Bump and Update: Time Magazine's interview with Porter Goss is here.

Via Reuters:

CIA Director Porter Goss said he has an "excellent" idea where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but the al Qaeda leader will not be brought to justice until weak links in counterterrorism efforts are strengthened, Time magazine reported on Sunday.

Here's what he might look like, according to this Pakistani paper:

Goss thinks he's in the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But, the border's a pretty big place.

A high-level member of al-Qaeda, Taliban military commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani, was interviewed on Pakistani television today and said Osama is alive and well, as is fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The man said the Taliban are still organized and senior Taliban leaders hold regular consultations. "Our discipline is strong. We have regular meetings. We make programs," the man said. He said Omar does not attend the meetings but "decisions come from his side." He did not say where those meetings take place.

On a related note, 14 people were killed in Afghanistan today:

Fighting between about 90 suspected Taliban rebels and hundreds of Afghan soldiers and U.S.-led coalition troops left seven insurgents dead and 10 wounded, while a rebel attack on a medical clinic killed a doctor and six others, officials said Wednesday.

....Even though U.S. military commanders are upbeat about progress in making Afghanistan secure, there has been a sharp rise in violence since spring. President Hamid Karzai's administration has warned that Taliban-led rebels and al-Qaida militants are trying to subvert crucial legislative elections in September.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today said the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay will be in operation for years to come - until the war on terror has ended.

But the war on terror has no end. It looks like Guantanamo is just another financial burden we will be saddled with for life - and it hasn't even produced a terrorist.

This is just a further indication that the military tribunals are a sham. Should there be an acquittal, as 60 Minutes pointed out a few weeks ago, the detainee will just be returned to his cell until the end of the war on terror. In other words, a life sentence.

The 9/11 Commission recommended the establishment of a civil liberties board to ensure our rights weren't trampled in the conduct of the war on terror. Bush has faced criticism for dragging his feet in appointing a chair to the board. Today he named the chair and several members.

Bush picked Texas lawyer Carol Dinkins, who was deputy attorney general under former President Reagan, to chair the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and Alan Charles Raul, an administration official in the former Bush and Clinton administrations, to be vice chairman.

The other members chosen by Bush were: Lanny Davis, once a crisis manager in the Clinton White House; former Solicitor General Ted Olson; and General Electric Co. executive Francis X. Taylor, a former head of diplomatic security and counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department.

Ted Olsen, whose wife was killed in the 9/11 attacks, who represented the Administration before the Supreme Court as Solicitor General in defending the Administration's enemy combatant policy?

Alan Charles Raul, former Associate White House counsel to President Reagan, and a supporter of the Administration's enemy combatant policy, has been lobbying for the position since right after the Sept. 11 attacks. Here is an op-ed he wrote, titled "Cheer Ashcroft On, With a Little Friendly Oversight; A civil liberties panel would help quell the naysayers in the fight against terrorism" for the Los Angeles Times (December 5, 2001, available on Lexis.com)

by TChris

Closing the Gulag detention facility at Guantanamo would put an end to a public relations disaster and begin to repair the image of the United States as a country that cares about human rights. President Carter and Senator Biden are among many who want President Bush (in Carter’s words) "to close down Guantanamo and the two dozen secret detention facilities run by the United States as soon as possible."

"Not gonna happen" was the essence of Donald Rumsfeld's response, as reported in this morning's New York Times. Apparently President Bush didn't get the memo.

President Bush left the door open to an eventual closing of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday amid mounting complaints and calls for it to be shut down ....

President Bush's pledge to "explore all alternatives" wasn't a ringing endorsement of President Carter's request. Still, his refusal to rule out Guantanamo's closing confirms that President Bush doesn't read the morning papers. By tomorrow, expect Bush and Rumsfeld to be on the same page: everything's just fine, it's all the left wing media, there's no need for change.

by TChris

The administration's case against Murat Kurnaz boils down to guilt by association, and demonstrates why the administration's Combatant Status Review Tribunals are an inadequate substitute for judicial review of "enemy combatant" detentions. Kurnaz -- a German-born Turkish citizen -- was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to the U.S. military, which transferred him to Afghanistan for interrogation before sending him to Guantanamo. He's been imprisoned there for three years as an enemy combatant.

