Ordinary, average, struggling Americans might be scratching their heads over the news from the Labor Department that unemployment is up by four-tenths of a percent for the month to a record 10.2 percent, fully three-tenths of a percent higher than economists had been forecasting, and stocks do what? Rise by a quarter of a percent!

What’s going on here?

Well, the tube analysts are quick to say, unemployment figures are a “lagging” indicator. That is, employment generally lags the overall economy, with layoffs coming after a recession kicks in, and hiring waiting until a recovery is well underway.

But that isn’t true with a deep recession like this one, because at some point—and we’re well past that point—high and pro-longed unemployment leads to reduced demand for goods and services, and to a psychology of fear and consumer withdrawal.

Once people feel that they aren’t going to find a new job soon, and once those who still have jobs feel that their employment is not secure, they no longer buy things except what they absolutely need. And in an economy where fully 72 percent of economic activity is consumer spending, that is no longer a “lagging indicator.” High, prolonged unemployment becomes a causal factor in the economic downturn.

If people aren’t buying stuff, then companies won’t make it, which means that they stop hiring, and even lay more people off, and so unemployment becomes a downward spiral of cause and effect.

But what about the stock market rise? Why would investors think that a worse-than-expected jobs report is a good thing?

There are several explanations for this ugly phenomenon.  First of all, rising unemployment—particularly sharply rising unemployment—means that the Federal Reserve will definitely not, for the foreseeable future, raise interest rates. A rise in interest rates would hit companies hard, and always batters the stock market, and the government and the Fed don’t want to do either of those things. So investors almost always jump into the market and push stocks up when they get some signal that the Fed is going to lower, or at least hold the line on interest rates. With rates effectively set at 0, the Fed can’t lower them, but it is saying, no doubt with the bad news about unemployment in mind, that it won’t be raising them anytime soon.

But there is another reason high unemployment may excite investors.  Current layoffs are likely, for many workers, to be permanent. A recent report that productivity—work output per worker—was up at a 9.55 annual rate in the Third Quarter, is an indication that those companies that haven’t shut down operations are making or doing more with fewer workers.  That kind of thing happens in recessions, because as joblessness gets worse, those workers who still have jobs become more docile and are willing to be worked harder by management.

Of course, you get more on-the-job injuries, more stress-related illness, etc. along with that kind of speed-up, but over the shorter term, it looks good on the books if you’re cranking out more product with a lower payroll.

Of course, longer term, this is all a disaster, not just for laid-off and afraid-to-be-laid-off workers, but for the country as a whole. You can’t rebuild an economy with more than one-in-ten workers unemployed. And remember, that’s just the people who are our of a job and still looking for one; it doesn’t count those who have been out of work for so long, or who work in professions that are so gone (like construction or maybe manufacturing Saturns) that they’ve just given up looking, or those who have taken part-time jobs in ice-cream parlors or selling apples to survive but who want to be fully employed again. If you add those people into the mix (which is the way the US used to count unemployment until the 1980s), you get an unemployment rate closer to 20 percent, or one in five! And you sure can’t rebuild an economy with one in five workers unemployed.

That’s what makes all the happy talk in the news and in Washington about the recession being over because last quarter showed a 3.5 percent annualized jump in the so-called Gross Domestic Product so ridiculous.

Most of that rise was the result of government subsidies to car-buyers and first-time house buyers. It was a one-shot stimulus that pushed forward spending, but it was no indication of a recovering economy, just a spasm of spending using taxpayer money.

Furthermore, an excellent article in Businessweek by Michael Mandel noted that fully one-percent of that GDP gain was the result of a failure by government economists to account for a collapse in corporate spending on research and development and on training and retaining intellectual assets (a complicated way of saying that engineers, scientists and technology workers were being laid off at a higher rate than other workers, and much R&D work was being shipped overseas for good), So really the “growth” of GDP in the third Quarter should have been at a 2.5 precent rate, and even that was largely government pump priming, not recovered economic activity.

The truth is, we’re falling deeper into recession, and apparently, according to the October unemployment figures, at an accelerating rate. And there is no indication that the Obama Administration or the Democratic Congress are planning any significant jobs-creation program.  They seem to be happy with this.

So quick, run out and buy some stock! It’s the American thing to do.  Probably not a bad idea either, since those dollars you are using will keep sinking in value as long as the Fed is constrained from jacking up interest rates.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, has agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to have a floor vote on his Medicare for All bill. A press release from Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (sponsor of HR 676, a single payer bill) opposing it helped tip the scale.

But Weiner did not ask Pelosi to include in her bill the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to create single-payer. Pelosi made clear that President Obama opposes that, and used the bogus excuse that providing everyone with comprehensive free healthcare would deprive them of the right to pay ever increasing rates for uncertain health “insurance.”

The removal of the Weiner vote undoubtedly helps the effort to force some of the 57 congress members who wrote to Pelosi in July keep their word. They said they would not support a bill without a public option tied to Medicare rates. If even 40 of them keep their word, the current bill will fail. And we will have a second round, in which we can push for single-payer and achieve at least a better result than the rotten corpse of a bill being voted on this weekend.

