OBAMA Exposed Part II
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I found this on another music site and this gives an idea that as citizens we must not look the other way when politicians get in office. We must make sure they're doing the job we elected them to office and that we're getting the change we expect.
OBAMA Exposed: This Is NOT REAL Change
Tell me what you think???
Peace
OBAMA Exposed: This Is NOT REAL Change
Tell me what you think???
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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Comments
i'm not surprised this is the first reply to this thread, either
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
You have to wonder if these people's intentions are actually good on the campaign trail, and then it all goes down just as the great Bill Hicks describes it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRykTpw1RQ
I have to think that by the time they get to the Presidency they know the score- probably hand picked
I have to think that by the time they get to the Presidency they know the score- probably hand picked[/quote]
From Democracy Now this morning on * Obama Reverses Campaign Pledge to Renegotiate NAFTA *
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Damn, here I thought this thread was going to be new prints from that beach photo shoot he did back on the campaign trail...
Obama was handpicked by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Rockefeller Stooge #2 (less favored than long term NWO apologist Henry Kissigner, for sure!) back in the early 80s when Obama attended Columbia University (high ranking illuminist institution that it is, ahem, "columbia", anyone?) while Zbig was on staff. Zbigniew later becomes one of Obama's most senior campaign Advisors, before having to sneak back in to the shadows after the public catches on that one of his sons is running with the McCain campaign. If that doesn't spell "insider" to you, what does?
No.
I do NOT think his intentions were ever geniune.
How the fuck anyone could have EVER ASSumed such with an understanding going in to this election that
a. Obama was being hyped by the very machine he was allegedly against
b. Obama was being MASSIVELY funded by the very same banking hegemony he allegedly opposed
c. Obama speaks directly about a new World Order, which i think we can all understand as an ESTABLISHMENT perspective, and NOT some outsider grassroots movement for "Change".
RIght?
Obama: "Give them a stake in creating the kind of WORLD ORDER i think that all of us would like
Sky News On Obama: "his vision for a new world order"
Sky News Again on Obama's New World Order
If you want to argue whether the intentions of the illuminsts truly qualifies as "good" or not, thats fine.
But lets not even PRETEND to think that Obama was just some young idealist off the street who did not know any better before he got involved.
Could we be any more naive?
:shock:
[ps - not pickin' on you Vinny, just using your comment as a talking point, no hard feelings please]
If I opened it now would you not understand?
No hard feelings, brother. Believe me, I am of the thought that all of our presidents are interviewed / sponsored / hand-picked in advance, and that a back-up is always chosen as the opposition, just in case things don't go as predicted on election day. I think it's pretty clear that whoever wins is the guy who gets the most publicity, of which the media is 100% in control. What's the old saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity"? Fox News gave Obama more coverage than McCain-- good coverage or bad coverage doesn't matter, simply coverage itself matters.
I just put my link out there as a "what if" for the people who sincerely believe that politicians tend to run with good intentions and change immediately while in office. As in, "What if their lives are actually in danger? What if the Secret Service were more like prison guards to the president, and only posed as his protectors?" I don't think this to be the case, personally-- at least not the part that they don't know the deal beforehand.
before the election someone posted a video from the ron paul campaign or at least a ron paul supporter that used some website (i think google trends?) that compared media attention and popularity and when people like ron paul had a lot of attention in the media his numbers went up, when coverage dropped so did his polls and vice versa; when obama got more and more coverage his popularity went up
also, i noticed the few times when the media covered candidates like ron paul, dennis kucinich, mike gravel, ralph nader....it was always in a negative light, making them look like fools with no chance to win. in fact when george stepanopolous interviewed the 2 major party candidates (paul and kucinich) he would constantly ask questions like "you know you have no chance in winning, don't you?"
i also noticed stepanopolous seemed to edit ron paul, like he asked him wasn't it true he refused to accept medicaid in his practice, paul said yes and that was it....it seems like paul would've explained how he gave reduced rates and payment plans to people who couldn't afford it instead of using tax payer money.
