS)

Just like New Yorkers did on the evening of Monday, September 10, 2001.

If it hasn't happened again it's not due to al Qaeda's lack of trying.

like I said, neocons and bedwetters

Folks...I understand your frustration, but listen -- I knew Bill Casey and was deeply disturbed by the level of obsessive secrecy he institutionalized under Reagan -- and was appalled when I saw Cheney and David Addington institute a far more secretive regime than Casey had put in motion.

The government is the government -- and often limits criticism of what it does -- and does not often even try to generate transparency. I think what the DoJ is doing is a step in the right direction. I appreciate what some there are doing -- even though I find certain policies, like what happened with the GITMO detainees, worrisome and wrong.

I made this clear in my blog post.

Every federal agency, including the DOJ has to comply with the Open Government directive, which was issued this past year by the Office of Management and Budget. I support the initiative -- even though it clearly won't solve all problems that I (or some of you) have with how the government operates.

Basically the directive asks every agency to draw up a plan to find ways to be more transparent and open in it's operations. The directive asks each agency to solicit "public comment" on ways this can happen.

That is what the Department of Justice "Share your Ideas" discussion forum is for.

As I understand it and have been told, the forum is not designed for people to make general comments about the Department of Justice or decisions by the Attorney General - but rather to comment on what they can do to operate in a more open and transparent manner.

As a result, moderators manage the discussion to stay on that topic and move other "off-topic, unrelated comments" to an "off-topic" community.

Complex -- but that is what I learned is the way this works. Obviously, no one likes to see their idea or comments rejected (and it isn't well explained on the site).

Anyway - there ARE ways to frame discussions in an open government way. For example, this comment is "off-topic"

http://dojofftopicm3fg.ideascale.com/a/dtd/19245-7191

I am concerned the remaining Guantanamo prisoners will be jailed indefinitely without trial. If these people have committed crimes, by all means present the evidence and put them on trial. If not don't you have to release them? And if not, why? This whole issue is a stain on our flag. It needs to be dealt with right away and not allowed to continue. Thank you.

But if it had been:

I am concerned the remaining Guantanamo prisoners will be jailed indefinitely without trial. If these people have committed crimes, by all means present the evidence and put them on trial. If not don't you have to release them? And if not, why? This information should be made publicaly available in an easy to understand way on the Department of Justice Website.

Then it would have been considered in bounds.

So, I know we have a lot of folks here who are angry with government in general -- but my role with this blog and in DC is to try to create constructive paths towards responsive, transparent government in the foreign policy/national security realms.

I do think that the DoJ overall -- and the team of people trying to create this platform are doing something right here. It's cool with me if it's not for you -- that's what diverse public opinion is all about, but everyday I make myself remember Bill Casey, Dick Cheney, David Addington and how much worse some of this could be.

So, keep your heads -- and try to see if there are things that can be done that fit the framing I have tried to provide above.

I do appreciate POA given this a go -- He's a great test of all things government as he's such a natural skeptic. I appreciate his views, but in this case, I don't think he's completely right. I have some insight into how this can be a helpful track and will be using it myself to push an agenda most of you here support.

All best -- and for those of you in the snow zone, hope you are doing ok.

best, steve clemons

when politics influence justice....there is no chance for the infant
justice to survive, it is smothered under the blanket of oppressive
politics.

and you thought the national socialist in germany were bad, the
only reason they seem so bad is because they lost the war and
couldt write the history books.

get off your moral high horse america...Mene , Mene , Tekel ,
Parsin.

"I am concerned the remaining Guantanamo prisoners will be jailed indefinitely without trial. If these people have committed crimes, by all means present the evidence and put them on trial. If not don't you have to release them? And if not, why?" (Steve Clemons)

The Obama administration cheerfully kills terrorists with Predators in Yemen and Pakistan, but wants to give them all the rights of US citizens if they manage to bring off an attack on US soil and survive it.

The schizophrenia of this approach is really what gets me. Not one person in this administration can even put together a plausible rationalization for the policy. To kill them with Predators is to admit they are combatants on the field of battle.

