Imagine an Occupied America
Rep. Ron Paul, TX
March 10, 2009

JURIST Contributing Editor Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame Law School and panel colleagues at a recent Washburn University School of Law symposium on “The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism” offer their consensus on the appropriate way forward on critical issues in international law and policy that will confront President Barack Obama’s Administration when it takes office on January 20, 2009…

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Within hours of the attacks of 9/11 the Bush Administration decided to treat the attacks as part of a worldwide war–a new kind of war that would free the Administration to re-write the rules. A “global war on terrorism” was declared and new rules for the targeting, detention and trials of persons suspected of acts of terrorism or membership in terrorist organizations were created. Seven years later, upon the election of a new president, there is an intense debate under way in the United States as to what to do about the “global war” and the laws and institutions resulting from it.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey expressed his views at a meeting of the Federalist Society November 20 and had this to say about the future:

The next Administration will have the opportunity to review the institutions and the legal structures that this Administration has relied upon in keeping the nation safe over the past seven years. I am neither so proud as to think that the next Administration will be unable to make improvements, nor so naïve as to think that the policy choices, or even the legal judgments, that they make will be identical to ours.

What I do hope, however, is that the next Administration understands the threat that we continue to face and that it shares the priority we have placed on remaining on the offense to prevent future terrorist attacks. Remaining on the offense includes not simply relying on the tools that we have established, but also encouraging a climate in which both legal and policy issues are debated responsibly, in a way that does not chill the intelligence community and deter national security lawyers from making the decisions necessary to protect us.

And I am hopeful that some time from now, after the next Administration has had the chance to review the decisions made and the legal advice provided, it will acknowledge that despite any policy differences, the national security lawyers in this Administration acted professionally and in good faith and that the country was safer as a result.

Three of us, all specialists in international law, especially International Humanitarian Law, take a very different view, which we expressed at a recent Washburn University School of Law symposium on “The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism”. The members of the Symposium’s final panel on “The Way Forward”[1], considering important legal issues that will confront President Obama’s Administration when it takes office on January 20, 2009, have framed the following:

Washburn Consensus on Post-9/11 Principles

1. The phrase “Global War on Terrorism” should no longer be used in the sense of an on-going “war” or “armed conflict” being waged against “terrorism”. Nor should it serve as either the legal or security policy basis for the range of counter- and anti-terrorism measures taken by the Administration in addressing the very real and present challenges faced by the United States and other nations in addressing terrorism.

2. The Administration should announce that it is taking immediate steps to close the interrogation and detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with a view to removing all remaining detainees by July 1, 2009.

3. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 should be repealed in its entirety, and all activities currently being conducted under the Military Commission process constituted by the Act should be terminated.

4. Persons accused of committing acts of terrorism, war crimes or other serious human rights violations should be tried, as appropriate, before Article III courts or, as provided for in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, by courts-martial or military commission.

5. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 should be amended to ensure the application of one standard of treatment and interrogation to all detainees held in U.S. custody or control.

6. The single standard for the treatment and interrogation of all detainees held in U.S. custody or control should be that reflected in Army Field Manual 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations.

7. Any presidential findings, statements, Executive Orders, or other forms of authorization related to detainee treatment and interrogation that sanction or authorize methods inconsistent with Field Manual 2-22.3 should be withdrawn.

8. A comprehensive investigation of alleged post-9/11 U.S.-held detainee abuse should be undertaken by an independent, expert commission with the goal of producing a 2009 report detailing both the findings and recommendations of this commission.
David E. Graham, Colonel (ret’d)
Executive Director, The Judge Advocate General’s
Legal Center and School, U.S. Army [2]

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell
Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law
University of Notre Dame

Professor Philippe Sands QC
University College London
Barrister, Matrix Chambers

1. The Panel was chaired by Dean of the Washburn Law School and former Judge Advocate General of the Army, Thomas J. Romig
2. These views are expressed in Mr. Graham’s private capacity.

Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of The Power and Purpose of International Law (OUP 2008); International Law and the Use of Force (Foundation 2005, 2008). For the ILA Use of Force Committee initial report on “The Meaning of Armed Conflict in International Law” (2008), see http://www.ila-hq.org/en/committees/index.cfm/cid/1022

Source URL: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/11/way-forward-post-911-principles.php

For more information on the event, see this link: Washburn University School of Law symposium on “The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism” and the Selected Works Relating to The Rule of Law and the Global War on Terrorism Presenter and Panelist Bibliographies

Delta Force officer: US officials stopped plans to kill bin Laden
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Monday October 6, 2008
The Raw Story

After September 11, 2001, a team of elite Delta Force commandos was sent into Afghanistan with an assignment to find and kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora — but that mission failed.

