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Jose Padilla, an Almost-Ordinary Defendant    [
The United States Under High Surveillance    [

    America Watches Its Stars Wane and Its Stripes Fade
    By Philippe Grangereau
    Lib ration

    Monday 13 August 2007

The Afghan and Iraqi conflicts have contributed to tarnishing the image of Washington, which begins to worry about that fact.

    The American athletes came back very shook-up from Brazil, where they had participated in the Pan-American Games, last week's Chicago Tribune noted gravely. They suffered boos and catcalls during the opening ceremony, "USA Go to Hell" during a volleyball match with the Cuban team, and, to top it all off, enthusiastic applause from the crowd when an American gymnast had the misfortune of falling ... This episode is not the last manifestation of an ever more caustic anti-Americanism.

    Decadence

    A study entitled "Global Malaise" the Pew Research Center completed in 47 countries in June emphasizes that "for the last five years, the image of the United States has been tarnished in most countries in the world - and has significantly deteriorated among the United States's traditional allies in the Americas, the Middle East and elsewhere." Turkey established a record, with an 83% disapproval level. In France, 76% of the people polled disapprove of "American ideas of democracy," according to Pew, which polled 45,000 people in total. Nearly similar scores were registered in Germany, Spain and Pakistan. Black Africa alone has an overall positive vision of the United States and there are few countries that do not revel in the humiliation the superpower has undergone in Iraq.

    This distrust of the United States and its president worries Americans themselves. Especially in the Democratic Party, which has continued to talk about it the last few weeks. Barack Obama, candidate for the 2008 presidential candidacy, deplores that the American ideal of freedom should be "tragically associated by many around the world with war, torture, and regime change by force." "Not so long ago, Venezuelan and Indonesian farmers put pictures of John F. Kennedy up on the walls of their houses," he laments, assuring that "that kind of America is once again" possible. "Not everyone can love us, but we also can't have everyone in the world hating us either," candidate Hillary Clinton reminded a supporter who made the point that the United States "is no longer the global power it once was."

    We are, in fact, far from the American omnipotence of the last decade when, in 1992, George H. Bush (the father) declared that "a world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes only one preeminent power, the United States of America." "And it looks at us without fear, since the world trusts us [...], for it knows what we do is right," he added. Distant also is the supremacy still proudly heralded in 2002 by his son, George W. Bush, who asserted that "the United States finds itself in a position of unprecedented military strength, allied to great political and economic influence." The American giant had just then, legally, along with its allies, overthrown the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and seemed invincible. Moreover, the country was then draped in the extraordinary capital of sympathy that resulted from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

    The consequences of the fiasco of the 2003 Iraq invasion, are making America question itself today. "Are We Rome?" asks journalist Cullen Murphy in the title of his recent book. He compares the United States to the Roman Empire of the Fifth Century and wonders whether this contemporary "center of the world" is not also heading for an upcoming fall. He sees "decadence" in the growing gap between rich and poor and in the incompetence of a government that is arrogant to boot.

    "Breaking Point"

    Historical analogies have their limits, but the Washington city-empire seems to be well and truly denuded of most of its legitimacy in the eyes of the world. "The overextension of financial and military resources," a consequence of the strategy the White House has followed in its "War against Terror," now considerably limits the United States' ability to present itself as a credible threat to its enemies, who have become brazen as a result, worried academician Samantha Power in last week's New York Times.

    "With too-few men and allies, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained the Pentagon's resources to the breaking point and raise the specter of a possible defeat in the two conflicts. [...] Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have significantly harmed America's image abroad, [...] the government appears more and more incompetent, [...] almost nothing is being done about the threats of global warming, the crisis in the national health care system or to reduce the deficit ..." This catalogue of woe was drawn up in July by Leon Panetta, who was White House chief of staff during Bill Clinton's presidency.

    Like many other Americans, Panetta no longer counts on George W. Bush and puts all his hopes for recovery in the election of a new president. Other Americans do also, since 65% of them now disapprove of their president's actions.