If we could have had a second round AND a strong but failing vote for national single-payer, that would have been better. But the single-payer vote was going to be used as cover for voting for a bad bill. Depriving conniving congress critters of that cover is decidedly a good thing, assuming healthcare advocates can come to terms with it and not rip each other’s throats out.

If congress members in favor of real helthcare reform were able to work with each other, or if activists were, other possibilities would open up. And if we have a round 2 in which advocates for a public option admit that single-payer would be better and include single-payer in all of their discussions as the ideal that Americans actually prefer, wonderful things might become possible. But unless single-payer advocates admit that winning in one state would be a good thing, rather than a loss of purity, we may not save any lives. Our most likely path to national single-payer is to get it in a state first.

And we could still facilitate that if we all got together and forced the conference committe to put the Kucinich Amendment back in, or if we forced House members to insist on voting No on Saturday unless the Kucinich Amendment is put back in.

*****

UPDATE: Congressman Henry Waxman has his own twisted logic:

Chairman Waxman’s Statement on Rep. Weiner’s Single-Payer Amendment

WASHINGTON, DC — Today Chairman Henry A. Waxman released the following statement in response to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s decision not to offer a single-payer amendment to the House Democratic health care legislation:

“Rep. Anthony Weiner has been one of the most tireless and effective advocates for health care reform. His decision not to offer his amendment on the floor was a difficult one for him, and for supporters of the measure. I believe Rep. Weiner’s choice will be enormously helpful in passing the health care reform package. His step is a correct and courageous one. I thank Rep. Weiner for it, and look forward to working with him closely. Rep. Weiner deserves a great deal of credit for helping to make quality, affordable health care more available to millions of Americans.”

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray says UK and the US sent prisoners to Uzbek to be tortured.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” Murray said. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won–in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent–that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort back in the 2008 campaign put Obama in office.

Exit polls showed that many Obama voters sat out this election in New Jersey and Virginia, with turnout low in both races. In part that was because of local conditions, of course. In Virginia, Democrat R. Creigh Deeds ran as a conservative, and was attacked by the Republican candidate, former state attorney general Robert McDonnell, as a tax-happy liberal. With liberal voters in Virginia unenthusiastic about Deeds, and Republicans revved up, the loss was a foregone conclusion, even with Obama making two visits to campaign for Deeds, and with the national Democratic Party pumping in $6 million in campaign funding.

In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat John Corzine was wildly unpopular for raising taxes, so that even with Democrats holding an almost 2:1 registration advantage in the state (half of all voters are unaffiliated), he too had no enthusiastic backing from his former base. No amount of money poured in by the former Goldman Sachs chief executive could overcome the negative views of his record as governor.

But despite the lackluster candidates in both Virginia and New Jersey, I think it’s safe to say that there was also clear evidence that the losses, and the margins of the losses—huge in Virginia’s case, and significant in normally safely Democratic New Jersey—provide evidence that the Obama presidency, and the prevailing Democratic strategy of minimalist legislative initiatives on health care reform, global warming etc., expanded and unending war in Afghanistan, support for Wall Street and neglect of the one-in-five Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, are a political disaster in the making for Democrats in general and Obama in particular.

The president came into office on a wave of populist enthusiasm and high expectations for the “change” candidate Obama promised. No change has been forthcoming now for over nine months, and with the president now past the first-year anniversary of his historic election victory, the latest election results suggest that his presidency could already be headed for the rocks.

Next year, we will see all seats in the House, and a third of the seats in the Senate up for grabs. Typically, a president’s party loses seats in that election even when things are going well. When things are not going well, the losses can be significant.

Obama had a chance, coming into Washington after a big rout of Republicans last year, to set out an agenda of major progressive change. He could have called for expanding Medicare to cover all Americans. Instead he handed health reform over to Congress and immediately put out the word that he was open to compromise with Republicans, thus dooming reform from the outset.  He could have announced a thorough review of America’s two wars, and then set in motion a withdrawal form both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead he dithered on Iraq, and added troops in Afghanistan, assuring that both these disasters inherited from the Bush/Cheney administration became his own disasters, which will now drag on through his whole term.  He could have declared a global climate emergency, and announced a job-creating crash program to develop renewable energy in the US and to make the US a leader in renewable energy R&D. Instead, he did almost nothing in this critical area.

As for the economic crisis, he could have taken a progressive stand against the abuses of Wall Street, ordered a criminal investigation of the banking class, broken up the big banks and established a new regulatory system to put an end to the era of casino capitalism. Instead, he put the bankers in charge of Treasury and poured trillions of dollars into the largest banks, allowing them to grow even bigger and more predatory.

Voters, their collective assets shrunken over the year by $14 trillion, understandably are left wondering how, aside from better verbal skills, this president differs from the last one. As for the Democratic Congress, with Democrats pretending that nothing can be done unless they have not just 60 seats in Congress, but perhaps 70 or 75 (enough to be able to survive the inevitable defection of conservative members of the party), they can’t do anything of consequence—a claim that only is true if, as is the case, the party’s leadership and the president are unwilling to punish those who break rank.

