Obama Grabs More Power And A Lebanese Man
Aug 24th, 2009 by MariaEvans
The White House is appointing itself “The Interrogation Czar” in yet another move that makes me wonder if Congress is ever going to step in and do some of the stuff we elected them to do:
President Barack Obama has approved creation of a new, special terrorism-era interrogation unit to be supervised by the White House, a top aide said Monday, further distancing his administration from President George W. Bush’s detainee policies.
The administration has also decided that all U.S. interrogators will follow the rules for detainees laid out by the Army Field Manual, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. That decision aims to end years of fierce debate over how rough U.S. personnel can get with terror suspects in custody.
President Barack Obama has approved the creation of a new interrogation unit to deal with terrorist prisoners. The unit, to be known as HIG, will operate under direct White House supervision.
Yikes, can this Administration look past itself and maybe see that someday this unit, in the hands of the wrong Administration, could be devastating to our rights and freedoms? This is exactly why I’m against the Patriot Act, in the wrong hands it could be **cough** used for all kinds of folly. This leaves me to ask where the heck is Congress? If I think really hard I can vaguely remember the concept of “Congressional oversight”…
Meanwhile, somehow I missed the Christening of Obama’s first victim of “extraordinary rendition,” Raymond Azar. And what did Ray do to deserve getting snatched up? According to Human Rights Watch, he was a **gasp** “white collar” criminal:
A Lebanese citizen being held in a detention center here was hooded, stripped naked for photographs and bundled onto an executive jet by FBI agents in Afghanistan in April, making him the first known target of a rendition during the Obama administration….
Defense lawyers and prosecutors declined to comment on the case Friday.
But Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism director at Human Rights Watch, called the case “bizarre.”
“He was treated like a high-security terrorist instead of someone accused of a relatively minor white-collar crime,” she said.
Justice Department lawyers have denied any misconduct in the case.
“The FBI followed standard operating procedures when transporting prisoners to the United States,” Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said Friday. She said restraints “were used with the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of the defendants and the agents.”
As the Obama administration steps up efforts to curb fraud at military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior Army official said Azar’s case “should serve as a warning” to other contractors.
In court papers, Azar said he was denied his eyeglasses, not given food for 30 hours and put in a freezing room after his arrest by “more than 10 men wearing flak jackets and carrying military style assault rifles.”
Azar also said he was shackled and forced to wear a blindfold, dark hood and earphones for up to 18 hours on a Gulfstream V jet that flew him from Bagram air base, outside Kabul, to Virginia.
Before the hood was put on, he said, one of his captors waved a photo of Azar’s wife and four children and warned Azar that he would “never see them again” unless he confessed.
“Frightened for his immediate safety . . . and under the belief he would end up in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib to be tortured,” Azar signed a paper he did not understand, his lawyers told the court.
Oh, and if you were alive last year to remember this:
As a candidate last year, President Obama vowed to end “the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries.”
Um, never mind.
Doesn’t the CIA answer to the president anyway?
They’re supposed to answer to Congress, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Permanent_Select_Committee_on_Intelligence
“The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Silvestre Reyes. It is the primary committee in the U.S. House of Representatives charged with the oversight of the United States Intelligence Community, though it does share some jurisdiction with other committees in the House, including the Armed Services Committee for some matters dealing with the Department of Defense and the various branches of the U.S. military.”
Puzzling, there has to be more to this story. I am all for a special interrogation unit for war on terror suspects. I do not favor the CIA falling under the Army Field manual. It is a different organization with a different purpose. That is why it is under a different set of laws. This administration was so naive. Now it appears to be confused. It appears to have little understanding of what is a true threat and what is not. I hope that is not the case.
I agree with you that the laws we passed in the wake of 9/11 were too broad and sweeping. We are not safeguarding our own people’s rights enough.
What disturbed me most about the article that you linked to was the idea of criminal investigations of people who have been previously cleared. This administration would rather persecute patriots who kept us safe than lean on terrorists who kill our people.
The protection that is typically afforded military personnel captured in uniform is not applicable to spies and those wearing a false uniform.
The German agents that were dropped off on our shores from a submarine early in World War II were given secret trials and most were quickly executed. They had yet to carry out any deed of sabotage. Admiral Canaris (head of the Abwehr) had scruples about sabotage and decreed that there should be no collateral damage.
Should we treat those subhuman savages who cut off heads of prisoners and attack unarmed targets with greater gentleness?
Where are all of the hysterical ‘unconstitutional executive power’ critics now? Oh, I see; BO is a Democrat, so it’s okay.