HARRY SHEARER: As is well known by now, [Dick Cheney] uses the case of the failed Detroit underpants bomb attempt to accuse President Obama of “pretending that the United States is not at war,” thereby making us less safe. He can engage in this kind of rhetoric safe in two comforting assumptions: that the Republican base, and a certain percentage of independents, will eat this stuff up, and that the Democrats, in and out of power, will continue to not know how to respond. The latter is because they, willingly or not, allowed themselves to be co-opted into the “war […]
THE AMERICAN GULAG: McClatchy Publishes Hard-Hitting Overview Of Gitmo, Who’s There, How They Got There, And Why Most Shouldn’t Be
BY TOM LASSETER OF MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens and perhaps hundreds of men whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments. McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees along with a number of local officials, primarily in Afghanistan, and reviewed available U.S. military tribunal documents and other records. Most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals, the McClatchy investigation found. At least seven […]