If Democratic and progressive independent voters feel the same way about Obama and the Democratic Congress next fall, it will be curtains for the Democrats and for Obama’s presidency, such as it is.

And you know what? It won’t matter much if that happens, because what we’re seeing is that having Obama in the White House, and Democrats “in control” of Congress doesn’t get you much in the way of progressive change.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Photo by John Soares via Chomsky.info

Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as “a mistake” or “strategic blunder,” it is, in fact, a “major crime” designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves.

“It’s [“strategic blunder"] probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad,” Chomsky quipped, referring to the big Nazi defeat by the Soviet army in 1943.

“There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world,” he added.

In a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London Oct. 27th, Chomsky warned against expecting significant foreign policy changes from Obama, according to a report by Mamoon Alabbasi published on MWCNews.net. Alabbasi is an editor at Middle East Online.

“As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style,” Chomsky said.

Chomsky said the U.S. operates under the “Mafia principle,” explaining “the Godfather does not tolerate ‘successful defiance’” and must be stamped out “so that others understand that disobedience is not an option.”

Despite pressure on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, Alabbasi reported, Chomsky said the U.S. continues to seek a long-term presence in the country and the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is to be expanded under Obama.

“As late as November, 2007, the U.S. was still insisting that the ‘Status of Forces Agreement’ allow for an indefinite U.S. military presence and privileged access to Iraq’s resources by U.S. investors,” Chomsky added. “Well, they didn’t get that on paper at least. They had to back down,” Alabbasi quotes him as saying.

Chomsky said Middle East oil reserves are understood to be “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

Concerning Iran, Chomsky said the U.S. acted to overthrow its parliamentary democracy in 1953 “to retain control of Iranian resources” and when the Iranians reasserted themselves in 1979, the U.S. acted “to support Saddam Hussein’s merciless invasion” of that country.

“The torture of Iran continued without a break and still does, with sanctions and other means,” Chomsky said. According to Alabbasi, Chomsky “mocked the idea” presented by mainstream media that a nuclear-armed Iran might attack nuclear-armed Israel. Iranian leaders would have to have a “fanatic death wish” to attack Israel, which reportedly has 200 nuclear weapons or more.

“The chance of Iran launching a missile attack, nuclear or not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth,” Chomsky said. He said the presence of U.S. anti-missile weapons in Israel are really meant for preparing a possible attack on Iran, not for self-defense, as they are often presented.

Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

The USA Patriot Act, rushed into law by a panicky U.S. Congress in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, gave the government broad surveillance powers to spy on innocent Americans. But it also stipulated that three of its more controversial provisions should expire next month unless reapproved by lawmakers.

And it appears that reapproval may be about to happen – evidently with a green light from the Obama Administration and over strong objections from human rights and civil liberties groups.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA Patriot Act Extension Act of 2009. The bill makes only minor changes to the original Patriot Act and was further watered down by amendments adopted during the Committee’s deliberations.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to pass legislation to rein in a bill that has become a symbol of out-of-control government invasions of your privacy. They failed — approving a bill that does little to curtail the sweeping powers embedded in the Patriot Act,” said the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Committee’s actions were driven by “short-term and political considerations,” Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told us. The Committee ignored “the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach,” he said.

Now, civil libertarians are looking to the House of Representatives, where the Judiciary Committee has already begun to consider the measure. Both chambers must produce versions of the legislation, after which differences will be reconciled by a bicameral conference committee.

The three sections of the law due to expire next month are:

The “National Security Letter (NSL)” provision. The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit (Doe v. Holder), the Second Circuit Court of Appeal struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records.

The “Material Support” Statute. This provision criminalizes providing “material support” to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial.

The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Amendments Act of 2008. Last summer, Congress amended the law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents’ international telephone calls and e-mails.

Now the civil liberties community is stepping up lobbying efforts to ensure that the legislation that emerges from the House Judiciary Committee contains more protections for privacy and other civil liberties.  Such legislation has been introduced in the House by three powerful Congressmen: John Conyers of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York, and Robert Scott of Virginia.

Their proposed amendments Act would create more civil liberties protections for many of the Patriot Act powers, including restricting the gag order attached to receiving a subpoena known as a national security letter (NSL), terminating the never-used “lone wolf” surveillance power, and limiting the use of NSLs to collect information on suspected terrorists or spies instead of innocent Americans.

However, the proposed new legislation leaves intact the Patriot Act’s so-called “material support” provision, permitting prosecution of those who work with or for charities that give humanitarian aid in good faith to war-torn countries.

The actions of the Senate committee have left human rights advocates and many legal scholars perplexed because the Committee chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democratic of Vermont, is considered one of the most liberal members of the Senate, and its members include such other high-profile progressives as Al Franken of Minnesota, Russ D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick J. Durbin of Illinois, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Asked to explain their votes, Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee said “the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms – while publicly stating receptiveness to them — was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor.”

He also cited the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others, noting that  Leahy said that in light of these incidents, “this is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America.”

Zazi has been charged with conspiring to bomb targets in the U.S. He allegedly traveled last year to Pakistan, where the FBI charges that he attended terrorist training camps.

