In a memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee concludes that the Geneva Conventions “do not protect members of the al Qaeda organization”, and, furthermore, that the “President has sufficient grounds…
The decision by the United States government to use cluster munitions in the war in Iraq has not gone entirely unnoticed by the American media. A study by USA Today, for instance, acknowledged that civilian deaths – “collateral damage” in Pentagon parlance – from the use of cluster munitions were…
A draft memorandum from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel dated January 9, 2002, entitled “Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees”, was written to inform the Department of Defense that the U.S. government, in the “war on terrorism”, need not conform to the standards…
Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote a memo to follow-up on the January 25, 2002 State Department memorandum to the George W. Bush, entitled “Decision Re Application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War to the Conflict With al Qaeda and the Taliban”, which contended the Justice Department’s judgment…
On January 25, 2002, the U.S. Justice Department sent a memorandum to the George W. Bush reasserting the judgment that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Entitled “Decision Re Application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War to the Conflict With al…
On December 18, 2001, The U.S. Department of Justice sent a memorandum to William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel at the Department of Defense. The memo, entitled “Possible habeas jurisdiction over aliens held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” and written by Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals Patrick F. Philbin and John C.…
Ahmad Chalabi has become a convenient scapegoat not only for the United States Government, but also, it seems, for the American media establishment. In a letter they would have us believe is their mea culpa, the editors of The New York Times name Chalabi as prominent among “a circle of…
“Do you ever get the sense the whole world is becoming unhinged from reality?” That is the question posed by David Brooks in his New York Times op-ed of January 6, appropriately entitled, “The Era of Distortion”. “Yes,” would be my own answer to that question, and never more so…
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. His new book, "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis", is now available at Amazon.com.
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