Fox News took a break from their BENGHAZIGATE! and ZOMG FISCALCLIFF!!!! coverage this morning for a little EEEEEK TERRISTS!!! update.

The Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee commissioned a federal report to identify prison facilities in the U.S. that are suitable for housing Guantanamo detainees, concluding the option is viable -- despite congressional opposition to such a plan when the Obama administration proposed it.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think my backyard would be a great place for Gitmo detainees. For one, my kids' playscape is in disrepair.

On the other hand, this country has a) lots of prisons; b) lots of military bases; and c) lots of open space. So unless you think these guys have superhuman powers, or just wet the bed at the sight of a Muslim, there's no good reason why we have to keep spending over $100M a year to keep them in Cuba.

So Bush and Cheney were afraid that if people knew we were knowingly holding innocent men in Gitmo, they might not go along with the rest of the fabricated case for war. And Congress, of course, doesn't want to do a thing about these probable war crimes:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Gitmo - the gift that keeps on giving -- that is, if you're trying to inspire a new generation of jihadi terrorists. Via Raw Story:

Four members of a US military intelligence unit assigned to Guantanamo Bay are questioning the government's official version of the deaths of three detainees in the summer of 2006.

The soldiers are offering a very different version of events than the one provided by the official report carried out by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. Their stories suggest the three inmates may not have killed themselves -- or, at least, not in the way the US military claims.

"All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths," reports Scott Horton at Harper's magazine.

According to the US Navy, Gitmo detainees Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani were found hanged in their cells on June 9. 2006. The US military initially described their deaths as "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States, before finally declaring that the deaths were suicides that the inmates coordinated among themselves.

But a report from Seton Hall University Law School, released last fall, cast doubt on almost every element of the US military's story. It questioned, for example, how it would have been possible for the three detainees to have stuffed rags down their throats and then, while choking, managed to raise themselves up to a noose and hang themselves.

The report (PDF) stated:

There is no explanation of how each of the detainees, much less all three, could have done the following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets and/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear to the guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into the cell—a violation of Standard Operating Procedures, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling, climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead and hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.

Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman told Harper's magazine that he was made aware of the existence of a secret detention center at Guantanamo, nicknamed by some of the guards "Camp No," because "No, it doesn't exist." According to Hickman, it was generally believed among camp guards that the facility was used by the CIA.

Hickman also said there was a van on site, referred to as the "paddy wagon," which was allowed to come in and out of the main detention area without going through the usual inspection. On the night of the three detainees' deaths, Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon leave the area where the three were being detained and head off in the direction of Camp No. The paddy wagon, which can carry only one prisoner at a time in a cage in the back, reportedly made the trip three times.

Hickman says he saw the paddy wagon return and go directly to the medical center. Shortly after, a senior non-commissioned officer, whose name Hickman didn't know, ordered him to convey a code word to a petty officer. When he did, the petty officer ran off in a panic.

There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."

See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

TalkLeft: Rosen recants on Sotomayor, Turley takes up his standard, but who will represent white males on the court?

The Pump Handle: The Climate Bill is less than ideal, but the best we're gonna get right now

The Big Picture: The back story to "Bailout Nation" (h/t swimgirl)

TPMMuckraker: A sketchy DOD report does not attempt to establish the original status of the detainees it claims "reengaged" in terrorism, and does not consider the possibility that some of the 540 men released from Gitmo just might have been radicalized during their imprisonment.

American Street: Death rattle of the cult of Intelligence?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Scoop44, Alien Truth, Politics In Color, Michigan Liberal

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Will Rogers famously said that he wasn't a part of an organized group, he was a Democrat. Sadly, when it comes to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), that's even more true. I understand that Nelson is a conservative Democrat and comes from a historically conservative state, but there's no excuse for his abject stupidity in discussing Guantanamo and how to deal with the detainees there.