“In sum, short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach, ” Pitts told us, adding, “In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it’s become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror (and avoid being accused of being ‘soft on terror’) brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed.

“Even nominal and sometimes actual civil liberties advocates have become more used to the ‘new normal’, seemingly forgetting the less visible but vital benefits of the liberties themselves – including for genuine and effective security, let alone for successful, prosperous, creative, dynamic open societies as opposed to closed societies like the former East Germany that used such approaches to their detriment.”

“The persistent myths and claims that the Patriot Act hasn’t been abused are simply ludicrous after the documentation by (civil liberties groups), regarding the torrent of abuse that has happened since 9/11,” Pitts told us.

Prior to the Judiciary Committee markups, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups had endorsed the JUSTICE Act, an alternative bill that would heavily reform not only the Patriot Act but other overly broad surveillance laws.

Amendments that were offered but failed by voice vote included an amendment by Senator Durbin to curb the abuse of the National Security Letter (NSL) statute and another offered by Senator Feingold to allow the “lone wolf” provision to expire (this never-used provision targets individuals who are not connected to terrorist groups). An amendment also failed that would make it more difficult for recipients to challenge the gag order that comes with receiving an NSL.

However, two amendments offered Senator Feingold were included in the final bill. In one, the Department of Justice would be ordered to discard any illegally obtained information received in response to an NSL. In the second, the government would have to notify suspects of “sneak and peek” searches within seven days instead of the 30 days currently required by the statute. “Sneak and peek” searches allow the government to search a home without notifying the resident immediately.

Most Americans have only seen Guantánamo detainees as one-dimensional caricatures. But a new American Civil Liberties Union video shows the full range of their lives before, during and after their captivity. The video, “Justice Denied: Voices from Guantánamo,” is part of an ACLU initiative against the practice of detention without due process that violates fundamental principles of American justice. Despite plans to close Guantánamo, the Obama administration has continued this unconstitutional practice.

The five men featured in the video were all held at Guantánamo for years without any meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention. They were denied their due process rights, which might have established the lack of evidence against them much earlier and spared them years of torture, abuse and imprisonment. The men were eventually released, and as they explain in the video, are now attempting to put their lives back together.

“I experienced sadness in a state that I have never had, cruelty in a depth that I’d never seen in my life,” Omar Deghayes tells the camera. He had graduated from law school in England and was studying the legal system in Afghanistan when he was captured and sent to Guantánamo for nearly six years. “You will not leave a similar person anymore. You will leave as broken, physically broken, psychologically broken.”

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul grew up together in England. They went to Pakistan for a friend’s wedding and took a short trip to neighboring Afghanistan where they were captured. It would be two and a half years before they could go home.

“Guantánamo Bay was hell for us,” Shafiq says. But Ruhal says their friendship helped them survive the brutal experience: “Anything that happened to me I could relate to somebody that was very close to me. Being friends from a young age – who else would you want in that kind of situation?”

Back home in England, Shafiq and Ruhal say the American leaders who allowed the injustices of Guantánamo should be held accountable. But they do not hold a grudge against the American people.

“The drinks we drink, Coca Cola – it’s American. We still drink it,” Ruhal says. “We still go to the movies. So we don’t hate Americans as American people.”

Omar says he feels the same way, but he wants Americans to know exactly what happened at Guantánamo: “I want the people themselves, the people in America, the good people – which I met many of – to realize what ugly things were done to others in their names.”

Country Joe McDonald said it best in his iconic “Fixin’ to Die” Rag: “Oh, it’s one, two, three, what are we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me. I don’t give a damn.” In fact, we were fighting for nothing in Vietnam.

It was a war that started out because the US didn’t want the Commies to win a battle in the so-called Cold War, and even though it was on the farthest side of the world, in a poor nation of peasants, even though they had been struggling to throw off colonialism for years and we had simply become the new colonists, no president dared to admit the obvious–we had no business being there, and all the killing and dying had no point.

Afghanistan is the same thing all over again. We “got in” surreptitiously for the same reason. Russia had helped organize a coup to take over what passed for a “central government” and had found itself mired in a brutal war of occupation, and the US had begun, back in the ’70s, organizing and providing arms to the forces fighting the Russians, not because Afghanistan–a country even more remote and meaningless in terms of US interests or security than Vietnam–had any importance but because it was a way to “stick it to” the Russians in the waning days of the Cold War. But things have a way of coming back to bite you, and the folks we armed turned out not to like us very much either.

So when we helped set up the foreign fighters–mostly Arab volunteers–in Afghanistan, we set up a force of people who saw us, in their home countries, as the oppressor and backer of vile and corrupt regimes back home. It was only a matter of time before they began turning their attentions to us. When 9-11 happened, we went after these people in Afghanistan, and the government of the Taliban, which we had formerly helped to power. In short order, what we managed to do was substitute ourselves for the Russians.