GE owns the NBC's and they are a huge weapons manufacturer, does anyone think they would seriously push someone that goes against their agendas?
and in the debates kucinich got more questions about things like ufo's than actual policy questions. they push who they want to push and who is better for their agendas and other parties aren't even allowed to participate in the debates thanks to the commission on presidential debates who are all former high ranking party officials who blatantly admit they have no interest in showing the views of anyone but the 2 parties and everyone else "just mess things up"
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I TRY not to be naive - but I do think that people who express a philosophy or promise and are so rigid that they can't reverse their position, are just as bad as the liars. Let's face it, very few of us whether "fully" informed or not can make completely error-free judgements or decisions. There are times when we have to reverse course. I'd like to think that in some situations, this is what Obama has done.
Has he lied, knowingly or unknowingly? I'm sure he has - it's a prerequisite for just about ANY occupation these days whether it's a little white lie or a big whopper. But when it's all said and done, we'll all have to weigh out and balance the results.
I think discussions like this are number 1, GOOD and number 2, NECESSARY, but I also think we need to try to focus on the big picture. The corruption and greed that permeated the Bush Administration was as distasteful to me as anything they did, including invading Iraq. My jury will be out on Obama until the full four years has been completed. We can at least give the guy at least a couple of years to prove who he really before we crucify him.
And by the way, I think you left Oprah Winfrey$$$ off the list in terms of how Obama got to where he is.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
~I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.~
Henry David Thoreau
Ain't that the truth?
Major network interviewer: "Boss, I'm interviewing Dennis Kuncinich tonight on my show... Anything you want me to ask him?"
Boss: Ask him whatever you want-- as long as it makes him look like a kook. Oh yeah, and make sure you make it clear he has no chance of winning a presidential election EVER. That is all.
Major network interviewer: Great idea, sir! How about a blowjob?
This is one of the major reasons I got so fed up with the presidential electoral system/debates last year. A man like Dennis Kuncinich whom wanted to be given a chance in the debates was basically railroaded out of town. Gone before one could blink an eye, in the media it was all was slanted to an Obama presidency and I could see that even on Fox News.
I took a good look at the whole system and paid more attention to a so called *nut* like Ralph Nader and his true concerns for the country and it's direction. He won my vote and people told me I was crazy but I didn't care to me he spoke the truth and wasn't afraid to say so even when speaking of Obama.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
The media is a huge indicator of who will win and actually ploys who should be knocked out by the questions the journalists ask, as you've noted. If you study it enough, you can actually see the manipulation happening to the public, since the majority lets the media think for them. That's why certain people win, because the stupid public would rather pay attention to polls and the types of questions asked, rather than do their own homework on the individual candidate. It's embarrassing when you think about how influenced we all are about the deceptive American mainstream media. People need to turn their TVs off, read more, research more, and only then, would we have more critically thinking and real opinions as to why we vote. The media completely gets in the way of our voting power and our manipulated brains.
Oh, and I read an excellent article a while back called "the ghosts in the machine". It was about the machine being the political 2-party system, and Kucinich and Paul being the lone ghosts, trying to rattle their chains making some noise against the machine, since their stances on issues don't conform to the machine as much as the other candidates so neatly conformed to the machine's ideals. These two are considered radicals, they actually have ideas set up to better the people as a whole, rather than "protect" the machine, and Kucinich rightly even wanted to get out of Iraq immediately (oh, the outrage about that!). Although there are many people who support these two candidates, the media disregarded them or treated them like idiots. We need more "ghosts" to rattle that machine.
I never expected real change.
But when your dealing with the United States, small changes in policy can mean life or death for millions of people around the world. That's what empires do.
That's why i voted for him.
Its up to us to hold him accountable to his campaign promises...real change doesn't come from a ballot.
This was scary to hear this today if it is true.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
it says the only claim the department of justice denies is the threat of never seeing his family, everything else they say happened and is standard procedure and to call it torture is hyperbolic....
