Iraq: Embassy of Oppression

CIVIL RIGHTS — FORMER GUANTANAMO TRIBUNAL OFFICER SAYS SYSTEM SOMETIMES RELIED ON ‘GARBAGE’ EVIDENCE: In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham, a military intelligence officer who spent six months “working in the office that reviews the government’s cases against detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” said that the military tribunals “were arbitrary and sometimes relied on ‘garbage’ evidence and that decisions in the proceedings were influenced by commanders.” Abraham is both “the first participant in the largely secret process to criticize it publicly” and “to urge Congress to scrap the military-run reviews conducted on the island and give detainees access to U.S. courts.” “What I expected and what occurred were two entirely different things,” said Lt. Col. Abraham. “What I expected to see was a fundamentally fair process.” “He said he had raised frequent concerns about the fairness of the process, but that ‘a quick result was preferred over a probing inquiry.'” Of the three-officer panel he served on, Abraham testified that they “agreed that there was no credible evidence that one detainee, Abdullah al Ghazawy, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, as the government alleged,” but “he later learned that a second panel was convened two months later to hear al Ghazawy’s case. It ‘reached a different result,’ Abraham said, and he was never assigned to another case.” “The hearing on Thursday was part of an effort…to press for legislation giving detainees access to federal district courts in habeas corpus proceedings to challenge their detentions.”

ADMINISTRATION — FBI CHIEF CONTRADICTS GONZALES TESTIMONY, CONFIRMS NSA PROGRAM WAS SUBJECT OF HOSPITAL VISIT: Speaking with the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, FBI director Robert S. Mueller contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s sworn Senate testimony from Tuesday. Mueller confirmed former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony that the “terrorist surveillance program” run by the National Security Agency (NSA) was the subject of discussion during Gonzales’s controversial visit to former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bed. Gonzales testified that it was about “other intelligence activities” and that there was “no serious disagreement” about the legality of the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program. Despite Mueller clearly refuting Gonzales’s testimony, a Justice Department spokesman defended the attorney general, saying that “Gonzales’s testimony and statements about the NSA program have been accurate,” but adding, “confusion is inevitable.” Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called yesterday for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Gonzales’s “confused” testimony constitutes perjury.

ENVIRONMENT — ADMINISTRATION LOBBIED AGAINST CALIFORNIA EMISSIONS LAW: Yesterday, in his testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Environmental Protection Agency head Stephen Johnson refused to answer Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) when she asked “whether he knew if the Transportation Department was lobbying against a California global warming law.” “I defer to the Transportation Department,” Johnson responded on three occasions. Documents released by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in June suggest that the Transportation Department illegally contacted members of Congress and urged them to vote against California’s request to “put in place its own pollution regulations.” Echoing the position of the auto industry, Transportation Department officials asked Congress to adopt a single federal standard for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and sports utility vehicles. California’s more stringent guidelines would “cut greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, by an estimated 25 percent from cars and 18 percent from sport utility vehicles, beginning in 2009.” If California’s bid is approved, “a dozen other states” are prepared to adopt similar emissions standards.  

Army Secretary Peter Geren is likely to recommend that a retired three-star general and six others Army officers be demoted for their roles in providing misleading information about the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman. The AP reveals new documents suggesting that Tillman may have been murdered.

450: Number of points the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell yesterday, the biggest drop of the year, before it closed down 311 points.

“The Senate approved antiterrorism legislation late Thursday that grew out of the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission after voting overwhelmingly for a measure allocating $40 billion for domestic security in the coming year.”

“Steven Spielberg, under pressure from Darfur activists, may quit his post as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, unless China takes a harder line against Sudan.”

Despite the “high stakes,” the Iraqi parliament is “deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.” At yesterday’s session, half of the parliament members were missing, including “the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers.” The meeting convened for just 30 minutes and was only the 50th time the body had met this year.

“The U.S. and its allies have delivered a little more than a third of the equipment in the pipeline for the Iraqi Army and less than half of what is destined for the Iraqi police, the Pentagon said Thursday, underscoring lags that Baghdad officials have complained about in recent days.”

In a strongly-worded opinion handed down at the U.S. District Court, a Pennsylvania federal judge issued a permanent injunction yesterday against restrictive anti-illegal-immigration ordinances in Hazleton, PA. The ruling declared that the anti-immigration law “prohibits Hazleton from enforcing any of the provisions of its ordinances.”

“Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. … Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.”

And finally: On Wednesday, comedian Dave Chappelle “surpris[ed] staffers and fans” when he showed up to the Congressional Federal Credit Union in the Longworth House Office Building. “An employee of the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer who sidled up to Chappelle” said the comedian “playfully asked him what the ‘CAO’ emblazoned on his shirt stood for. ‘He asked if it was a gang,'” said the employee.