What are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Don’t ask me. I don’t give a damn. And neither do most Americans. For a while, Afghanistan was the “good war” in many Americans’ minds, because they bought the lie that conquering Afghanistan was necessary to defend the US from terrorism. Of course that was silly. Terrorists don’t need countries. They are as mobile as a nuclear submarine or a flu virus.

But once you put large numbers of troops in a foreign country and have them storming around shooting up the place, and once you start bombing the crap out of villages and killing people indiscriminately, you create a new situation where you become the occupier. So here we are, fighting another war that makes no sense, has no purpose, and has no end. Good war? Necessary war? What a joke!

What are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Don’t ask us. We don’t give a damn. And yet President Obama is now on track to add more troops–maybe 20,000, maybe 40,000. Hell his general on the ground, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, is asking for as much as 80,000, which would put the total up to what it is in Iraq, where we’re still bogged down in an occupation quagmire.

That’s where Kenny Rogers song “The Gambler” comes in. “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”

We had a chance to walk away from Afghanistan back in 2001. The Al Qaeda forces had been routed, the Taliban government had collapsed, and people in much of the country of Afghanistan, who had been largely spared any violence during the American attacks, were largely grateful at having the yoke of fundamentalism lifted off their backs. But the US didn’t leave. A low-level war continued.

More and more innocent people were killed, or arrested and stuffed into a concentration camp and torture hell-hole at Bagram Airbase outside Kabul, or shipped off to the other hell-holes in Guantanamo Bay or other CIA secret sites. And the Taliban were able to regroup and reposition themselves as saviors of the nation. Now the US is cast as the occupier. We can’t just “walk away” anymore. We have to “fold ‘em” and “run.”

Will Obama have the sense of a gambler with a bad hand? So far the signs are not good that he will. We are now in the position of having 70,000 US troops, soon to be closer to 100,000 troops, fighting, killing and dying in a country run by a corrupt, vote-stealing leader whose brother has long been known to be a leading profiteer in the global opium/heroin trade, in which Afghanistan has become the world leader (80-90 percent of the market) and, according to the New York Times, for eight years and counting a paid CIA asset in charge of a nation-wide death squad that is working on contract for The Agency. Polls show that most Afghanis, understandably, want the US out of their country. Wouldn’t you?

A hand doesn’t get much worse than that.

It’s time to fold and run.

If we don’t get the hell out of Afghanistan, then we’ll all be singing Country Joe’s song, but with modified lyrics (which I just premiered at a solo performance at a fund-raising dinner last week in Philadelphia for the local chapter of Veterans for Peace):

Come on all you young women and men,

Uncle Sam needs your help again.

He’s got himself into a terrible jam,

Way off yonder in Afghanistan.

You ain’t got a job, so pick up a gun!

We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun!

All you folks in the National Guard,

You won’t be protecting your back yard.

We may have floods and hurricanes here,

But you’ll be dodging bullets in the desert there.

But if that’s not what you signed up for,

We’ll send you there a few times more!

General McCrystal, jump right in!

Your big chance has come again.

The VC whupped us back in ‘74,

But now you can show some Muslims what-for,

And maybe even earn you a medal or three,

Sittin’ at your desk in DC.

Chorus:

Oh it’s one, two, three what are we fightin’ for?

Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn.

Next stop’s Afghanistan.

And it’s five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates.

Ain’t no time to wonder why.

Whoopee! We’re all bound to die!

Come on mothers, here’s the plan,

Send your son off to Afghanistan.

Come on fathers, it’s all cool,

Send a daughter off to Ka-Bool.

And if they die, they come home free,

And nobody has to see.

chorus

Okay Wall Street, here’s the deal:

Middle East oil is yours to steal.

Afghani blood, American too, is being shed now

Just for you!

And you can charge whatever you dare,

Cuz Washington don’t care.

chorus

Bush and Obama, you’ve done your best,

You’ve made the Middle East into one sweet mess!

But that’s okay, there’s still a plan:

To divert attention just bomb Iran!

And if that seems a bit unwise,

Well hell, you’ve got the Nobel Prize!

Chorus:

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fightin’ for?

Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,

Next stop’s…

Pakistan?

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

So it’s finally over. Ali al-Marri, a legal US resident from Qatar, who was held as an “enemy combatant” on the US mainland for five years and eight months without charge or trial, was finally sentenced in a federal court last Thursday. The prosecution was seeking a 15-year sentence, following al-Marri’s guilty plea in April, when, as part of a plea bargain, he accepted that he had receiving training in al-Qaeda camps and had come to the United States on a mission for al-Qaeda on the day before the 9/11 attacks.

However, in the Federal District Court in Peoria, Illinois, Judge Michael M. Mihm accepted a request from a-Marri’s lawyers to take into account the nearly eight years he has already spent in US custody, including the five years and eight months that he spent in almost complete isolation as part of the Bush administration’s aberrant “War on Terror” policies.

I have been covering al-Marri’s story in depth since June 2007, writing up the painful details of his torture and noting, with incredulity, the rulings of the courts who backed the Bush administration’s policies, but it was not until President Obama issued a Presidential memorandum on his second day in office, stating that it was “in the interests of the United States that the executive branch undertake a prompt and thorough review of the factual and legal basis for al-Marri’s continued detention, and identify and thoroughly evaluate alternative dispositions,” that his long and unjust isolation came to an end, and he was reintroduced to the justice system that had been prepared to try him back in June 2003.