But an investigation of Mr. Kurnaz's case reveals no evidence that he ever fought against the United States or planned to.

The administration initially believed that Kurnaz was an associate of Mohamed Atta, who likely piloted a plane into the World Trade Center. Lacking evidence to support that suspicion, the administration now relies on evidence that Kurnaz received food and lodging from Tablighi Jamaat while he traveled in Pakistan. The administration contends that Tablighi Jamaat supports terrorism against the United States, a proposition disputed by some terrorism experts. In any event, basing a three year imprisonment on guilt by association is unconscionable.

by TChris

The Bush administration and its cheerleaders have criticized Amnesty International's use of the term "gulag" to describe Guantánamo Bay. AI gives the administration a nice slap in response:

Kate Gilmore, the group's executive deputy secretary general, said the administration's response was "typical of a government on the defensive," and she drew parallels to the reactions of the former Soviet Union, Libya and Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, when those governments were accused of human rights abuses.

It hasn't escaped AI's notice that the administration relies on AI reports of human rights abuses when those reports focus on countries the administration looks upon with disfavor. Nor does AI mind the publicity it receives when one government official after another talks about its findings.

Pakistan today agreed to hand over Abu Farraj al-Libbi, an alleged senior member of al-Qaeda, for prosecution in the U.S.

He said al-Libbi, believed to be a close confidant of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, did not provide any leads during interrogation on bin Laden’s whereabouts.

“No, he did not provide useful information about Osama bin Laden,” Musharraf said, speaking from the Pakistani capital. “He says he is not in contact with Osama bin Laden.”

Reportedly, al-Libbi tried twice and failed to assassinate Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. What crimes did he commit here? And is he really a senior member of al-Qaeda or is this another case of mistaken identity? Does anyone really believe that if this guy was a somebody, Pakistan would turn him over to the U.S.?

Talk about the unfriendly skies. The CIA's secret airline, which I (and undoubtedly others) refer to as 'Ghost Air' because it transports hidden detainees around the world until reaching its preferred country of interrogation, has been exposed. It's not just a Gulf Stream and a 737. We're talking a whole airline operation with at least 26 planes.

An analysis of thousands of flight records, aircraft registrations and corporate documents, as well as interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots, show that the agency owns at least 26 planes, 10 of them purchased since 2001. The agency has concealed its ownership behind a web of seven shell corporations that appear to have no employees and no function apart from owning the aircraft.

The CIA's airline is based in North Carolina, using the name "Aero Contractors and holds itself out as a charter airline service.

The L.A. Times continues it drug theme today with a very long report on Afghanistan's poppy production.

Western officials warn of a nascent narco state as drug traffickers act with impunity, some allegedly with the support of top officials

Should we be getting ready for the introduction of the Victory Act....which, make no mistake, will not be limited to overseas violators or terrorism.

More on the Victory Act here:

by TChris

This attitude toward individual liberty has become typical in the Bush administration.

"We wanted more information," said the former official, who sat in on discussions of Mr. Arar's fate in 2002. "The one way we wouldn't get it is if we let him go."

The official is talking about Maher Arar, who was kidnapped by the United States government and whisked away to Syria for interrogation. (Talkleft background collected here.) The administration claims it had evidence that the Canadian was a member of Al Qaeda, but Arar was released when ten months of imprisonment and torture produced no evidence to support the claim.

Even a casual reader of the Constitution might think that a deprivation of liberty requires something more than an unspecified level of suspicion held by unnamed bureaucrats in the Justice Department on the basis of secret evidence. One might expect proof to be presented to a neutral magistrate before the government removes someone from American soil and tosses him into a foreign prison to be tortured. “We wanted more information and we couldn’t get it if we let him go” is a poor substitute for due process.

John Cole of Balloon Juice had insomnia last night and blogged his way through it. First up: Do you feel safer knowing that Homeland Security Agents, entrusted with securing our borders, are spending their time investigating and drafting and executing search warrants against sites that offer free downloads of the new Star War movies? John rails against the misuse of resources.

John's second rant is against doctors in the U.K., who want to ban kitchen knives with long blades because they might lead people to spontaneously pick one up and stab someone.

John should get insomnia more often.