Today's Stories

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 14, 2009

The Poisoned Mosaic

Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

David Remes, an attorney for 16 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo, claimed today that the government’s detention policy was “in tatters,” after District Court Judge Gladys Kessler comprehensively demolished the Justice Department’s case against a Yemeni prisoner held in Guantánamo without charge or trial for seven years (PDF).

Judge Kessler ruled last Monday that the government had failed to establish, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” that Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed was “part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaeda forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” and stated that the government “should take all necessary diplomatic steps to facilitate“ his release.

This was not the first time that a judge had ordered a prisoner freed from Guantánamo because of the weakness of the government’s evidence. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the prisoners’ habeas corpus rights last June, judges have ordered the release of 25 prisoners in the 29 cases that have so far been heard.

However, although Judge Richard Leon dismissed the testimony of two witnesses in Guantánamo four months ago in the case of the Saudi resident and Chadian national Mohammed El-Gharani, stating that “the credibility and reliability of the detainees being relied upon by the government has either been directly called into question by government personnel or has been characterized by government personnel as undermined,” last week’s 45-page ruling reveals (despite extensive redactions) that Judge Kessler expressed even more comprehensive doubts about both the reliability of witnesses in Guantánamo, and the overall quality of the government’s supposed evidence. This will, I believe, have a knock-on effect on other cases, and may well be causing tremors of fear in those parts of the Justice Department and the Pentagon where, bizarrely, all indications suggest that, despite the change of administration, career officials who worked under George W. Bush are behaving as though it is still business as usual.

The case against Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed

Ali Ahmed, who was seized, with at least 15 other prisoners, in a raid on a house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002 (on the same night that the alleged senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was captured in another house raid), has always stated that he traveled to Afghanistan “in order to find a religious school at which to study the Koran,” as Judge Kessler described it, and “denies ever going to Afghanistan, training at an al-Qaeda camp, fighting against anyone, or being a member of a terrorist group.”

In a military review board at Guantánamo in 2007, he explained that he traveled to Pakistan, on a one-month visa, “to learn the Koran so he could be a teacher,” but ended up stuck in the guest house “because the situation at that time was they were arresting any Arab that was found there in Pakistan so we were just sitting and waiting in that house.”

In its case against him, the government drew on allegations made by four prisoners in Guantánamo, and also attempted to rely on a “mosaic theory” of intelligence. As Judge Kessler described it, drawing on documents submitted by the government,

[the] theory is that each of these allegations -- and even the individual pieces of evidence supporting these allegations -- should not be examined in isolation. Rather, “[t]he probity of any single piece of evidence should  be evaluated based on the evidence as a whole,” to determine whether, when considered “as a whole,” the evidence supporting these allegations comes together to create a “mosaic” that shows the Petitioner to be justifiably detained.

Judge Kessler then noted that, although it “may well be true” that “use of the mosaic approach is a common and well-established mode of analysis in the intelligence community … at this point in this long, drawn-out litigation the Court’s obligation is to make findings of fact and conclusions of law” to consider the government’s case. After pointing out that the mosaic theory “is only as persuasive as the tiles which compose it and the glue which binds them together,” she then proceeded to highlight a catalog of deficiencies in the tiles and the glue.

Judge Kessler dismisses the testimony of four witnesses

Dealing first with the witnesses, she excluded the testimony of the first, “whose credibility has been cast into serious doubt -- and rejected” by Judge Leon in the case of Mohammed El-Gharani. Noting that he “has made accusations against a number of detainees” at Guantánamo, and that “Many of those accusations have been called into question by the government,” Judge Kessler dismissed his claim that he “overheard” conversations at Guantánamo about Ali Ahmed’s travels in Afghanistan, stating that, “In addition to coming from an unreliable witness,” it was “based upon multiple levels of hearsay.”

Judge Kessler then dismissed the testimony of a second witness, whose allegation was redacted, because he had made several contradictory statements to interrogators, and, moreover, because his allegation was “riddled … with equivocation and speculation,” and also dismissed the account of a third witness, who claimed to have seen Ali Ahmed while he was allegedly being smuggled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, because, as Ali Ahmed stated, he “has been diagnosed by military medical staff as having a ‘psychosis.’”