The commander of the Delta Force team has now written a book which tells what he says is the true story of what went wrong. He appeared anonymously on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday to summarize that story.

Bin Laden was known to be holed up at Tora Bora on a ridge with an elevation of 14,000 feet. The Delta Force team’s initial plan was to come at him from the direction he’d least expect, climbing over the mountains at his back, but that plan wasn’t approved by the higher-ups. Their second idea, to drop hundreds of landmines along the mountain passes to Pakistan to impede bin Laden’s retreat and then bring in helicopters, was also turned down.

“How often does Delta come up with a tactical plan that’s disapproved by higher headquarters?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked the commando leader.

“In my experience, in my five years at Delta, never before,” he replied.

The only remaining option was a frontal assault by 50 US Delta Force members plus their Afghan guides — and the Afghan warlord accompanying the commandos frankly told them, “I don’t think you guys can handle it.” A few million dollars from the CIA quickly secured his cooperation, but only to a degree.

The Delta Force leader told CBS that the Afghan fighters went home every night, abandoning whatever territory had been gained that day. “It was almost like it was an agreement, an understanding between the two forces fighting each other,” he stated When the CIA did come up with an exact location on bin Laden, it was nighttime, and the Afghan support was nowhere to be found.

“It wasn’t worth the risk at that particular moment to go up there and play cowboy,” the leader told CBS. “It was better to be cautious, refit, go up there with the entire force the next day and play the battle out as we had planned.” But when he attempted to move on bin Laden the next day, his Afghan allies balked, saying they had negotiated a cease fire with al Qaeda, and even drew their weapons on the Delta force team to prevent it from acting alone.

Read the rest of this story which includes a video from 60 minutes.

U.S. State Department Misleading About Reason For U.S. War With Afghanistan?

by Aidan Monaghan

U.S. State Department Daily Press Briefing

Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
April 8, 2008

QUESTION: Ahmadi-Nejad’s remarks that the U.S. used the September 11th attacks as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I haven’t seen all of his comments, but as a pretext, we went into Afghanistan because that’s where the attack originated.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2008/apr/103106.htm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4585010/

From the History Commons:

October 11, 1996: Afghan Pipeline Key to ‘One of the Great Prizes of the 21st Century’

The Daily Telegraph publishes an interesting article about pipeline politics in Afghanistan. “Behind the tribal clashes that have scarred Afghanistan lies one of the great prizes of the 21st century, the fabulous energy reserves of Central Asia.… ‘The deposits are huge,’ said a diplomat from the region. ‘Kazakhstan alone may have more oil than Saudi Arabia. Turkmenistan is already known to have the fifth largest gas reserves in the world.’” [Daily Telegraph, 10/11/1996]

December 4, 1997: Taliban Representatives Visit Unocal in Texas

Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Future President George W. Bush is Governor of Texas at the time. The Taliban appear to agree to a $2 billion pipeline deal, but will do the deal only if the US officially recognizes the Taliban regime. The Taliban meet with US officials. According to the Daily Telegraph, “the US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban’s policies against women and children ‘despicable,’ appears anxious to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract.” A BBC regional correspondent says that “the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.” [BBC, 12/4/1997; Daily Telegraph, 12/14/1997] It has been claimed that the Taliban meet with Enron officials while in Texas (see 1996-September 11, 2001). Enron, headquartered in Texas, has an large financial interest in the pipeline at the time (see June 24, 1996). The Taliban also visit Thomas Gouttierre, an academic at the University of Nebraska, who is a consultant for Unocal and also has been paid by the CIA for his work in Afghanistan (see 1984-1994 and December 1997). Gouttierre takes them on a visit to Mt. Rushmore. [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 328-329]

February 12, 1998: Unocal VP Advocates Afghan Pipeline Before Congress

Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca—later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan—testifies before the House of Representatives that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan, the trans-Afghan pipeline will not be built. He suggests that with a pipeline through Afghanistan, the Caspian basin could produce 20 percent of all the non-OPEC oil in the world by 2010. [US Congress, 2/12/1998]

Mid-April 1998: US Official Meets with Taliban; Promote Afghan Pipeline

Bill Richardson, the US Ambassador to the UN, meets Taliban officials in Kabul. (All such meetings are illegal, because the US still officially recognizes the government the Taliban ousted as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.) US officials at the time call the oil and gas pipeline project a “fabulous opportunity” and are especially motivated by the “prospect of circumventing Iran, which offers another route for the pipeline.” [Boston Globe, 9/20/2001] Richardson tries to persuade the Taliban to hand over bin Laden to the US, promising to end the international isolation of the Taliban if they cooperate. [Reeve, 1999, pp. 195]