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I don't get what the big deal is. I'm not condoning what happened to this guy, but I will say that for anyone to believe a blanket statement about torture/rendition being stopped completely is a bit naive. This sort of thing has been going on for at least 50 years and will continue to as long as threats to governments (US or otherwise) exist. When Obama got up and spoke about torture, he specifically referred to Abu Graib (sp?) and Guantanamo. He WASN'T referring to the daily ops/black ops of government agencies and the military.
No one can be sure about what has been published with regard to this particular story's voracity. Is the guy totally and completely innocent of any threat to the US Government? Remains to be seen. Only one side of the story is being talked about in the press. Attorneys, depending on their motivation, can spin the story however they like. They get paid to paint pictures of guilt or innocence, whether they believe in the guilt or innocence or not. It seems to me that for the US to snatch him, there HAS to be more to the story, they HAVE to have been investigating him.
The spin doctors are working overtime on everything even remotely connected to the Obama administration - just like they did to Bush the last three years of his presidency. I think generalizing about issues like this one is a waste of time. Countries have, will and always will continue to do whatever it takes to protect themselves. Is is right? It's not completely wrong either.
Ever get off a plane in Frankfurt? There are HUNDREDS of big bad dudes with machine guns - everywhere in the airport. If you made the mistake of fucking with one of the them as a joke or anything else, your ass would get hauled away and never heard from again.
Again, I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it is, was and always will be. It's a by-product of the world we live in, especially since 9/11. There are times when it does need to take place.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
~I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.~
Henry David Thoreau
how is bribing a contractor for a job a threat to the US?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
on second thought, i guess that could be a threat depending on the job it was, still it seems heavy handed to do just for a bribery case
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
written by the guy that was on democracy now
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/1 ... 56499.html
Target Of Obama-Era Rendition Alleges Torture
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama sharply criticized the Bush Administration's extraordinary renditions program. "To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people," he wrote in Foreign Affairs. "This means ending the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of law." But Obama was consistently careful never to commit to ending the practice of rendition entirely. When the issue flared shortly after his inauguration, senior administration officials were quick to say that abuses including torture would end, but that "ordinary" renditions - the spiriting away of suspects from other countries without going through the formal process of extradition -- would be continued in a cleaned-up form. Now in a federal court in suburban Washington, a case is unfolding that gives us a practical sense of what an Obama-era rendition looks like.
Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a Lebanon-based contractor that does work for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has the unlikely distinction of being the first target of a rendition carried out on the Obama watch.
According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by "at least eight" heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company's U.S. government contracts. The trip ended with Azar alighting in manacles from a Gulfstream V executive jet in Manassas, Virginia, where he was formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe.
This rendition involved no black sites and was clearly driven by a desire to get the target quickly before a court. Also unlike renditions of the Bush-era, the target wasn't even a terror suspect; rather, he was suspected of fraud. But in a troubling intimation of the last administration, accusations of torture hover menacingly over the case. According to papers filed by his lawyers, Azar was threatened, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and induced to sign a confession. Azar claims he was hooded, stripped naked (while being photographed) and subjected to a "body cavity search."
On a ride to the infamous Bagram air base in Afghanistan -- site of the torture-homicides involving U.S. interrogators exposed in the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side -- Azar contends that a federal agent pulled a photograph of Azar's wife and four children from his wallet. Confess that you were bribing the contract officer, the agent allegedly said, or you may "never see them again." Azar told his lawyers he interpreted that as a threat to do physical harm to his family.
Azar alleges that on arriving at Bagram he was shackled to a chair in an office for seven hours and not allowed to move. Then in the midst of a cold rainstorm he was taken to an unheated metal shipping container converted to use as a cell. The cell was brightly lit and although the outside temperature approached freezing, he was given only a thin blanket. He also claims that he was not permitted to sleep during his confinement at Bagram, which lasted over a day. Then he was told he was going to take a plane trip. His handlers would not tell him where he was going. He feared he was being dragged to Guantanamo, there to be "disappeared" and tortured. How else, he thought, could he explain the absence of Afghan authorities, the hooding and other techniques?