Judge Kessler was particularly troubled that Ali Ahmed “learned of the witness’ medical condition only through the diligent work of his counsel, and not as a result of the government’s obligation to provide him exculpatory information.” She was also unimpressed that the witness provided “inconsistent identifications,” and was concerned by “evidence that [he] underwent torture,” at Bagram and in the CIA’s “Dark Prison” near Kabul, “which may well have affected the accuracy of the information he supplied to interrogators.”

According to the government, the last witness, identified as al-Qahtani (probably Jabran al-Qahtani, an alleged al-Qaeda operative who was captured with Abu Zubaydah), identified Ali Ahmed, from a photograph shown to him in Bagram, as someone who had received military training near Kabul. However, Judge Kessler dismissed this statement when it became apparent that, in Bagram, where Ali Ahmed had been given the prisoner number 191, the government admitted that two detainees were given this same number,” and she therefore concluded that it was “completely unclear” to whom the allegation referred.

Judge Kessler dismisses the “mosaic” theory of intelligence

While the dismissal of all four witnesses’ statements fatally undermined the government’s case, Judge Kessler also took apart the “mosaic theory” conjured up from the prisoners’ statements, which purported to show that Ali Ahmed trained and fought in Afghanistan, and was associated with al-Qaeda because of his presence in the guest house in Faisalabad.

Dismissing the claim that he fought in Afghanistan, Judge Kessler noted that, bizarrely, the government asked that his “participation in battle be inferred from a web of statements made by witnesses who were commenting on [his] non-military activity,” by suggesting that military activity could be inferred because the witnesses claimed that Ali Ahmed undertook military training in Afghanistan and “stayed in the company of al-Qaeda fighters,” and “because Ali Ahmed’s denial of such behavior is not credible.”

Noting that “The government’s position on this charge rests on its mosaic theory,” Judge Kessler added decisively, “The theory cannot support the charge,” and proceeded to explain that it was “extremely significant” that there was “absolutely no ‘direct’ evidence, at whatever hearsay level, of Ali Ahmed’s participation in battle.” She also made the following withering dismissal of the government’s claims:

Even if the evidence is to be believed that Petitioner’s story is false and that he was in Afghanistan, there simply is no affirmative proof that he took up arms. The Court will not make the leap that the government does.

After dismissing other pieces of the mosaic that dealt with Ali Ahmed’s purported military training in Afghanistan, and his supposed use of a particular kunya (nickname), for reasons connected to the unreliable witnesses discussed above, Judge Kessler also refused to accept that, because Ali Ahmed stated at a guest house in Faisalabad, which, according to the government, housed at least a few individuals who “were involved with terrorist groups,” it was logical to infer, as “one more piece of the mosaic,” that he was “a substantial supporter of al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban, as well as a trainee and fighter for one or both of these groups.”

Reiterating her profound doubts about the witnesses, she stated that the government’s allegation was “not the material of which a reliable hearsay identification is made. Once those pieces of the mosaic have been removed because of their unreliability, the government is left with what is essentially a charge of guilt by association.”

She added,

The problem with this charge is that there is no solid evidence that Ali Ahmed engaged in, or planned, any future wrongdoing while [redacted]. There is no evidence that he was arrested with any weapons or other terrorist paraphernalia; nothing of this kind was found in his locker. Though others at the house admitted their affiliation with al-Qaeda, they did not implicate Ali Ahmed in any terrorist activity.

She also noted that there was “ample evidence in the record to indicate that guest houses are common features of the region, serving as way stations for impoverished young men spending time away from home,” and -- in a comment that is worth noting in the cases of the other men seized in the house, whom I discussed in my book The Guantánamo Files, and in an article last December -- stated, “It is likely, based on evidence in the record, that at least a majority of the [redacted] guests were indeed students, living at a guest house that was located close to a university,” and added that she thought it significant that, “even though the police arrested all of the [redacted] men staying at the house, they appeared to have ignored [redacted], the man who operated the house.”

This was a valid point, as the house owner, Issa, was a Pakistani, and, as many Guantánamo prisoners seized in Pakistan have attested (see, for example, the story of two Sudanese prisoners released in 2007), the Pakistani police often made a point of apologizing to foreign Muslims as they were captured, stating that they had to seize foreign Arabs -- but not, by inference, Pakistanis -- to please the Bush administration.