July 21, 2001: US Official Threatens Possible Military Action Against Taliban by October if Pipeline Is Not Pursued

Three former American officials, Tom Simons (former US Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Deputy Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs), and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia) meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in a Berlin hotel. [Salon, 8/16/2002] This is the third of a series of back-channel conferences called “brainstorming on Afghanistan.” Taliban representatives sat in on previous meetings, but boycotted this one due to worsening tensions. However, the Pakistani ISI relays information from the meeting to the Taliban. [Guardian, 9/22/2001] At the meeting, Coldren passes on a message from Bush officials. He later says, “I think there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action.” [Guardian, 9/26/2001] Accounts vary, but former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik later says he is told by senior American officials at the meeting that military action to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan is planned to “take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” The goal is to kill or capture both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, topple the Taliban regime, and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. Uzbekistan and Russia would also participate. Naik also says, “It was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.” [BBC, 9/18/2001] One specific threat made at this meeting is that the Taliban can choose between “carpets of bombs” —an invasion—or “carpets of gold” —the pipeline. [Brisard and Dasquie, 2002, pp. 43] Naik contends that Tom Simons made the “carpets” statement. Simons claims, “It’s possible that a mischievous American participant, after several drinks, may have thought it smart to evoke gold carpets and carpet bombs. Even Americans can’t resist the temptation to be mischievous.” Naik and the other American participants deny that the pipeline was an issue at the meeting. [Salon, 8/16/2002]

August 2, 2001: US Official Secretly Meets Taliban Ambassador in Last Attempt to Secure Pipeline Deal

Christina Rocca, Director of Asian Affairs at the State Department, secretly meets the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, apparently in a last ditch attempt to secure a pipeline deal. Rocca was previously in charge of contacts with Islamic guerrilla groups at the CIA, and oversaw the delivery of Stinger missiles to Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s. [Irish Times, 11/19/2001; Brisard and Dasquie, 2002, pp. 45; Salon, 2/8/2002] Around the same time, US embassy officials in Islamabad hold secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli.

February 9, 2002: Pakistani and Afghan Leaders Revive Afghanistan Pipeline Idea

Pakistani President Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to “cooperate in all spheres of activity” including the proposed Central Asian pipeline, which they call “in the interest of both countries.” [Irish Times, 2/9/2002; Gulf News, 9/2/2002]

February 14, 2002: US Military Bases Line Afghan Pipeline Route

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv notes: “If one looks at the map of the big American bases created [in the Afghan war], one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.” Ma’ariv also states, “Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve American interests… If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would think that bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at the coincidence.” [Chicago Tribune, 3/18/2002]

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=pipelinePolitics

9/11 may have been an insiders’ job
Thursday, 21 February 2008, 3:53 pm
by Syed Akbar Kamal
Scoop Independent News

In a significant observation many time UN contributor & international observer Professor Hans Koechler said “9/11 may have been an insider’s job” in response to a question from one of the delegates attending his lecture The ‘Global War on Terror – Contradictions of an Imperial Strategy’ last night at the Trades Hall in Auckland.

“I am not a boy-I am 59. There are many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the official version of events. Those who could not handle a Cessna pulled off 9/11,” he said.

But he was quick to note that the official version has to be challenged. Quoting David Ray Griffin he said these events, in terms of destruction caused, these incidents cannot have been exclusively organized by a shadowy network of Mujahedeen from the remote places of the globe.

The causes officially given for the incidents are not a sufficient explanation for what actually happened on that day, especially as regards the logistics of this highly sophisticated operation and the very advanced infrastructure required for it.

He has published more than 300 books, reports and scholarly articles in several languages. In his book The Global War on Terror and the Metaphysical Enemy he writes the atrocities of September 11, 2001- Instead of dealing with the contradictions and inconsistencies in the official version of events and the numerous gaps in terms of the factual information, a “dogma of political correctness” has been promulgated according to which 19 Islamic-inspired Arab hijackers, directed by an elusive “Al-Qaeda” (“base”), succeeded in carrying out the atrocities all by themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rule by fear or rule by law?

by Lewis Seiler, Dan Hamburg
The San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, February 4, 2008

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”

- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

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Japanese Senator Questions 9/11, Direct Confrontation with Prime Minister

Part One

Part Two

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Endless War Profiteers
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

Norman Solomon at TomPaine.com writes:

America’s military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.

Hmmm…$2 billion a day, and Congress isn’t too concerned…I wonder why?

Maybe because most of the money we’re shamed into handing over to “support the troops” is actually flowing to over-priced contracts with the Military Industrial Complex, and part of their profits end up in the pockets of Congress.

