Today’s post wraps up those from my “Classic” series on Mark Sageman’s “Leaderless Jihad.” Sageman, an ex CIA agent and forensic psychiatrist, has researched the radical groups of Islamist jihadis. He first published on the subject in 2004, with “Understanding Terror Networks.” He presented his most recent theories in late 2007, in “Leaderless Jihad,” which he discussed at the New America Foundation on 2/20/08. My first four posts about Sageman’s work are linked below.*

Bagram, the prison most folks don’t know about..and Gitmo, the one everyone knows about, have one disgusting thing in common:

Jonathan Turley discusses both sides of the SCOTUS aisle on yesterdays ruling that Gitmo detainees have the right to Habeas Corpus.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

I have shuddered at the thought that most, if not all, of the individuals to be tried in BushCo’s kangaroo court known as the military tribunals would be found guilty. That they would be found guilty on shoddy or non-existing evidence coerced out of them by torture and certainly without any decent representation.
Great gnashing of [...]

It wasn’t easy to read this article. I have an over-powering hatred for the man. The following section just made my blood run cold:
It seems grotesque, doesn’t it? To sit in a comfortable classroom as the future lawyers of America clack away on their laptops, parsing definitions with the man whose legal mind turned America [...]

After being held for SIX years, Sudanese native Sami al-Haj has finally been released. From the AP story:
Haj was arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001 and had been held without charge at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since June 2002.
The Pentagon would not immediately comment [...]

I received an e-mail update from the ACLU that describes their intentions, and why, to defend the 9/11 suspects. Very powerful stuff. I went to check some of the people who are backing the ACLU in their endeavor. One group was the September 11th Advocates, some the wives of those killed in the towers and [...]

From The Guardian by way of TruthOut we get this gem:
AP Confirms Secret Camp Inside Guantanamo
By Andrew O. Selsky
The Associated Press
Wednesday 06 February 2008
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba - Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban [...]

Sadly his reasons are shallow. Not because of what has been done there in our name, but because it makes us look bad around the world. AP has this:
By ROBERT BURNS
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The chief of the U.S. military said Sunday he favors closing the prison here as soon as possible [...]

“They’re living in the tropics… They’ve got everything they could possibly want.”
- Dick Cheney
Torture and indefinite detention are shamefully un-American, inhumane, unconscionable.
WEAR ORANGE January 11 and protest the shame that is Guantánamo Bay.
www.aclu.org/closegitmo
To me, the guantanamo prison is an especially low spot in US history. What would be the need to have a prison housed [...]

The European newspaper, the TimesOnline had an interesting article this past Sunday. What bothers me that I can’t find anything similar in the US media. I googled the main phrase ‘flight logs, cia’ and only got the European write-ups, with the exception of a two-year old CommonDreams article reprinted from a French news media outlet. [...]