What's so odd about Nelson's NIMBY attitude is that he himself points out the flaws in his logic: we have and are successfully housing some really dangerous men (including both foreign and domestic terrorists, like Moussaoui and Eric Rudolph) in prisons on American soil without incident. Nelson just doesn't want them here.

Well, Sen. Nelson, I'd prefer that we have a country that wasn't full of criminals and people who wish us harm too. But unfortunately, that isn't reality. I live within 30 miles of San Quentin prison and Bay Area residents (for as liberal and hippy as our reputation is) do not seem to be all that concerned about our collective safety. The fear that these people will be on American soil so that we deal with them as befitting our justice system forgets that they will also be under heavy lock and guard as well.

And then in another annoyingly wrong nod to bipartisanship, Nelson lends credit to the Republican meme of Jack Bauer/the-ends-justify-the-means issue of keeping American safe is somehow the moral equivalent of respecting the rule of law:

WALLACE: Senator Nelson, who’s right about the balance between, on the one hand, keeping the country safe and, on the other hand, living up to our values?

NELSON: Well, they probably both are in some -- to one degree or another. I don’t think anybody wants to see this country attacked again. And I think it’s also a question about whether or not it is held against us because these tactics have been used.

But look, the president, when he was running, said that we’re going to stop waterboarding. John McCain has said it’s torture. I think what we have to do is understand that this decision apparently was decided last -- last November.

But what we need to do is make sure that the intelligence information that’s gathered is accurate, that we do everything within our power to get good intelligence, and it may or may not consist of coming from enhanced techniques.

Oh holy FSM. I'm so tired of this dishonesty. NOTHING of value came from torture, and to suggest that it might is accepting the Republican framing of this issue. Nelson should be ashamed of his ignorance. If we had to torture three people over 30 days more than 200 times looking for some way to connect Iraq to 9/11 (unsuccessfully, too), then how can anyone with the least bit of common sense much less intelligence think that it kept us safe? Does Nelson actually think that the 108 detainees killed via "enhanced interrogation techniques" have actually deterred terrorism?

Think about it, Sen. Nelson, before you spout off on television again, hurting your party and the President's stance: If your son, brother, cousin or friend (even if he had jihadist tendencies--something we have not yet proven) was killed in the name of the American "War on Terror", would you be inclined to be sympathetic to the American cause, or would you too seek revenge for the US's dehumanizing treatment?

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Nothing, it would seem, pleases the Republican mind more than regurgitating demonstrably false and shockingly mean-spirited talking points. So Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign must been ecstatic to score a twofer last week. In a single sentence, Ensign not only faithfully reproduced the GOP's "Club Gitmo" talking point, but resuscitated the old Republican claim that there is no health care crisis.

Ensign's back-handed jab at the American health care system came even as he was insisting the Guantanamo Bay detention center needed to remain open. Following hot on the heels of his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) comment that terror suspects "wouldn't be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn't have the tropical breezes blowing through," Ensign claimed Gitmo was to-die for:

Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate.

"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said.

That Ensign praised the Club Med atmosphere at Gitmo comes as no surprise. John Boehner (R-OH), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and Dick Cheney are just a few of the legion of Republicans who lauded Guantanamo as "more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp" and "if anything, it's too nice."

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Mock, Paper, Scissors: Who has better sex: Dems v. GOP Matrix

Vagabond Scholar: Defending torture insistently means one's moral compass is pointing straight down to hell

A Tiny Revolution: Obama's great concern is about the impact on the U.S. public, half of which is already far more interested in accountability for torture than he is, and the other half unwilling or unable to conceive of US torture unless shown pictures.

Wonkette: Lying hypocrite, Newt Gingrich, is the voice of the GOP.  Can someone explain why any cognizant human would pay any attention to this waste of skin?

OurFuture: Big Busines likes arbitration...if it can control the process

Agitprop: When an authority figure comes to you and says “We must do this now or else [fill in the blank]” it’s best to question their motives.

