As we steadily approach January, by which time President Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and as the Supreme Court, Congress and the nation continue to ponder appropriate outcomes, my latest interview in my series of interviews relevant to “the war on terror” (by my count, the 50th such interview) is with retired Army Reserve Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who has perhaps more familiarity than anyone regarding the unreliable process by which the United States...

As Congress and the President continue to make preparations for the possible end of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, our subject, Karen Greenberg wrote the book on its earliest stages, The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days. The interview is cross-posted at the talking dog, and may be found, in its entirety, after the jump. As always, thanks to Team TMV for allowing me to present these interviews in this great forum. Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the...

Continuing my series of interviews with people “who wrote the book,” I bring you my interview with BBC Reporter David Loyn, who has written the definitive book on the subject of Afghanistan and the history of foreign-power involvement there over the last 200 years. The interview follows in full after the jump, and is cross-posted on my blog, “the talking dog.” David Loyn has been an award-winning foreign correspondent for 30 years for the BBC. He has reported from such...

Continuing (or perhaps resuming) my series of interviews with relevant players in what was formerly known as “the war on terror” and the plight of “enemy combatants” (both of which terms await their new nomenclature in the Obama Administration), as issues from resumption of the military commissions to release of detainee abuse photos make the headlines, habeas counsel, such as my present subject, Ramzi Kassem, continue to plug away trying to get their clients their day in...

Continuing my series of interviews concerning “the war on terror” (or whatever it’s new name will be) and American detention policy therein, I bring you this interview with George Clarke, an attorney in Washington who represents four Guantanamo-detained clients, three of whom have been expressly “cleared for release,” although all continue to languish as prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The interview is cross-posted at “the talking dog” and may be found in...

Continuing my series of interviews with people with direct knowledge of matters Guantanamo Bay (or “GTMO”), the closure of which President Obama has made a signature part of his agenda, I bring you this interview with a former prison guard there, Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., who served at GTMO from 2002 to 2005. This interview is cross-posted at the talking dog blog, and can be found, in full, after the jump. Terry Holdbrooks, Jr. served as a military police officer with the rank of Specialist...

Continuing my series of interviews on whatever the “war on terror” will now be called, I am pleased to be able to bring you the first of my interviews with someone able to speak from the perspective of having been called upon to prosecute alleged (and this is they key word missed by so many closed-minded people, unlike today’s subject) acts of terror and/or war crimes that may (again, a critical qualifier) have been committed by men now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Darrel...

As “closing Guantanamo” looms as one of President Obama’s most visible campaign promises (backed up with executive orders to complete the task within a year), more and more snapshots emerge as to what has been happening in the little sliver of American society at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And in what was once a rarity, soldiers who have served there are now coming forward to tell their stories. Recent TD interview subject Almerindo Ojeda of [ posted here at TMV] the Guantanamo Testimonials...

On this day in which my college classmate (and coincidentally, the President) Barack Obama signed a number of significant executive orders altering his predecessor’s policies with respect to detentions and interrogations in the so-called “war on terror,” I am pleased to be able to bring you another in my series of interviews with those knowledgable in this area, today, with Professor Almerindo Ojeda of the University of California at Davis, director of The Guantanamo Testimonials...

Our post title, widely attributable to William Gladstone (though some say to William Penn) takes on a special resonance today. After some men have been in what has been determined to be unlawful American detention for nearly seven years, the very, very first Guantanamo Bay detainees were released pursuant to court order (a pathetic total of three men) and reached their home country of Bosnia. To be honest, I write this post more in sorrow than in anger. As the Bush Administration comes to an...

The Supreme Court granted certiorari review in the case of Ali al-Marri, after Padilla, the second most important case of our lives. Why? Mr. al-Marri, you will recall from our interview with his attorney Jonathan Hafetz, was a legal resident studying at Bradley University in Peoria, IL, when, just like Padilla, was already in the criminal justice system when he was magically declared “an enemy combatant” and held in camera in a military brig in South Carolina, denied any semblance...

Oddly enough, I am not referring to “pig gate,” that asinine flap (or is it a kerfuffle?) developing between the two battling political camps over Barack’s remark about the McCain program being “putting lipstick on a pig”… the Democrat apparently failing to recognize that Governor Sarah Palin using her stupidmean-spirited adorable joke noting that the difference between a soccersecurity hockey mom and a pitbull was lipstick imbued the Republican Party with an...

As the United States opens its first “war crimes trial” since the aftermath of World War II, not with OBL, but with one of his motor-pool drivers (remember how we tried Hitler’s valet, gardener and chauffeur at Nuremberg?), I take this opportunity to continue my series of interviews with players (mostly lawyers) in “the war on terror;” the interview below is with Steven Wax, who, as the Federal Defender for the District of Oregon, volunteered to take on a number of...

