The military commissions system, a system that many civil liberties groups consider to be a second-class system of justice, will be used to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others, who are accused of being involved in the September 11th attacks. The Defense Department also may give Mohammed and the four others the death penalty if they are convicted.

Even in the Era of New Dysfunction, Congress usually manages to pass a defense authorization bill. The forces of nature demand that the war machine gets to set its budgets on time, even if the budgets for food stamps, welfare, the NIH, the Department of Education, etc., have to sit on pins and needles and [...]

A few weeks ago, Truthout published an article that examined a number of instances of water torture, including evidence of near-drowning, on prisoners held by the Department of Defense. A second article, with further documentation, including cases other cases of submersion in water and also extreme forms of “water dousing,” will be coming out soon. But not everything can be squeezed into even two articles.

It is difficult to know why the CDPP has decided now to officially go after David Hicks’ royalties. One wonders if it had anything to do with the warm reception and ovation he received when he spoke to “a packed audience of 1000 people at the Sydney Writers’ Festival” last May. At the same event, Hicks “also warned that Julian Assange could face a similar abandonment by the Australian government, if the US government get their hands on him.”

So, here’s what this suggests: The government made a plea deal with Khadr’s lawyers (eight more years, but after one year he’d be transferred to Canada, if they’ll take him). Then it had a show trial featuring a frothing psychologist arguing that Khadr would never give up his allegedly Muslim aggression. Normally, defense attorneys could easily exclude such testimony from a trial based on key scientific issues like peer review. But Khadr’s lawyers, allegedly, were put in the position such that if they wanted to preserve Khadr’s eight-year deal, they would have to limit their complaints about Weiner.

The commissions’ main purpose is to produce government propaganda, not justice. These are meant to be show trials, part of an overarching plan of “exploitation” of prisoners, which includes, besides a misguided attempt by some to gain intelligence data, the inducement of false confessions and the recruitment of informants via torture. The aim behind all this is political: to mobilize the U.S. population for imperialist war adventures abroad, and political repression and economic austerity at home.

As part of a new investigative story, Truthout has published two documents written by the former psychologist for SERE, and later CIA contract interrogator for the Bush torture program, Bruce Jessen. Jessen’s notes describe an “exploitation” survival course that was “reverse-engineered” to provide a blueprint for the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration, which emphasized not just the ways to coercively interrogate an individual for intelligence purposes, but to “exploit” the detainee for a number of uses, including production of false confessions, recruitment of prisoners as U.S. spies, putting on show trials, and medical experimentation.

Give the power to take away rights to the Secretary of Defense…you mean the name isn’t Orwellian enough?

Barack Obama will not be the President who closes Guantanamo. The plan is to hold new trials there, so obviously the prison will not be cleaned out. It’s been over two years since the President signed an executive order to close Guantanamo.

Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner is interviewed by a Candian newspaper and engages in character assassination in order to make Omar Khadr look like an unrepentant evil terrorist, comparable to Osama bin Laden. Dr. Welner bases this on an evaluation of Mr. Khadr in custody at Guantanamo. The timing of the interview is suspect, as negotiations over a possible plea bargain for the former child “soldier” are ongoing.