NEWSWAR ON TERROR

The right to free speech is recognized by the First Amendment and given lip service by most U.S. politicians – whenever they're not trying to ban rap music or bar people from saying mean things about them.

In practice, though, the right to voice one's opinions is more tenuous than it is on paper; just ask Eugene Debs, who was imprisoned by the “progressive” Woodrow Wilson for speaking out against the draft during World War I, the “war to end all wars.”

And so it is today with those who organize opposition to another self-styled progressive's attempts to make the world safe for democracy by way of heavy munitions and military occupations. Since September, the Obama administration has raided the homes and offices of a half-dozen prominent anti-war activists, issuing 23 people subpoenas to testify before a grand jury, all ostensibly as part of an FBI investigation into whether a group of pacifists and peaceniks provided “material support” for terrorist organizations.

Bradley Manning stands accused of fulfilling Barack Obama's campaign promise to promote government transparency and accountability, having allegedly leaked evidence of corruption and war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. The Obama administration has responded by throwing him in a military prison cell in Quantico, Virginia, and seeking to destroy his mind.

"War crimes” isn't used lightly, mind you. One of the videos Manning allegedly leaked shows U.S. soldiers in Fallujah killing two Reuters journalists and the Iraqi father of two who stopped to help them in cold blood, the audio of the incident showing they were eager to pull the trigger and not the least remorseful when they learned they had just severely wounded two young boys. The military claimed it couldn't release the video because it would expose operational secrets. That was a lie. The military didn't want to release the video because it would show the bloody truth of war -- what it is in reality, not in a recruiting ad.

At a time when Muslim Americans in communities across the country are feeling abused by federal law enforcement, Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, wants to know why they aren’t more cooperative with those who are targeting them.

King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is planning to hold controversial hearings on the supposed radicalization of Muslims in American communities. The hearings, which are expected to take place sometime in February, have been likened by activists to a “witch hunt” and to the infamous hearings held by Sen. Joe McCarthy to ferret out secret communists in the 1950s.

“You can definitely say overall the hearings are seen with great apprehension, suspicion and distaste — sometimes sorrow,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islam and Islamic law at UCLA, in a recent interview with Politico. “These hearings have a history of stigmatizing whole groups of people.”

According to Politico, possible witnesses may include two critics of Islam popular in right-wing circles that have made “creeping radicalism” and alleged jihad in America a cause célèbre: Dutch critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhfi Jassar. Law enforcement officials and people with “the real life experience of coming from the Muslim community” will also be included, said King.

But activists within the Muslim community are loudly denouncing the hearings, fearing that Muslims are being targeted for political show – a dangerous game for which an entire swath of people is being singled out on the basis of religion.

David House is one of the few people allowed to visit Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence officer accused of leaking evidence of war crimes to WikiLeaks who's being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day – an hour for each year he has been on this earth. Or rather, House was one of the few people allowed to visit Manning, a right that's now been denied because he did something the military didn't like: he spoke out.

In a December piece for the blog Firedoglake, House confirmed what Manning's military lawyer, Lt. Col. David Coombs, had long been saying: that the young man who in a free country would be considered a hero is instead being tortured, mentally destroyed by military officials who critics speculate are trying to coerce testimony from him against the founder of WikiLeaks, Public Enemy #1 and “high-tech terrorist” Julian Assange. Denied so much as a pillow and bed sheets, Manning is permitted just one hour of exercise – he's taken to a room where he walks figure eights – and is required, every five minutes, to respond in the affirmative to guards who ask him if he's “okay.”

The prolonged use of solitary confinement can break a man, as a group of psychologists noted in a recent letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, one of the reasons even the just-deposed authoritarian regime in Tunisia pledged not to employ it for more than 10 days, acknowledging that any period longer than that would constitute torture. Manning has been held in solitary confinement for more than six months.

Those torturous conditions – and remember, whatever your thoughts on what Manning allegedly did, he has yet to even have a trial – spurred his military lawyer last week to file an Article 148 complaint under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), charging that he is being criminally wronged by his commanding officers. Rather than improve his conditions, however, those commanding officers have responded by cutting of Manning's access to the outside world, denying his lone remaining visitor, David House, the right to speak with the imprisoned whistleblower.

“Karen Sullivan” and “Daniela Cardenas” pretended to care about peace, about justice – and about solidarity with those working for the same.

They were lying.

As the Minnesota Anti-War Committee revealed this month, the characters known as Karen and Daniela were not who they seemed. Though they appeared to be committed peace activists, even going so far as to organize protests and fundraise, they were in fact FBI agents. Their great service to the country? Disrupting peaceful antiwar activism.

“When I speak of disruption, I am referring to an August 2009 solidarity delegation to Palestine,” says Jess Sundin, a founding member of the Anti-War Committee. “Officer Sullivan made public her plans to join this delegation, she helped to promote it and fundraise for it here in our community. At the same time, she was secretly working to sabotage the trip entirely. Through her work, reports were passed onto Israeli authorities, who then barred entry to the two Minneapolis women traveling with Karen Sullivan.”