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Former Bush State Dept official Philip Zelikow testified today about the closing of Guantanamo Bay. He compared it to the former prison known as Alcatraz, which was closed because of its horrendous reputation. He also feels that the U.S. could easily hold any prisoner from Guantanamo Bay, while Republicans are trying to claim otherwise with their usual fearmongering.

Zelikow: Guantanamo, in world public opinion, had become a toxic problem for the United States of America, and so we needed to address that as an issue in our foreign policy.

Dick Durbin asked if we could hold any transfers from Gitmo to federal correctional facilities in the United States safely, Zelikow answered:

Zelikow: Sir, we hold people who are far more dangerous in such institutions including quite dangerous terrorists like Ramzi Yousef, who's currently residing in a maximum security facility inside the US now. I'll also add that I've had the opportunity on behalf of one of the federal judges who have been working through the habeas petitions to be asked to examine classified files and provide expert advice on holding these folks and one of the things that strikes me now and struck me then is we have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month all over the United States including some really quite dangerous people. We routinely make these decisions...

I think the United States knows something about prisons, since we hold the most prisoners in the world. Sen. Jim Webb is setting his eyes squarely on reforming the prison system in America. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece on Webb's proposal. Good for him.

And by holding Guantanamo detainees here, it would create more jobs for corrections workers wherever they are held.

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Sen. Harry Reid talked at length today on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell about Arlen Specter, the closing of Gitmo and possible prosecutions over the torture memos.

Reid said that he talked to Specter after he read that Arlen supported Norm Coleman when he was interviewed by the NY Times, and Specter says he misspoke.

CQ Politics:

The political whirlwind that surrounded Sen. Arlen Specter ’s switch from the Republican to Democratic party had him forgetting which team he is rooting for in 2010.

But after voicing support for Republican Norm Coleman in his contested Minnesota Senate race, Specter said he misspoke in a New York Times magazine interview and is supporting Democrats.

--

Asked whether he cared about a shortage of Jewish Republicans in the Senate, Specter replied: “I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.” But questioned outside the Senate chamber Tuesday, Specter said the comment was a mistake.

“In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” he said. “I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke.”

Asked who he’s backing now in elections, Specter said, “I’m looking for more Democratic members. Nothing personal.”

Specter's idiocy forced Harry Reid to come out and talk the whole story down. I'm sure he was really giddy about that. And is Specter's support for Franken only based on the fact that he switched sides? Reid also said that he wanted to wait until Dianne Feinsten's investigation into the torture memos was completed before he gave an opinion on the Bush Co. torture memos. Are you sold on her investigation, or the OLC's?

The minute Feinstein became the great congressional leader on torture, I wondered if it wasn't kabuki. It's DiFi we're talking about. She rushed in "begging" the president not to launch any investigation until she'd finished hers. The village babblers were using her investigations as the primary reason not to pursue prosecutions. It makes perfect sense that they would bottle the thing up in secret hearings and a very slow investigation as long as possible.

We already saw them do this with phase two of the pre-war intelligence investigation. It took years and the media treated it as old news, not worth talking about, when it was finished. But it helped keep a lid on the political hot potato that was the dawning realization that the Bush administration had manipulated the intelligence to get us into war.

Secret investigations are a junk yard for rear view mirrors.

We need a special prosecutor, period.

I was surprised that Reid held back on this because he has shown no interest in going after the torture authors, you know, like the Mormon Judge Bybee, but he was very careful today on MSNBC. I wonder if he practiced with Blitzer, because I heard he was mumbling and stumbling his way through The Situation Room.

BLITZER: It certainly sounds like he wants Norm Coleman to beat Al Franken, the Democratic candidate, when the dust settles.

REID: Arlen has said -- that is the way that he said that. I'm not here to put words in his mouth. All I know is he told -- he's told everyone that that isn't the way that it was meant to be. He wants Franken to win ...

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