If they are combatants, then they should be tried in military tribunals, a perfectly lawful mechanism with a 200 year old history. Yet if this same foreign al Qaeda terrorist manage to set foot on US soil, the administration revokes his combat status and declares him a criminal. It makes no sense whatsoever.

I was going to comment on the DOJ site but apparently they are all asleep so I couldn't get an email verification.

I fear POA is correct....nice fluff, but that's all.

"IF" they really wanted to be transparent they would publish in a timely manner the names of all politicians (and others) who contact them to discuss or try to influence DOJ cases and their entire conversations.

I want to know who is interfering in what.
Remember Jane Harman? Pretty clear cut...but no prosecution.
Now who squelched that?

Inquiring minds want to know all about the political meddling in the DOJ. But they will never us anything really useful...because then they might have to do something really useful.

Department Of Justice Hires Blog Outreach Person | The Plum LineMay 27, 2009 ...

A source confirms that Justice has tapped Tracy Russo, who did blog outreach for John Edwards' presidential campaign, as the agency's chief ...>>>>
Profile for Tracy Russo at Confabb. Tracy Russo is a Democratic strategist who specializes in integrating online communications and new media opportunities ...>>>>>>

"A Strategist" vr. a Person looking for real hard to swallow solutions are two different animals.

Is anyone, like an actual official, from the DOJ every going to see the comments on that site.
My guess would be no.

Listen ..you will never break thru the Iron Curtain of Orwellington DC without a bitter and probably bloody fight.

I can't think of anything I need to say to the Department of Justice, or that I need to find out from them.

Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Feb 06 2010, 2:39PM - Link
By the way, yesterday I heard on the radio that a "study" has determined that excessive internet usage is a sign of severe depression.>>>>>>

Yea, all those "bougus conspiracy theories" are depressing us. LOL

Actually telling us to stay off the net is their attempt at mass anger management.

To DOJ

Most of the Gitmo detainees are POW's. We declared war and invaded "their land.
They fought back.
Clear enough?
So treat them like POW's.

And enough with the GWOT crapola in which you pretend that everyones who fights us when we invade and bomb their countries are terrorist.

Doesn't Obama consider the US-Iraq war over? If
Then send the Iraqis you have back to Iraq.

http://www.worldwar2database.com/html/germanpow.htm

"When the war ended, the German POWs were shipped home — unless they were held by the Red Army. Germans were still being released from Soviet POW camps in 1955.

"By the way, yesterday I heard on the radio that a "study" has determined that excessive internet usage is a sign of severe depression."

It does seem to me that a lot of seriously depressed and disturbed individuals flock to the internet.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than
their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –
ownership of government by an individual, by a group.”
–Franklin Delano Roosevelt

DonS,
I'm not sure I understand your most recent post. Any sense of well-being and continued existence anyone ever has probably comes from, say, 3 parts denial and 2 parts a sense of habit (Hume's notion). The constant conjunction of events in the past leads us to feel a kind of false necessity in the future. So if I've been ok for the last many years, then I will continue to be safe in the future.

Anyone who fails to perform the Humean leap from past to future ends up a little on the paranoid side and we get the kind of crazed secretive insanity Steve pointed to in his post above. (Of course performing this leap is to fall into the problem of induction! So we're insane either way.)

So if I sleep well ever, it must be because I have slept well in the past and I either deny the possibility of my own death OR I don't mind dying as it is a great adventure or a natural part of being alive (Socrates for the first, Chuang Tzu for the second).

And Paul, thanks for the brief history lesson. I have many gaps to fill in and fewer years than it will take to fill them all in.... I think that the enemy combatant stuff is a nightmare to deal with and we'd be better off just not having wars anymore. What're the chances.... So we're likely far more stuck with the Gitmo 50 than we'd ever want to be.

And just a slight degree of difference with Steve's post -- I get the feeling the bureaucracy would be happier with seeming-openness and false transparency than not. Experts want to get through their work day, deciders just want to make decisions, new ideas are great so long as you don't actually have to implement them.... If open government is going to work, people are going to have to love process more than outcome. I don't really see its happening.