 

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    Go to Original

    Jos Padilla, an Almost-Ordinary Defendant
    By Luis Lema
    Le Temps

    Saturday 18 August 2007

    The proof is in the pudding. The American legal system met the challenge of trying Jos Padilla, the United States's most famous "enemy combatant." Certainly, the Miami courtroom was transformed into a fortified camp. But the trial took place without a hitch, all the way to proving the American's guilt. Even the White House mentioned "a fair trial and a just
verdict."

    How then, can it continue to justify the unjustifiable? Revealed by his lawyers during the trial, the photos of Padilla recall the treatment their client underwent before coming into the light of day: three years of exceptional treatment, deprived of his most elementary rights, of any contact with a lawyer, subject to constant torture. The fact that Jos
Padilla was born in the United States proved decisive. But it required years of combat by his defenders and for the security hysteria linked to September 11 to calm down before he was handed over to civilian justice.

    In the interval, the charges against Padilla never ceased melting like snow in the sun. Initially accused of wanting to use a nuclear bomb, then a gas attack was evoked. Finally, it was none of that: it was abroad, in Bosnia and Chechnya that the American dreamed of conducting jihad, and not in US territory, the court concluded.

    Today, Padilla's passage through the darkest corners of the system established by George Bush not only proves itself to have been useless. It is also highly counter-productive. For this "enemy combatant" was, in fact, judged guilty before he ever appeared in Miami: in fact, it is difficult to imagine that the jury's decision was not influenced by such a context. The doubt will always persist.

    Will George Bush use this "success" as a pretext to once more legitimate his conduct of the "war against terrorism?" Or will the episode serve, on the contrary, to give previously missing arguments to those who deem the American justice system strong enough and who deem it time to turn the page on this regime of exception? No one knows, of course, especially not those hundreds of "enemy combatants" who continue to await their verdict in the camp at Guantanamo.

 

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    Go to Original

    The United States Under High Surveillance
    By Laurent Suply
    Le Figaro

    Thursday 16 August 2007

    After the "big ears" of wiretapping systems, the "big eyes" of spy satellites? Mainly financed by the Pentagon through its very secret "black programs" with their opaque budgets, these ultra-advanced machines are usually focused on foreign lands, for example, Iran, China or North Korea.

    Among their many advantages: the ability to see in virtual real-time, to track human groups on the ground thanks to infrared radiation, or even to track certain chemical substances that serve to manufacture weapons or drugs. At the levers of these jewels of technology are two of the most secret agencies, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

    Satellites, Planes, Drones ...

    Among civilian agencies, only a few handpicked agencies with a scientific purpose (NASA, US Geological Survey ...) and, in very rare cases, the forces of order with a green light from the US president himself, have been able to use these systems.

    But the "keys" to these spy satellites will be very widely distributed in the future. Thus, on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal revealed the existence of a memo authorizing this change addressed on May 25 by the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Michael McConnell, to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff.

    The same day, Homeland Security published a communiqu detailing the operation of this new apparatus. At the end of 2007, the National Applications Office (NAO), specifically created for this purpose, will be in charge of "facilitating access to the intelligence community's technological abilities for civilian objectives, domestic security or maintenance of order within the United States."

    These technical abilities include not only spy satellites, but also the NSA's eavesdropping apparatus, as well as the Pentagon's airborne sensors (all kinds of detection apparatus) such as those carried by stealth jets or drones.

    Cold War Stench

    Initially, all these means will serve to strengthen border controls or the protection of sensitive infrastructure. But the possibility of supplying images to the FBI or to "US Marshals" to attack a house where thugs are hiding out has already been planned for and detailed in the 2005 report that inspired this new program.

    A document that, moreover, warns that this reform runs the risk of scandalizing American citizens "highly suspicious" of the concept of domestic intelligence which reminds them of the sorry moments of the Cold War and its witch hunts.

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