It must suck to be elected president and have to do your predecessor's job in addition to your own.

The Obama administration today ordered that the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four others be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to New York to stand trial.

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, told a press conference in Washington he would be seeking the death penalty.

President Obama, speaking at a press conference during a trip to Japan, said he was sure Mohammed would receive a fair trial, in spite of the problems of finding unbiased jurors in New York, and of evidence being tainted by torture. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subjected to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it," he said.

The US ambassador in Kabul has written to the White House arguing against sending thousands more American troops to Afghanistan.

In a leaked cable, Karl Eikenberry expressed doubts about the competence of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Mr Eikenberry, a former US commander in Afghanistan, also raised concerns about corruption within the Afghan government.

He said it was "not a good idea" to send more troops, the BBC has been told.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't support the current nation-building project in Afghanistan, but I do support the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and I think we should commit however many troops it takes to get that job done.

But one thing we shouldn't do is say we want to achieve an objective but then fail to commit the resources for it. We should go all in or not at all.
- posted by truthspeaker    Comments

From the New York Times:

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater's ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater's president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.

Twenty-three Americans were tonight convicted of kidnapping by an Italian court at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme for abducting terrorist suspects.

The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady's superior, Jeff Castelli, the then head of the CIA in Italy, and two other Americans were acquitted on the grounds that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

But another 21 alleged CIA operatives and a US air force officer were each sentenced to five years in jail. All were tried in absentia and those who were convicted will be regarded as fugitives under Italian law.

Extraordinary rendition, which has been criticised as "torture by proxy', involves the snatching of suspects and their forcible transfer for interrogation to third countries – often those states where torture is routinely employed.

Now to get these guys extradited. If they're smart, they'll testify against the people who gave them orders.

Edited to add a link to the BBC story. I was going to link to this one originally but the BBC website was having problems.

CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap

The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions.

"We are disappointed by the verdicts," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.

He declined to comment further pending a written opinion from the judge, but said an appeal was likely.

Instead of being disappointed, he should be arranging for extradition of these criminals. You can contact the White House here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.
- posted by truthspeaker    Comments