In conclusion, Judge Kessler provided a succinct recap of her response to the government’s evidence, which should leave no one in any doubt about the extent of the administration’s failure to create a convincing case out of selection of profoundly dubious witnesses, and a “mosaic” with more holes than tiles:

As to the claim of participating in fighting, the government produced virtually no credible evidence; as to the claim of receiving military training, the conclusory nine-word hearsay statement by [redacted] does not show that it is more likely than not that he received such training; as to the claim that he traveled around Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 in the company of terrorist fighters fleeing the battlefield, even if the government had proven this charge, which it did not, such a fact would not constitute substantial support; as to the evidence that he stayed at [redacted], the government has certainly proven that he stayed there, but has utterly failed to present evidence that he was a substantial supporter of al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban while he did stay there; as to the government’s position about the significance of locating Petitioner’s alleged kunya on a list, the Court finds this argument without any merit whatsoever.

The long reach of Judge Kessler’s ruling

As a result, Judge Kessler’s ruling casts serious doubts on the wisdom of pursuing the cases of the other men seized in the house, except, perhaps, for those few who, as the government described it, “admitted to fighting with enemy forces” -- although even these bold statements may prove, under scrutiny, to be rather less clear-cut.

Moreover, her unwavering condemnation of four separate witnesses, including one who was responsible for making unreliable allegations against dozens of prisoners (which still seem to be included as part of the government’s “evidence” against these men), and her equally unwavering condemnation of a “mosaic” of intelligence composed of second- or third-hand hearsay, guilt by association and unsupportable suppositions, have repercussions that extend far beyond the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed and the other Faisalabad guest house prisoners.

As David Remes explained to me, “Judge Kessler’s opinion exposes the flimsiness of the government's evidence and blows a hole in many of the government's cases. Specifically, the court rejected the government's reliance on guilt-by-association and accusers of dubious reliability. These are two of the pillars of the government's cases against many if not most of the prisoners. The opinion also shows that the courts will not give the government the unquestioning deference it has been counting on to win its cases. If the other judges of the court should apply the opinion in their cases, the government's claims of detention authority will lie in tatters.”

If justice is indeed to be delivered to the Guantánamo prisoners, through a legal process that has taken many long years to establish, and is not to be hijacked instead by the Obama administration’s Executive review (which, noticeably, sidelines Congress and the judiciary in a manner that recalls the Bush years), I foresee that the release of many other prisoners will be ordered by judges in the coming months.

The government’s failure to comprehend the scale of the Bush administration’s cruelty and ineptitude

As a result, the administration might want to reflect on its reasons for claiming, as defense secretary Robert Gates stated two weeks ago, that there are 50 to 100 of the remaining 241 prisoners “who we cannot release and cannot try,” and who, it was suggested, might be held under some new kind of legislation authorizing preventive detention. If many of these cases are looked at closely enough, I suspect that it will be become apparent that the reasons that the government does not want to put them forward for trial is because the evidence against them is unreliable (in other words, that it was obtained through the use of torture, coercion or bribery), and that, moreover, much of it is composed of exactly the sort of “mosaic” of intelligence that, under close scrutiny, is revealed to be full of holes.

In addition, Attorney General Eric Holder would do well to focus significant attention on the pending habeas cases, and, preferably, to drop those which are infected by the testimony of liars (whether coerced or bribed) and are composed of broken “mosaics” of intelligence that will not convince judges seeking “findings of fact and conclusions of law.”

No one in the Obama administration should be surprised that so many of the Guantánamo cases will not stand up in a court of law, but I find myself surprised that senior officials seem to have been content to let a Bush-era approach to prosecution survive unchanged in the offices of the Justice Department and the Pentagon. Perhaps they haven’t been informed that the reason that there is no case against most of these men is because torture, coercion and bribery were used to fill in the blanks when the majority of these men were sold to the U.S. military by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, who handed them over with a smile, and a simple phrase, “This man is an al-Qaeda/Taliban fighter. You owe me $5,000.”

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

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