And one more note on prosecuting gov't officials for whatever their transgression....

There's a real dilemma here. When people work for the government, they sacrifice salary for sure. They also are required to split themselves into private and public selves and serve only the public self. They have to make decisions on behalf of the people, but those decisions then have ramifications for their private selves. They need to be able to take initiative on behalf of the people, but then take personal responsibility if their decisions suck.

It doesn't happen that way, and hence the accountability issue is a little different for the feds. It's not that they're ABOVE the law, it's that what they do, at some level, has to be the law, even though we like to talk about "rule of law" rather than "rule of men" we might be making a false distinction here, or we might be telling a story that is incomplete.

The only escape I see from the tension is if we could know for sure that, say, Cheney, acted only with his stock portfolio in mind or that Bush just wanted to avenge his father or something. But I think that neither man acted solely or even mostly from private gain. They took terrorism seriously after 9/11 (not before), and they took resource security seriously as well. But if you think there's no "threat" at all, then you'd automatically disagree with what I'm writing for this particular instance.

First Hobbes - in a little chapter called "Persons, Authors, and Things Personated" from the Leviathan, he notes that we the people are AUTHORS of what the sovereign does. The people create the sovereign and so are responsible for what the sovereign does in the people's name. We don't arrest the sovereign for doing what we tell it to do, and we clearly aren't going to arrest ourselves. There's a real tension here that cannot be easily resolved.

Arresting the sovereign would make it far less likely that the next sovereign could function (this is my governance issue). If people cannot take the initiative to act w/o fear of arrest, they stop taking the initiative. There can be some serious problems if our gov't workers decide to bury their noses in their shirt pockets and stay there til retirement.

Accountability sounds good until you realize that what can come from a certain kind of accountability is a refusal to attempt anything at all. If nothing is attempted, there's nothing to be accountable for. Life is easier. So the gov't really has to protect its own, just as any group tries to do.

One way to keep the gov't more on the honest side is to make sure that crazy people don't get into positions of authority. We're not so good about that. Another way is this attempt, feeble though it is, at accountability. But that has structural problems in any organization. The best way is probably to make sure that the institution itself values better decisions rather than worse. But if we want individual initiative and reasonable risk-taking, then we probably have to accept some of the negative consequences including really bad decisions on occasion.

The secretive nut cases likely actually had what they thought were the best interests of the people in mind. And indeed, a fair number of citizens agree with disappearances and torture and summary execution by predator drone strikes. So maybe the paranoid nut cases were on the mark in a participatory system.

And now, of course, Plato.... The dialogue _The Euthyphro_ is about a guy, Euthyphro, who's on his way to prosecute his own father for murder because it's the pious thing to do. He bumps into Socrates who is on his way to his own trial for impiety. Nice irony here. Euthyphro is incapable of defining "piety" and so that part of his argument falls flat. Then, it turns out, the murder his father supposedly committed is really murky. His father's servant committed a murder in a drunken rage, was tied up and tossed in a ditch while the PIOUS father sent to the seer to find out what to do. The servant died and therefore had to have been murdered. Euthyphro claims piety in bringing charges.

A careful reader think, hmmm, was it really murder, what is piety, what are the standards for bringing charges, for what murder is, for what piety is? Isn't it funny that in the name of piety a possibly pious man is charged with impious murder for acting in a seemingly pious fashion? Should sons ever try to prosecute their own fathers, or are there some funky conflicts of interest? Who has sufficient knowledge to deal with any situation like this?

All of this to say that it's pretty unclear who should prosecute whom and under what conditions. Things we think are simple are not so simple.

Using love of the law and national security to prosecute those who may have loved the law and national security when no one can quite define love of law and national security -- well, it's ironic if nothing else. And it suggests that we need a lot more conversation about what it means to love the law and national security.

I honestly think Questions, that you could fill in a lot of gaps by
reading 1984.