Before boarding the Gulfstream, Azar was shackled, blindfolded and had earphones placed on his head. Occasionally, the earphones and blindfold were removed so that his interrogation by FBI agents could continue. The 16-hour flight was broken by a refueling stop in Tbilisi, Georgia -- which has long served as a pit stop for rendition flights into and out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. During the flight, according to papers filed by the Justice Department, Azar confessed to the charges against him--essentially that he was aware of corrupt payments made to a U.S. government contract agent to help Sima International secure or extend its contracts with U.S. government agencies.
Azar's attorneys are now seeking to suppress that confession, arguing it was secured by torture and that Azar, a native Arabic speaker, did not understand English well enough to have given it.
The Justice Department acknowledges the accuracy of many of Azar's specific claims, but it denies that Azar was ever threatened with a photograph of his family or that he was malnourished. It heatedly argues that the characterization of these techniques as "torture" is "hyperbolic."
The department also insists that the decision to subject Azar to sensory deprivation for the duration of his flight to America was "according to accepted procedure for the transport of prisoners by airplane" and that it was "done solely for the safety of the prisoners and the FBI agents accompanying them." The decision to use those techniques is attributed to FBI Special Agent Nicholas Zambeck, who heads the Bureau's hostage rescue and negotiation team in Afghanistan. These procedures--particularly the blindfolding and shackling -- correspond to standard Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques, which President Obama declared banned immediately on his arrival in office.
A Disproportionate Response?
Renditions conventionally involve seizing a target overseas, often with the informal consent but rarely with the overt involvement of the foreign government, and moving him across international boundaries without observing legal formalities associated with extradition. Under the Bush administration, rendition typically involved intensive interrogation using highly coercive techniques or outright torture, most often at the hands of proxies. By contrast, renditions that occurred in the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations involved transferring someone to stand trial on criminal charges--not "disappearing" a person to a black site or a third country.
But in all three previous administrations, renditions have been considered a rare technique reserved for dangerous terrorists and violent drug kingpins. Azar is at worst a secondary figure in a small-time contract fraud case and is not accused in any way of terrorism. Why such aggressive and dramatic techniques were used in connection with the apprehension of a man suspected of a small-scale white collar crime remains entirely unclear.
Could Azar have been nailed on contract fraud because prosecutors actually suspected something more sinister but have been unable to make out a case? Apparently not. In accounts of politically motivated terrorism, the name "Raymond Azar" does surface--it is the name of the former Lebanese military intelligence chief, suspected of involvement in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But that Raymond Azar--General Azar--has been in prison in Lebanon since 2005 and is unrelated to the construction manager who was nabbed in Kabul. The Azar who was the target of the rendition effort is a Christian, and has no prior criminal record and no history of involvement in politics. Moreover, prosecutors agreed (under some pressure from the court) to release him into the custody of a local Maronite priest--a step they would not have taken had he been a terrorism suspect.
The decision to seize Azar in Afghanistan apparently was made in April 2009, six weeks into the Obama administration. Documents filed by the Justice Department, however, suggest that plans for it were laid at least as early as December 2008, before the transition had occurred in Washington. The Justice Department declined to respond to requests for information about the identity of the official who authorized the special operation in Afghanistan to apprehend Azar and Cobos.
"The United States views contract fraud as a very serious matter," Public Affairs Deputy Director Gina Talamona told me. She notes that the prosecution resulted from the work of the International Contract Corruption Task Force -- uniting the FBI and Justice Department with the Department of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
And Azar's removal does match in some respects the change that the Obama team promised. Obama administration officials explained that renditions would be reserved for unusual cases in which a person's transfer to face charges under a criminal justice system faced obstacles that could not be met through extradition or other more formal processes. They also insisted that renditions would occur for purposes of holding and charging the targets under law. Azar's delivery to the United States to bring him to face charges indeed matches Obama's announced change in the program.