News on the Guantanamo (GTMO) front is coming fast and furiously; even today it is reported that torture methods used by the Communist Chinese to extract false confessions from American military personnel in the 1950’s were recycled for use upon our prisoners at GTMO (though as I noted on my own blog, the substance of the fact that Communist torture methods were imported to Guantanamo has been known for at least a year). And of course, both the federal appeals court and the United States...

Once again, thanks to Team TMV for letting me post my periodic interviews re: “the war on terror,” and American detention policy. This interview is with Rebecca Dick of the Washington, D.C. office of Dechert, LLP, representing a number of Afghans. Nowithstanding the apparently very favorable Supreme Court decision recently upholding detainees’ constitutional rights to pursue a habeas corpus remedy in the Boumediene case, thus far, not a single detainee has been released as a result...

The words I’ve been waiting to type for the last several months can now be typed. We will now have a candidate I can enthusiastically say I will be voting for, rather than simply against his opponent. That moment is now: Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination tonight. As expected, the speech I am hearing on the radio is every bit as worthy as his 2004 Convention speech, or his “race speech,” or others he has given. “This is our moment. This is our...

It seems fitting that Hillary Clinton will win West Virginia’s Democratic primary. West Virginia is a state whose major industry is extractive and destructive, to wit, coal mining and these days, often by strip mining. So, in its tradition, Hillary proceeded by simply discarding the Black and educated “overburden” of the Democratic party and going right for those valuable ores and nuggets: older, less educated, hard-working White Americans. Every time I think of that statement,...

You know, I believe I have a certain familiarity with Hillary Clinton’s personality insofar as she is 15 years older than I, to the day… we Scorpios are often maniacally loyal (think about why she stays with Bill) and maniacally driven (I’ve completed 18 marathons, despite a complete lack of physical talent, and I continue to write my blog, week in, week out, six and a half years on, despite a lack of particular literary talent or tremendous popularity among blog-readers, while...

In today’s last-big primaries left (187 pledged delegates up for grabs of the 404 remaining) day, Sen. Barack Obama scored a decisive victory (around 15 points or more) in North Carolina and Sen. Hillary Clinton holds around a 4 point lead in Indiana with around 85% of precincts in, as of 23:00 “fast time” (EDT). Insofar as North Carolina is significantly bigger than Indiana, and insofar as Sen. Obama’s margin of victory there will be greater than Sen. Clinton’s margin...

On the occasion of the release of a Human Rights Watch report on the subject of “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to Jordan, for detention, interrogation, and torture, in the course of the “war on terror,” I thank Team TMV for letting me bring you this installment in my ongoing series of interviews with knowledgeable players in “the war on terror,” and particularly American detention policy. I am particularly privileged to bring you this interview with Joanne...

[Note to TMV readers: the following post is plagiarized from my own blog, "the talking dog".] While Senator Clinton fires wild shots that hit nothing (though the recoil seems to keep knocking her ever further off her game) about Senator Obama’s supposed “plagiarism” by using lines from Mass. Governor Deval Patrick it appears that the nation’s new “war on plagiarism” has claimed its first victim, ironically, unrelated to the Obama team at all, but none other than...

[I continue my series of interviews with some of the most interesting thinkers of our time with John Byrne Cooke. Mr. Cooke wrote the book on the subject of the history of reporting of America's wars from the Revolution to the so-called war on terror and how the press has interacted with government efforts aimed at suppressing or censoring it over the course of our history. The full interview follows below, after the jump, and is also cross-posted at the talking dog. As always, thanks to Joe and...

Yes! What a night for AARP! Two of its members, seventy-one year old John McCain, who as late as a few weeks ago, was written off as (politically) dead, and sixty-year old Hillary Clinton, who just yesterday was believed to be crushed to death under Omnibus Obama… have both emerged to win their respective parties’ primary in New Hampshire. On the Democratic side of the roster, Hillary edges out Obama around 39% to 37%, though CNN projects each will get 8 delegates, with Edwards out...

The results are in from the Iowa caucuses. On the Democratic side, it’s Obama (38%), Edwards (30%) and H. Clinton (29%), with Richardson and Biden in low single digits, and Dodd under 1% and withdrawing from the race. This was predicted as a close 3-way, and it was. It seems that, at least in lily-white Iowa, America’s First Black PresidentTM proved a liability for America’s First Woman PresidentTM, and may well help elect America’s actual first Black President (not to...

The 2004 election was a kind of prototype: candidates started realizing the relatively-young Internet’s potential for raising campaign funds — and to get votes. In Campaign 2008 candidates in both parties are nurturing weblogs (with conference calls to friendly sites), blog outreach activists (by hiring bloggers to pitch ideas and positions to other bloggers) and to raise funds (Rep. Ron Paul set a record). But will any of this truly make a REAL difference in the final vote count? Can...