At this point, even supporters of the war on terror ought to be asking just what the hell is the FBI doing wasting taxpayer money and its finite resources on infiltrating groups of non-violent peaceniks when – as the government never tires of reminding us – there are dangerous terrorists out there that need to be stopped? It's all about priorities, it seems, and respecting First Amendment-protect speech isn't one of them.

Politicians, especially those with an “R” after their name, love to talk about their fidelity to the Constitution. Actually abiding by that ancient document, though? Nah, they're not so keen on that; just try finding “indefinite detention” in the Bill of Rights or permission for carrying out preemptive attacks on sovereign nations without so much as a declaration of war.

So while GOP congressmen and the likes of Glenn Beck might feverishly warn about impending Obama-fascism – the latter mere months after musing about declaring supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul enemies of the state – you won't find them raising much hell about the case of Gulet Mohamad, a 19-year-old American citizen who has been detained and tortured in Kuwait and placed by the Obama administration on the U.S. “no-fly” list, denying him his right to return home.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with his name.

What can it mean when a citizen of the United States, living abroad, can be detained with the cooperation of American officials, and -- without a warrant, without charge, without explanation -- be allegedly beaten, tortured and then put on a no-fly list so that he cannot return to the U.S. even he wanted to?

Civil liberties groups and Muslim-American activists are saying that's the case with 19-year-old Gulet Mohamed, a Somali-American who has been living in Yemen and Kuwait since March 2009, and is now barred from re-entering America. And activists say he's not the first, indicating that the rights Americans enjoy may be more tenuous than we think.

In fact, the ACLU is suing the U.S. government on behalf of 10 citizens and legal permanent residents (three of them U.S. military veterans), some of whom are living abroad, but are now on the amorphous no-fly list, which, according to The Washington Post's latest estimate, is about 4,000 individuals long. According to the ACLU, the individuals stranded include one American in Mexico, another in Columbia and four in Yemen.

According to the lawsuit, the individuals have no idea how they got on the list, nor have they been given the opportunity to appeal or redress the situation -- they just cannot fly.

Bradley Manning has yet to be charged with a crime. And as The Los Angeles Times points out in an editorial published this week, he hasn't even received the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing -- the military first wants to study whether he has a "mental disease that made him unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions and whether he is competent to stand trial," according to the paper.

But the young Army intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks is being punished just the same. No word on whether those who carried out said war crimes are likewise being examined for possible mental diseases (just joking -- they aren't).

Held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for the better part of a year, Manning is barred from exercising and even denied bedsheets – ostensibly for his own good, his conditions justified by a “Protection of Injury” order despite the fact military psychologists have said he is not a suicide risk. The group Psychologists for Social Responsibility, meanwhile, recently sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates raising concerns about Manning's detention and noting that long-term solitary confinement is known to cause severe psychological damage.

In other words, the military is causing severe harm in the name of protection. Kind of sounds like the whole war on terror, doesn't it?

You're much more likely to die as result of a train crash on the public transit system in the nation's capital than you are a terrorist attack – nine people died in a June 2009 crash due to what federal inspectors call Metro's “anemic safety culture,” while no one has been killed as a result of terrorism.

But, banking on the assumption that the public values easily bypassed security theater more than having competent train operators and fully functional safety equipment, Metro officials have decided to sink their limited resources into random, liberty-eviscerating bag checks.

“Passenger security and safety is our top priority here at Metro,” claimed Michael Taborn, chief of the Metro Transit Police, in a YouTube video announcing the move in December. “To help ensure that our customers, employees and facilities are provided with the highest level of security, we're seeking your support as we move forward to implement random inspections of items carried into the Metro system.”

At a packed meeting Monday night meeting of the Metro Riders' Advisory Council (RAC), however, the public response was overwhelming: no, thank you – we rather like our rights.

If Bradley Manning had gunned down an innocent Iraqi family and a pair of journalists, he'd be free right now – and probably up for some sort of medal. Instead, he allegedly leaked video evidence of said war crime to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. So, naturally, rather than being subjected to the torture of a lengthy speech at an awards ceremony, he's being held in mind-destroying solitary confinement 23 hours a day, which the group Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) labels cruel and inhumane punishment.

Such is the price of having a conscience.

A 23-year-old Army intelligence officer, Manning allegedly leaked, among other things, the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks last summer that shows U.S. soldiers in a helicopter gunship calmly and coldly firing upon two Reuters journalists and killing an innocent Iraqi father who, having come upon the scene as he drove his two young children to school, attempted to rescue them.

When troops on the ground arrived, they quickly reported the tragedy they came across, noting that the helicopter crew had just killed an innocent man while filling his children with bullets. “Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle,” a not-terribly-remorseful soldier remarks in the July 2007 video.