Rendition By Any Other Name
Reeling from the adverse publicity associated with the Bush-era program, the Justice Department denies that the seizure in Kabul and forcible transportation of Azar and Cobos should be called a rendition. "This was a lawful law enforcement transfer consistent with international law," says Talamona. In papers filed in the court proceedings, the Justice Department prefers to call the process an "expulsion."
The Justice Department's papers insist that "defendants were expelled from Afghanistan, with the permission of the Government of Afghanistan, based upon outstanding arrest warrants issued by this Court."
In response to requests for clarification, Talamona states that the "consent of the Government of Afghanistan was secured through diplomatic channels, involving the State Department." Rob McInturff, a State Department public affairs officer, confirmed that U.S. diplomats were involved in the effort and claims that they secured the Afghan government's consent. But he refused to disclose who gave the consent, the specific parameters of the consent given, or even to identify the specific agency or ministry of the Afghan government from which the consent was given.
When contacted and asked to confirm whether the government of Afghanistan had given its permission for the seizure and removal of Azar and Cobos to the United States, two senior officials of the Afghanistani Interior Ministry in Kabul insisted in separate interviews that the ministry had no record of any such request ever having been made by the U.S. Justice Department, nor did it have any record of permission having been granted for Azar's removal.
The senior Afghan Interior Ministry officials explained that under an existing U.S.-Afghan understanding the United States has the authority to seize any person who constitutes an "imminent threat to the safety or security of U.S. forces in Afghanistan," but no unilateral authority to remove such persons from the country. They also noted that a number of FBI agents are currently on duty with the Ministry of Interior and have been specially deputized to perform activities consistent with their training mission. These agents are not, one official stated, authorized to engage in law enforcement activities in Afghanistan outside of the scope of that mission. The United States does have the right, one official stated, to remove U.S. citizens from the country, which would suggest that no issue existed as to the removal of Cobos. The Afghan officials also stated that they "could not rule out" the possibility that someone in the Afghan government might have given some form of consent in connection with the seizure of Azar and Cobos, but they expressed skepticism that this was in accordance with Afghan law.
Generally speaking, the Justice Department's description of the process as "expulsion" causes legal scholars to wince. As Philippe Sands, Q.C., an international law professor at London University points out, an "expulsion" in a case like this would be done by the government of Afghanistan, and not by agents of the Justice Department acting on Afghan soil. And Sands stresses that the seizure and removal of Azar and Cobos on Afghan soil would only be lawful if the consent of the government of Afghanistan had been properly given.
The Justice Department contends that operations like the one in Afghanistan are "quite common." A public affairs officer cited five press releases involving transfer (usually American citizens) from Indonesia, Mexico and Colombia--all involving "expulsions." However, in most of these cases, the persons were actually in the custody of the foreign government and expelled based on a finding that they had entered the foreign country illegally. They were then transferred to U.S. custody in connection with the expulsion. Thus none of the examples cited were close to the facts of the Azar case.
But even if consent were secured in some form from officials within the Afghan Government, the operation might still be legally ambiguous. Sands notes a pending prosecution in Milan, Italy, where 26 American agents, including a diplomat and a military attache, face kidnapping and assault charges in absentia connected with the United States' decision to seize a radical Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar off the streets of Milan and transport him to Egypt. The operation appears to have been carried out with a "wink and nod" from Italian state security agents, but without observing the formal extradition rules applied by Italian law. The U.S. agents whisked Abu Omar off to nearby Aviano Air Base before loading him on to a Gulfstream jet for a trip that ultimately landed him in Egypt. For the United States agents, this was a legitimate national security operation which had been coordinated with Italian intelligence counterparts. But for Italian prosecutors it was kidnapping, and for their role in giving the "wink and nod," the implicated Italian state security agents were charged as co-defendants. The case is expected to go to a verdict by the end of the summer.