This fact is more than pointed out by the following information, gleaned from www.warprofiteers.com:

Boeing

Aside from 747s, Boeing makes “smart” bombs, F-15 fighters, and Apache helicopters. Boeing has paid tens of millions in fines for selling flawed parts that led to thousands of unnecessary landings and at least one fatal crash and has been plagued by scandals connected to the company’s influence-peddling.

CEO: Jim McNerney
Military contracts 2005: $18.3 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $1,659,213

Lockheed Martin

The world’s #1 military contractor, responsible for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, F-16, F/A-22 fighter jet, and Javelin missiles. They’ve also made millions through insider trading, falsifying accounts, and bribing officials.

CEO: Robert J. Stevens
Military contracts 2005: $19.4 billion
Total contributions for the 2004 election cycle: $2,212,836

Read the rest of this entry »

The Pentagon’s “Second 911″

Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets
by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, August 10, 2006

With all the fear mongering in the mainstream media today, this article may well be more relevant today than when it was written almost one year ago. -Ed.

 

One essential feature of “defense” in the case of a second major attack on America, is “offense”, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff: “Homeland security is one piece of a broader strategy [which] brings the battle to the enemy.”(DHS, Transcript of complete March 2005 speech of Secr. Michael Chertoff)

In the month following last year’s 7/7 London bombings, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. Implied in the contingency plan is the certainty that Iran would be behind a Second 9/11.

This “contingency plan” uses the pretext of a “Second 9/11″, which has not yet happened, to prepare for a major military operation against Iran, while pressure was also exerted on Tehran in relation to its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program.

What is diabolical in this decision of the US Vice President is that the justification presented by Cheney to wage war on Iran rests on Iran’s involvement in a hypothetical terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred:

The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War , The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

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Treason as a Basis for Impeachment
Monday, July 9, 2007

Most people who talk about impeachment are talking about “high crimes and misdemeanors”. There are certainly many bases for impeaching Bush and Cheney based upon high crimes and misdemeanors (see, for example, Congressman Kucinich’s articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney; the articles drafted by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; this website; and this one).

However, no one is talking about treason as a basis for impeachment. Specifically, Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Obviously, if you believe that the government has used false flag terror to promote its agenda, then you believe that our “leaders” have committed treason.

But even if you do not believe that the neocons have committed false flag operations, it cannot be disputed that they have opened our country up to attack.

More War and Terrorism

Initially, in the 90′s, the Neocons wanted to go to war against China because “‘they felt that the Republican Party didn’t do as well’ in the absence of a pressing foreign threat.”

And the head of the Arkansas GOP said we need more ‘attacks on American soil’ so people appreciate president Bush

And former GOP congressman Rick Santorum is hoping that “some unfortunate events” will give Americans a “very different view of this war”, one more in view of that of the administration.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bush Directive for a “Catastrophic Emergency” in America: Building a Justification for Waging War on Iran?

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, June 24, 2007

“Another [9/11 type terrorist] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets” (Statement by Pentagon official, leaked to the Washington Post, 23 April 2006)

The US media consensus is that “the United States faces its greatest threat of a terrorist assault since the September 11 attacks” (USA Today, 12 February 2006) The American Homeland is threatened by ” Islamic terrorists”, allegedly supported by Tehran and Damascus.

America is under attack” by an illusive “outside enemy”.

Concepts are turned upside down. War becomes Peace. “Offense” becomes a legitimate means of “self-defense”. In the words of President Bush:

 

“Against this kind of enemy, there is only one effective response: We must go on the offense, stay on the offense, and take the fight to them.” (President George W. Bush, CENTCOM Coalition Conference, May 1, 2007)

The intent is to seek a pretext to wage a preemptive war.

A “terrorist attack on America” could be used to justify, in the eyes of an increasingly credulous public opinion, on “humanitarian grounds”, the launching of a major theater war directed against Iran and Syria.

Allegedly supported by Iran, the terrorists are said to possess nuclear capabilities. They are supposedly planning to explode “radiological dispersion devices” (RDD) or “dirty bombs” in densely populated urban areas in the US. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had already forewarned in 2003 that, “It would be easy for terrorists to cook up radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs to explode inside the U.S. … How likely it is, I can’t say…” (10 February 2003).

The sheer absurdity that Al Qaeda might have advanced capabilities to wage a nuclear attack on America is, nonetheless, pervasive in US media reports. Moreover, numerous drills and exercises, simulating a terrorist attack using nuclear devices, have been conducted in recent years, creating the illusion that “the threat is real”:

“What we do know is that our enemies want to inflict massive casualties and that terrorists have the expertise to invent a wide range of attacks, including those involving the use of chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. … [E]xploding a small nuclear weapon in a major city could do incalculable harm to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to businesses and the economy,…(US Congress, House Financial Services Committee, June 21, 2007).

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