Been there, done that, positively junior high. Think about the data management issues in "big brother".... Oh, brother. Who's gonna watch all those hours of real time surveillance? We can't connect the dots we have, I doubt we'd do better if we had real time surveillance. Read some Foucault if you want a more sophisticated version -- what he has to say about the pan opticon is a lot more interesting.

Orwell is the least of our concerns.

I got a chuckle out of Steve's latest comment on this thread. I can't even find out who is "moderating" the site, despite querying both Steve AND the "site moderator". And who administers the site? Why do some comments get moderated by a "Department of Justice Moderator", and others by a "Site Moderator", and others by a "Site Administrator"???

How's that for "transparency"? We can't even determine who runs the damned thing, yet its a positive sign for citizen engagement?

Questions, if you don't think you understood my last post, imagine my mystification at yours!
I was actually trying to make a quite simple point, though I confess I do tend to take certain leaps of logic out of respect for folks basic intelligence (it's why I did so poorly in moot court until the final minute when the judges said 'why didn't you lay it out like that in the beginning?')

Though I may have lost the thread, NPI, the point, following on your 7:16 attempt to complicate the mattrer -- I was talking about the assassination revelations and you brought it detention issues, enemy combatant/POWs -- was:

Forget 'sleeping well', etc. Just saying: GWOT is a government fear program more than a statistically significant reality in the US. The cost of that program -- the replacement for the M/I/C cold war fear program -- is outrageous and insanely beyond the realistic defense needs (% of GDP compared to any or all other countries in the world combined?). The GWOT fear program (is (the latest) 'patriotic' gimmick that prevents addressing defense spending realistically.

We are a nation that says it cant afford health care, cant afford infrastructure rehab, cant reverse eroding standard of living; can't question our financial masters on Wall Street; but we can afford military adventures all over the world in patently counterproductive efforts to address neocons' terrorism hype and someone's notion that American exceptionalism requires that there be not one rock left unturned to guarantee a 0 % chance of any [living] soul in the world thinking about harming America. If one had set out to design a program for ensuring endless war they couldn't have done much better.

It would be far more efficient and cost effective, for those who insist on believing in the boogeyman hype (since our efforts are so wrongheadedly targeted) to be offered a program of a ration of valium in each box of Cherrios.

1984 indeed. Orwell is totally on target. And very few in authority have the courage to expose the myth for what it is.

I think that the gwot, and all large enterprises, should be disaggregated. Gwot, at its root, is a series of jobs programs in individual congressional districts, a series of speeches by candidates who are trying to challenge incumbents and incumbents who are trying to forestall challenges, TV personalities looking for audiences, viewers looking for the next big thing to have anxiety about, and just a little bit of actual fear of actual death that is actually badly analyzed because we simply are horrible at analyzing risk -- horrible as in, we can't do it at all. We sit terrified of one or another food while chain smoking cigarettes, we strip to virtual nudity while talking on cell phones in SUVs....

But, some people do die in terror-related events, and some people almost die, and who would want to be the airport screener who let a terrorist through? Who would want to be the one who didn't act when he should have? There's a huge pressure on the government, on security personnel, on the political structure to keep us citizens alive (except for the ones we assassinate....) At any rate, the risk is incalculable, might be far larger if we take no action.... International relations and security are so much about perceptions that doing nothing and showing weakness is probably a big mistake.

I'm sure we don't have the calculations correct for the terror risk, but then we don't have them correct for anything else either. But the fact is that those jobs and those military contractors are supported by such an array of individuals' interests that they wouldn't go away absent the gwot anyway..

And as for Orwell, my take on him is more the surveillance issue than the fear issue, but I really haven't been at that book since junior high, so maybe the fear is bigger than the surveillance. At any rate, Foucault has interesting things to say about surveillance in his work on the pan opticon, a prison designed by Bentham senior I think it was.

Hope I'm a bit clearer?! I'm over the fever but my head is not really functioning still. Nasty virus this week.

Glad I worked backwards and caught your latest post on this thread, questions.