It was at that point that President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and moved him to the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was held until February this year, and where, in his first 16 months of chronic isolation, he was subjected to the type of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were prevalent at the time in Guantánamo (as I explained at length in an article last December, “The Last US Enemy Combatant: The Shocking Story of Ali al-Marri”).

Al-Marri’s long years of extra-legal detention and torture — like those endured by two other Americans, Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — are a black mark on America’s recent history, and it has always amazed me that even Americans who were — and are — content to let foreigners suffer in Guantánamo and other “War on Terror” prisons did not feel a shiver of apprehension when fellow Americans were subjected to the same treatment on US soil. Putting aside the ”terrorist” rhetoric, it should have been abundantly clear all along that this was the kind of tyranny that the Founding Fathers of the United States expressly set out to prevent.

In court on Thursday, al-Marri’s lawyers also urged the judge to reduce their client’s sentence because “he no longer harbored a desire to attack the United States,” and this is clear from a statement that al-Marri made in court (reproduced in full here). In what the New York Times described as “eight minutes of tearful testimony,” al-Marri told the judge, “I am sorry for providing assistance for those who would do this country harm,” and stated that he was “a changed person from the 2001 al-Marri,” explaining:

My religious beliefs — refined through years of thoughtful prayer and study during my incarceration — I realize prohibit me from engaging in violence toward any man. I forcefully reject any sort of violence for religious, political or other reasons. I say this to the court and I also state this to the representatives of my country who are present with us today. I know that the news people are here so I know my word will be received by those with whom I associated with in 2001. You have my word.

Al-Marri also spoke about the punishment of missing his children growing up, but it was the words about how he has changed that, for me, rang out most noticeably from the proceedings, overshadowing the prosecution’s claims that a psychologist claimed that al-Marri was “likely to engage in hostile acts towards the United States,” and setting a seal on this long and deeply unpleasant story of how, in response to a terrorist attack, the Bush administration sank to the level of those it sought to defeat, in the most appropriate setting for this conclusion: a federal court.

As President Obama prepares once more to revive the tainted Military Commissions at Guantánamo, I hope he has paid attention to the proceedings in Peoria on October 29, 2009, and has realized how hollow are the words of David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, who, as the Times described it, “questioned the Obama administration’s decision to try Mr. Marri in criminal court instead of the military commissions favored by the administration of President George W. Bush.”

Stating that the sentence “underscores how ‘ill suited’ conventional courts are for dealing with these issues,” Mr. Rivkin proceeded to complain that criminal courts are “a crapshoot,” with wildly varying sentences, and claimed that the Military Commissions “arrive at a better judgment, being comprised of warriors, as to what level of danger the person poses.”

With federal courts having a proven track record of dealing effectively with terrorist cases, and with just three results after eight years of the Military Commissions — each of which, in various ways, was regarded as compromised or inadequate — it is, frankly, difficult to perceive the logic in the world of “warriors” inhabited by Mr. Rivkin, and far more comprehensible to acknowledge the words of Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney at the ACLU. For many years, Mr. Hafetz led the challenge to al-Marri’s detention as an “enemy combatant,” and, as the Times noted, he called the sentence “a powerful reminder that America’s civilian courts can deliver justice even in the most challenging circumstances.”

This story was originally published on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.

Abu Zubaydah

This story was originally published on Truthout.

Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee captured after 9/11, is expected to finally gain access to diaries he wrote during the years while he was being brutally tortured at secret black-site prisons by CIA interrogators.

A federal court judge has ordered the government to turn over unredacted volumes of the diaries and other “specified” writings to defense attorneys representing Zubaydah.

Although the order issued by US District Court Judge Richard Roberts on September 30 was filed under seal, Zubaydah’s attorney, Brent Mickum, said in an interview that while he could not discuss the substance of the ruling, it was his opinion that the order “should have been made public from the get-go” because “there’s nothing in [the order] that should be considered classified.”

In his motion, Mickum asked for original copies of the diaries to be released. It is not known whether Roberts’ order required the government to produce original versions of Zubaydah’s diaries. However, it is believed that Roberts’ order applies to three volumes of diaries Zubaydah wrote between 2002 and 2006, the time he spent in CIA custody and was tortured.

Those volumes, identified as seven, eight and nine, “were drafted while [Zubaydah] was in CIA custody,” according to court papers filed by Mickum last January. “Volumes 10 and 11 were completed in [Department of Defense] custody at Guantanamo, after September 2006; only these last two volumes, written after [Zubaydah] was transferred from CIA to DoD custody, were given to counsel in late 2008 by [Zubaydah] because they were in his possession.”

Mickum said he already has access to volumes one through six and 11 and 12. Though volumes one through six are unclassified, they have been designated by the government as “protected” and are not publicly available.

In a public summary describing his order, Roberts wrote that Mickum’s motion for “a preservation order and additional relief will be granted in part and denied in part, and [his] motion for an order requiring the [government] to return unredacted versions of [Zubaydah's] diaries and other specified writings to him will be granted in part and denied in part.”

