September 11

The Hamdan’s Tale

6
1 year ago
by Monotreme in ,

Salim Ahmed Ham­dan. Source: New York Times.

Two cases related to the Guan­tanamo Bay detainees and their treat­ment are mak­ing their way through the court sys­tem now and may be reviewed by the Supreme Court soon.

The first, Jose Padilla v. John Yoo, was the sub­ject of Michael’s arti­cle this morning.

The sec­ond case is being heard (or maybe not, see below) by the D.C. Cir­cuit Court and may well move to the Supreme Court next term.

Salim Ahmed Ham­dan is a Yemeni national who, intel­li­gence offi­cials say, served as a dri­ver for Osama bin Laden. He was detained by Afghan forces in Novem­ber 2001 and held with other sus­pected ter­ror­ists at Guan­tanamo Bay.

In 2006, his case (Ham­dan v. Rums­feld) was heard by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the sys­tem of mil­i­tary tri­bunals cre­ated by Con­gress was uncon­sti­tu­tional because it did not prop­erly fol­low the Geneva Con­ven­tion. The present case is unre­lated to the first; the only com­mon fea­ture is that it fea­tures the same peti­tioner. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Yoo Who?

5
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Jose Padilla

John Yoo

The Supreme Court is done hear­ing cases for this sea­son. But the Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals issued an opin­ion yes­ter­day that may be reviewed by the Supremes in the future. The case is Jose Padilla v. John Yoo.

If those names ring a bell, it’s with good rea­son. Jose Padilla is the Amer­i­can cit­i­zen dubbed the “dirty bomber”, for his arrest, on sus­pi­cion of plot­ting a radi­o­log­i­cal bomb attack, almost exactly ten years ago, on May 8, 2002. John Yoo was a mem­ber of the George W. Bush Admin­is­tra­tion Jus­tice Department’s Office of Legal Coun­sel, where he gained noto­ri­ety as the author of the “Tor­ture Memos”, which pro­vided a legal argu­ment that “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion” was legally dis­tinct from “tor­ture” as described in the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture. (more…)

War is Political Hell

29
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Today marks a year since the death of Osama bin Laden, the patron and leader behind the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. At the risk of politi­ciz­ing those events, let’s look into how those events have been, well, politicized.

From the begin­ning, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, and the Repub­li­can Party in gen­eral, have used the al Qaeda attacks for polit­i­cal advan­tage. On May 1, 2003, Pres­i­dent Bush took a vic­tory lap, in an immense staged event on an air­craft car­rier, pro­claim­ing that “Major com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq have ended.” Of course, they hadn’t ended, and things went so badly so quickly that in 2007 the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion had to engage in a mas­sive “surge” to make up for the dis­as­ter of the Iraq war. It was not until August 31, 2010, that a dif­fer­ent pres­i­dent, Barack Obama, could hon­estly declare an end to com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq.

There is a pat­tern here, not only of Repub­li­cans politi­ciz­ing national secu­rity issues, but of Pres­i­dent Obama clean­ing up for­eign pol­icy messes left by Pres­i­dent Bush. The response of the Repub­li­can Party has been to fur­ther politi­cize these events, and attempt to min­i­mize the suc­cesses that Obama had but that Bush couldn’t achieve. (more…)

It Wasn’t the Beginning

36
1 year ago
by Armchair Warlord in

Editor’s Note: Log­a­rchism occa­sion­ally fea­tures guest arti­cles by our loyal read­ers. Here, Arm­chair War­lord pro­vides his take on the mean­ing of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks.

It was very hard for me to write this arti­cle. My gen­er­a­tion has, for bet­ter or worse, become inured to the mas­sive tragedies that have played out across the world’s tele­vi­sion screens on a yearly basis for our entire adult lives. The ter­ror attacks on Sep­tem­ber 11 were one of many hor­rors of recent years — promi­nent but, with the last ten years’ of per­spec­tive, by no means unique. There have been many ter­ror attacks since then, some of them almost as deadly. There have been nat­ural dis­as­ters that have laid waste to entire regions of the world. After a while you learn to absorb the shock as a sur­vival mech­a­nism. But when your reac­tion to cat­a­stro­phe is to grit your teeth and carry on, it makes it hard to write some­thing stir­ring and eloquent.

The date has a spe­cial place in our con­scious­ness, though.  (more…)

The Shanksville Redemption

3
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

All that remains, except for the freedom.

This is the third arti­cle in a series this week on the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

It is almost 10 AM East­ern time on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

Two planes have been delib­er­ately crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter. Amer­i­can flight 11 out of Boston strikes the North Tower at 8:45 AM. With the whole world trans­fixed by the drama in New York, won­der­ing if this is a hor­ri­ble acci­dent or a delib­er­ate act, the defin­i­tive answer is not long in arriv­ing. United flight 175, also out of Boston, strikes the South Tower at 9:03 AM. Amer­i­can flight 77 strikes the Pen­ta­gon at 9:43 AM.

Jeremy Glick, a pas­sen­ger aboard doomed United 93, has called his wife, Lyz. She is stay­ing with her par­ents in upstate New York. State Police are on another line with Jeremy’s mother-​​in-​​law: Does he know where the plane is headed? He’s not sure, but he thinks they’ve changed direc­tion. In fact, the plane is headed to the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. To this day, no one knows which build­ing was the ter­ror­ists’ intended target.

Lyz relates to Jeremy the scene on her par­ents’ TV, the twin tow­ers on fire, soon to collapse.

As so many did, fac­ing down death that day, his mes­sage to his wife is one of agape love, of affir­ma­tion and strength.

Lyz: You need to be strong.
Jeremy: I need you to be happy, and I will respect any deci­sions that you make.

Then he tells her some­thing that is not often reported, that didn’t make it into the movie, that we as Amer­i­cans don’t talk about, but we should. (more…)

Secure in Our Beliefs

13
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

A typ­i­cal air­port secu­rity line

This is the sec­ond arti­cle in a series this week on the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In the 1990s, I was a road war­rior. I spent as much time in air­ports and on air­planes as I did pretty much any­thing else dur­ing my work­ing hours. And I car­ried a Swiss Army knife in my carry-​​on bag, along with my lap­top, because it’s a very handy tool for the ran­dom things that life throws you.

That, along with many other things, changed on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

Today, no knives of any kind (even but­ter knives). We are restricted from car­ry­ing most liq­uids and gels. We take our shoes off and have those scanned. We are sub­jected to body scans that are an affront to our mod­esty and may well be car­cino­genic. We wait in longer secu­rity lines at the air­ports. We are denied board­ing if our names are too sim­i­lar to those who are believed to wish ill on our nation. And we’re told that all of this makes us safer.

But are we appre­cia­bly safer with all of these changes?

(more…)

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