This comes from Salon:

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy
By Glenn Greenwald

During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates:

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig at Guantanamo Bay and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.

The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.

Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.

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US drone-fired missiles suspected to have killed Al Qaeda’s Pakistani leader, 3 others

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A US drone strike on a house in northern Pakistan killed at least four suspected militants, and is suspected to have killed Al Qaeda’s Pakistani leader Badar Mansoor, Fox News reports.

The attack is the second in 24 hours. A strike Wednesday in the same area killed at least 10 and several others were injured.

The back-to-back strikes could be an indication the drone program is picking up steam again after a slowdown caused by tensions with Pakistan over accidental American airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year.

The U.S. held off on carrying out drone strikes for over six weeks after the deadly accident on Nov. 26. There have been a handful of attacks since they resumed in January, but the last two are the first consecutive strikes since the border incident.

The house hit before dawn on Thursday was located in the main bazaar in Miran Shah, the biggest town in the North Waziristan tribal area, the country’s main sanctuary for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, said Pakistani intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

via Report: US Drone-fired Missiles Suspected To Have Killed Al Qaeda’s Pakistani Leader, 3 Others | Fox News.

Truth, lies and Afghanistan

How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

via Truth, lies and Afghanistan – February 2012 – Armed Forces Journal – Military Strategy, Global Defense Strategy.

In a crushing blow to academic freedom, Harvard University has censored and fired a prominent professor because university administrators didn’t like what he said about Islam.  The tenured professors at Harvard, who cannot be fired in order to protect their freedom to express themselves, have failed to rally to the cause of the fired professor — and worse, the expulsion was occasioned in part by a faculty vote:

At a meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, faculty members voted with an “overwhelming majority” to remove two economics courses - ‘Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business’ and ‘Economic Development in India and East Asia’ – that Mr Swamy teaches at the three-month Harvard Summer School session.

Harvard has  dropped economics courses taught by a Hindu professor, Subramanian Swamy, president of the Janata Party of India and a former Union Cabinet minister, because of something that had nothing to do with economics: he wrote an editorial that Muslims find offensive.  And now the Harvard Crimson has added insult to injury by applauding this decision and declaring a barbarian’s war on the founding principle of this great nation — our unalienable individual rights.

If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.

Better stock up on guns and ammo. Gonna need it before too long. Just saying.

The Guardian

Americans face Guantánamo detention after Obama climbdown

By Chris McGreal

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”.

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the “war on terror” to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation’s supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law’s critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

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Even CBS has this one:

(CBS News)

WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects

By Phil Hirschkorn

The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.

As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.

The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been “softened.” The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.

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And from InfoWars:

‘Indefinite Detention’ Bill Heads To Obama’s Desk As White House Drops Veto Threat

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

UPDATE: Obama has dropped his threat to veto the bill and is now expected to sign it into law. Remember – it was Obama’s White House that demanded the law apply to U.S. citizens in the first place.

The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama’s desk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously report that the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens.

“The House on Wednesday afternoon approved the rule for the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting up an hour of debate and a vote in the House later this afternoon,” reports the Hill.

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Oh shit! Even Al Jazeera talks about it!

Detaining US citizens: How did we get here?

By D. Parvaz

Aziz Rana, professor of constitutional law at Cornell University, explains the significance of provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorisation Act that define the entire world as a battlefield, allowing for open-ended detainment of US citizens, without a trial.

Rana tells Al Jazeera that these provisions are merely the latest round in a long battle between Congress, the executive branch, and rights activists.

On the executive branch versus civil liberties:

“One of the positions in the legal community, for example, around the assassination of [Anwar] Al Awlaki, is that this is a constitutional violation.

But the executive branch has pretty systematically defended this - not that it can, under the Constitution - but it has systematically defended its ability to pursue a variety of different practices.

For example, various officials in speeches and statements have implied that the battlefield extends beyond Afghanistan or Iraq and indeed may be global. If an individual is suspected of engaging in terrorism but is in a friendly or non-hostile country – such as Yemen – that still would count as the battlefield.

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The sorry excuses for Representatives and Senators are a disgrace to this country. They all need to be fired and replaced if at all possible. EVERY.ONE.OF.THEM.

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet.com

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

UPDATE: Obama has dropped his threat to veto the bill and is now expected to sign it into law. Remember – it was Obama’s White House that demanded the law apply to U.S. citizens in the first place.

The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama’s desk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously report that the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens.

via Prison Planet.com » ‘Indefinite Detention’ Bill Heads To Obama’s Desk As White House Drops Veto Threat.

Is it not central to this ivy league university and every institution in these United States to “protect free speech, including that of Dr Swamy and of those who disagree with him”? Where does Harvard address the truth of Swamy’s remarks, or the 80 million Hindus slaughtered in jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements? Harvard has removed Swamy’s course from their curriculum over an editorial he wrote concerning the jihad in India. I ran it at Atlas here on July 16, 2011.

I cannot believe this is America.

Freedom of speech protects all speech, not just the ideas that we like. That’s the point. Who decides what’s good and what’s forbidden? Harvard? The Islamic supremacists seeking to impose the sharia restriction on free speech?

Harvard has been bought and sold to the highest sharia bidder (in December 2005, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed donated $20 million each to Harvard University and Georgetown University to fund Islamic studies).

This is dire.

via Harvard Deems Truth “Reprehensible”: Fires Subramanian Swamy for Editorial – Atlas Shrugs.

This asshole Hassan is a terrorist, traitor and murderer. Plain and simple.

Obama is a SCOAMF.

Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation’s Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

via Lawmakers Blast Administration For Calling Fort Hood Massacre ‘Workplace Violence’ | Fox News.

Afghanistan Casualties – Military and Civilians

Rest in peace.

And to their families for raising such men, my sincerest condolences for your loss.

Please read Onward.