16 Words: New Court Filing Suggests Manufactured Terror Threat in Bush's 2002 State of the Union

[babylonsister]

16 Words: New Court Filing Suggests Manufactured Terror Threat in Bush's 2002 State of the Union


A new court filing by the lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Guantanamo detainees suggests that the Bush administration ordered the Bosnian government to arrest and hold the men after an exhaustive Bosnian investigation had found them innocent of any terrorism related activity and had ordered their release, in order to use them as props in Bush's January 2002 State of the Union speech.

The filing--"Lakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners, v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., Respondents, Petitioners' Public Traverse to the Government's Return to the Petition for Habeas Corpus"--lays out the case that the Bush administration threatened at the highest levels to withdraw diplomatic and military aid to the Balkan nation if Bosnia released the men, which its own three-month investigation had found innocent of any terrorism charges in the days leading up to Bush's January 2002 State of the Union.

Faced with the threats of the withdrawal of aid and that if it released the men, the White House would order NATO troops to detain them, Bosnia transferred the men under duress to the custody of the US government in January 2002, and the US transferred them to Guantanamo. Ten days later, in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush used sixteen words to warn Americans that, in "cooperation" with the Bosnian government, it had captured terrorists who had planned to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo: "Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush told the nation.

But, six years later, the detainees' new petition says, after the US Supreme Court has sided with the detainees and ordered the US to give the detainees habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration has failed to repeat the embassy plot charges that Bush used in his State of the Union address, or to produce credible evidence of why the men should be held as enemy combatants.

more...

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/10/10385_16_words_detain.html

[TomInTib]

1. I shudder to think of just how many innocent souls have had their lives destroyed...

by these heartless fucking jackals.

I hope every one of the bastards die a long, painful death.

[babylonsister]

2. I'm in total agreement. They've ruined so many lives illegally,

and so far are getting away with it.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. Thank you for posting this, thank you Mother Jones for writing it. k+r, n/t

[irish.lambchop]

4. Not surprising - sickening, but not surprising.

I was in Bosnia this summer. I doubt they are getting the kind of aid that is needed anyway - or at least it's not making its way to where it is truly needed.

http://s528.photobucket.com/albums/dd323/irish_lambchop/Bosnia%

[90-percent]

5. They did it legally?

Maybe not so much. They also did plenty of illegal stuff.

All a moot point because they are all ABOVE THE LAW.

It's like a license to kill, only bigger and better.

-90% Jimmy

[Laelth]

6. More LIES.

And more superb journalism by Mother Jones.

Neither surprises me.

:dem:

-Laelth