A senior State Department figure involved in Afghanistan policy noted to me that the United States and Afghanistan have failed to conclude a status of forces agreement in part because of difficult unresolved issues surrounding the power of Americans to detain and hold prisoners on Afghan soil. "The Afghans understandably see this as impinging on their sovereignty," the U.S. diplomat stated. All of this underscores the sensitivity of the American-Afghan dealings underlying the murky Azar case, and explains why--against the backdrop of a presidential election campaign in Afghanistan--the Americans are unwilling to identify who gave consent to seize Azar and the Afghans are unwilling to confirm that consent was given.
Azar's Fate
In any event, U.S. legal precedents coming from bounty-hunting cases and earlier renditions operations make it unlikely that Azar can successfully challenge his seizure and removal from Afghanistan, even if it was improper under local law. Instead, Azar is seeking dismissal of his indictment on grounds of government misbehavior. His torture allegations are central to those claims.
An analyst with Human Rights Watch who is expert on renditions cases, Joanne Mariner, notes that Azar's claims match an existing pattern of accusations concerning the treatment of prisoners in past renditions, many of which have now been well documented. "The court needs to examine, for instance, whether Azar was in fact threatened, hooded, deprived of food and sleep, left for seven hours in shackles in a chair," she said. Professor Sands similarly observed after examining the court papers that he found the allegations "deeply troubling." They indicate, he explained, "clear violations of international norms on due process and detainee treatment. The consent of the host state, even assuming it to have been given, would not appear to provide any sort of justification, certainly in terms of international legal requirements, as the English courts have made crystal clear."
The government's indictment claims that in response to a government sting operation, Cobos agreed to pay and then paid money to a person posing as a government contracts officer in order to retain or expand her company's business. It alleges that Azar knew of these actions and was Cobos's supervisor. But the case also raises strong questions simply about the allocation of resources. The sums of money involved in the government action as corrupt are relatively small, amounting to about $100,000. That's almost certainly a smaller sum than the Justice Department expended sending a Gulfstream V around the world and deploying a platoon of FBI agents to Afghanistan for the sting operation that apprehended the Lebanese business executives.
Another cause for concern: Azar and Cobos were lured to Afghanistan as targets in a Justice Department sting operation, not invited to come to Virginia or Washington, D.C., to confer with contract officers--an easier and more conventional trip. Did Justice Department prosecutors intentionally avoid the more restrictive rules of U.S. law by luring Azar to Afghanistan, where he could be held and interrogated at Bagram and subjected to harsh methods that could never be applied in the U.S.?
Azar's allegations will now go before United States District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who must test Azar's claims to have been tortured and act on his motion to dismiss the charges and suppress his confession. Motions of this sort are generally reckoned a long shot, as most judges prefer to have everything fully developed at trial. But at a 90-minute hearing held on July 17, Judge Lee indicated his discomfort with the prosecutors' conduct, and specifically with their failure to supply the defendants with background information about the capture and interrogation of Azar and Cobos in Afghanistan. He asked three government prosecutors who were present if they were familiar with the Stevens case before Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, in which a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate potential criminal misconduct by the prosecutors. He insisted that the prosecutors immediately turn over to the defendants their records, including interview notes and any exculpatory materials.
Whatever happens to Azar and his co-defendant, some intriguing questions hover over this case. Does it tell us how the rendition program is being reshaped? Is the Obama team eliminating Bush era abuses and bringing the program back to its Clinton-era criminal justice roots? Or will the program continue to be plagued by charges of torture?
Supporting Documents
Azar Motion to Dismiss Indictment on the Basis of Governmental Misconduct
Azar Motion to Dismiss Indictment on the Basis of Governmental Misconduct Exhibit A
Azar Motion to Dismiss Indictment on the Basis of Governmental Misconduct Proposed Order
Azar Motion to Suppress Statements
Azar Motion to Suppress Statements Exhibit A
Azar Motion to Suppress Statements Exhibit B
Azar Motion to Suppress Statements Exhibit C
Cobos - Motion Dismiss Government Misconduct
Government - Opposition to Dismiss due to Misconduct
Government - Opposition to Suppress.pdf Government - Opposition to Suppress
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'