The diaries have been the subject of legal wrangling for years. Justice Department attorneys in both the Bush and Obama administrations have argued that releasing unredacted copies of the diaries would constitute a threat to national security because they contain names of government employees, including an FBI agent, and names of individuals who assisted in translating the diaries from Arabic to English, plus information about ongoing counterterrorism efforts.

Mickum has filed numerous motions in federal court accusing the government of improperly classifying the diaries – even after portions have already surfaced in public documents – and abusing the classification process related to other materials in Zubaydah’s case.

For example, last August Mickum filed court papers seeking additional copies of Zubaydah’s medical records and an in-person medical evaluation, both of which Mickum says he needs in order to “challenge the lawfulness” of Zubaydah’s detention. The court previously ordered the release of medical records related to the more than 200 seizures Zubaydah has suffered since being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.

The Justice Department balked and filed its opposition in the matter under seal. Mickum objected to the government’s “ongoing abuse of the classification system” in a motion he filed in federal court in June. The court hasn’t ruled on that motion yet although it has been fully briefed on the matter.

Mickum said he has not been able to mount a meaningful defense because the government continuously denies his requests for documents related to Zubaydah’s time in CIA custody.

“The government is preventing us from working up the case,” Mickum said. “They are trying to keep things closely guarded.”

A Justice Department spokesman would not return calls for comment regarding Judge Roberts’ ruling.

Zubaydah has written 11 volumes of his diary in a “slender bound notebook” and has started work on volume 12, according to court papers in the case filed last January. He wrote the first six volumes before his March 2002 arrest in Pakistan.

The government’s case against Zubaydah is based heavily on entries contained in the first six volumes of his diaries, according to court papers. But the materials were designated by the government as “protected,” even though the diaries are unclassified and both the defense team and Zubaydah have access to volumes one through six.

In a July 14 motion opposing the government’s attempt to “protect” volumes one through six, Mickum said he is not permitted to inform Zubaydah “which passages the government relied upon” in the charges it prepared against him as outlined in the “factual return.”

“The Government has redacted every reference to the unclassified volumes of [Zubaydah's] diary from the unclassified factual return,” Mickum’s motion states. “By removing every reference to the diary, the Government leaves very few of the relevant allegations against [Zubaydah] to be seen by the eyes of the public. Moreover, what is left is an incredibly misleading picture. For example, for several pages of the factual return, virtually the only words that are left unredacted are the names: Abu Hafs al-Masri, [al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader] Abu Mas’ab al-Zarqawi, [self-professed 9/11 mastermind] and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known al-Qaeda operative. What the public does not see if that the only reason these people are mentioned in [the government's] factual return is that they are alleged to have been in the same city as [Zubaydah]. The Government does not even allege [Zubaydah] had direct, or even indirect, contact with them.

“What possible explanation can the Government offer to justify that the diaries are unclassified but the quotations from the diaries upon which the government relies in the factual return are classified? There is none. By doing so, the Government simply demonstrates its disregard for the fact that the authority to designate unclassified information as protected properly belongs to the court.

“It is understandable that the Government would want to avoid the public criticism that may follow from an honest discussion of who [Zubaydah] was and how the Government mistreated him, but this is not a legitimate basis for sealing information [in his] case. [This is about] the Government’s simple desire to keep information about [Zubaydah] and the case against him secret, primarily to cover up evidence contradicting its own public misstatements about [Zubaydah] as well as potential evidence of further as-yet-undisclosed government wrongdoing.”

Mickum said diaries Zubaydah kept while in CIA custody will go a long way toward establishing the brutal treatment Zubaydah was subjected to – far surpassing what the public has learned thus far from declassified \Justice Department legal memos documenting the brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation and beatings, used by CIA interrogators against Zubaydah.

He added that the diaries contain a “list of names, dates and activities” that will assist the defense in generating leads and prove that Zubaydah was not a senior member of al-Qaeda.

But by designating the material as “protected,” the government “severely hinders [the defense team's] ability to prepare [Zubaydah's] defense and vindicate his constitutional entitlement to habeas corpus at numerous levels.”

Mickum opined that the government would force him to have potential witnesses sign an agreement stating that they would be bound by a protective order if he were to discuss the diaries with them. Mickum said that was impractical as his investigations “are taking place all over the world” and it would also have a “chilling effect” on foreign witnesses. “Counsel are right now seeking the cooperation of witnesses in foreign countries who can corroborate the substance of [Zubaydah's] defense, much of which is articulated in his diary,” Mickum’s July 14 court filing says. “The Government’s attempt to designate the diary as protected, if granted, would preclude counsel from conducting such crucial investigations.”

Zubaydah began keeping a diary in 1992, after he suffered a severe head injury while fighting communist insurgents in Afghanistan. The injury left “significantly impaired both his long- and short-term memory,” states Mickum’s January 14 court motion.

“He cannot remember his father’s name and dimly recalls that he looked like a movie star in the Arab world (whose name he cannot remember). He cannot remember the name of his business partner with whom he ran a news agency prior to his arrest. Long after his 1992 injury, once [Zubaydah] had recovered the ability to speak and write, he began to keep a diary. It is his memory. Without it, he is lost.”

Dan Coleman, a former FBI agent who analyzed the diaries, said he was convinced that Zubaydah was “certifiable” and was not a high-level official in al-Qaeda as top Bush administration officials had claimed. Rather, Coleman said, Zubaydah was more like heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis, who worked as a greeter in Las Vegas at the end of his life.

According to author Ron Suskind, Zubaydah’s diaries were written in the voices of three people – Hani 1, Hani 2 and Hani 3, which, Suskind wrote in his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” helps establish that Zubaydah was mentally ill.

Furthermore, Suskind wrote, “Zubaydah was a logistics man, a fixer, mostly for a niggling array of personal items, like the guy you call who handles the company health plan, or benefits, or the people in human resources. There was almost nothing ‘operational’ in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn’t one of them.”

Suskind’s account closely matches what Jack Cloonan, a former FBI special agent assigned to the agency’s elite Bin Laden unit, told me in a recent interview. Cloonan said the CIA and the Bush administration were flat wrong in designating Zubaydah as a top official in al-Qaeda. Zubaydah “wasn’t privy to a lot of what I would consider to be a lot of really good operational details,” getting most of his information secondhand, Cloonan said.

Mickum denies that Zubaydah was privy to any operational details of al-Qaeda.

“My client was never, ever, even a member of al-Qaeda, much less a high-level operative,” Mickum told Truthout. “The camp he was alleged to have assisted was closed in 2000 by the Taliban. Leaders of the camp known as Khalden closed it rather than allowing it to fall under the control of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda because they disagreed with al-Qaeda’s missions and attacks on innocent civilians.” Cloonan agreed, for the most part, with Mickum’s characterization of Zubaydah.

“We thought [Zubaydah] would be best described as a logistical officer who managed a series of safe houses and was a great travel agent,” Cloonan said. “But to cast him and describe him as the al-Qaeda emir or leader for the subcontinent or worse … I think was a mistake…. Based on his age and ethnicity, [he] would [n]ever be brought into the inner circle of al-Qaeda.”

There was also the question of Zubaydah’s personality. “My partner had a chance to look at a lot of Abu Zubaydah’s diaries, poems and other things that he has written and he said that after reading this you just come away with the feeling that this is a guy who can’t be trusted or be given huge amounts of responsibility,” Cloonan said. “He just seemed mentally unstable…. “I’m not at all suggesting that Abu Zubaydah wasn’t valuable. Anytime you get one of these guys and get their cooperation, I think [it] is a win. You can get information that’s really valuable from people who are further down the food chain. It’s how you get the information and whether you’re getting real cooperation or simply compliance because somebody’s either waterboarding you or gets you on sleep deprivation.

“We know, and the science tells us, that people cannot recall details accurately, they can’t look at pictures, they will make things up if deprived of the bare essentials of life over the course of time. I don’t understand how you could sleep deprive somebody for 11 days and expect this person to provide you with accurate information.

“Even if they wanted to they’re probably so debilitated at this point they need to be rehabilitated before they ever give you anything.”

Zubaydah’s 2002 torture sessions were videotaped. But CIA officials destroyed the tapes and a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate whether federal laws were broken when the tapes were purged.

As I previously reported, CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley with daily “torture” updates of Zubaydah. The extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and agency officials in Langley likely included updates provided to senior Bush administration officials.

In justifying his torture, the Bush administration had maintained that Zubaydah was the No. 3 official in al-Qaeda and had information about pending terrorist attacks against the US. But documents, news reports, books and former FBI interrogators familiar with Zubaydah said he was a low-level figure in the terrorist organization and was mentally ill.

CIA interrogators waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times in one month, according to recently released documents, and placed him inside a coffin-like box for hours at a time. The Bush administration claimed it obtained actionable intelligence by torturing Zubaydah – an assertion contradicted by a CIA inspector general’s report on the agency’s torture and detention program.

CIA documents from a Combatant Status Review Tribunal in March 2007 revealed that Zubaydah’s torturers eventually apologized to him and said they concluded he was not a top al-Qaeda lieutenant as the Bush administration and intelligence officials had claimed.

“They told me sorry we discover that you are not number three [in al-Qaeda], not a partner, even not a fighter,” Zubaydah said during his tribunal hearing.

Mickum said volumes seven, eight and nine of Zubaydah’s diaries would shed further light on his brutal treatment while “in CIA custody and recount his torture and damaging exculpatory admission made by [Zubaydah's] torturers and other CIA officials.”

The diaries “are critically important to show what [Zubaydah] was doing during this time frame and contain exculpatory evidence.”

Public court filings also state that Zubaydah “created other relevant writings and drawings, none of which have been returned to him.” Although Mickum said he could not describe the drawings because they remain classified, but it appears likely that they may depict Zubaydah’s torture.

“You’ll just have to use your imagination as to what they might be,” Mickum said. Zubaydah’s “really good.”