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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton.
And our next guest on the show today is Chase Medar, he's a lawyer in New York.
And he writes for the American Conservative Magazine.
Their web address is amconmag.com.
And this article is amazing and it's called Obama's Gitmo, Torturing the Rule of Law.
Welcome to the show Chase, how are you?
I'm doing great, thanks so much for having me Scott.
Well I appreciate you joining us here today.
And hey, I appreciate the fact that you put some effort into this thing.
Sounds like you went down to Guantanamo to see for yourself.
I sure did, I spent two weeks in Guantanamo at the end of April and the beginning of May.
And was there for part of the pre-trial hearings for Omar Khadr.
Omar Khadr...
Now just as a journalist or participating in any way?
Participating in any way.
Just as a journalist.
And I had to sit on my hands because I wanted to participate, but nope.
Okay, now I'm sorry, go ahead, Omar Khadr.
So Omar Khadr is, he was captured when he was just 15 years old outside of Kabul by U.S. troops.
And he looks like he will be the first full trial at Guantanamo under President Obama.
And this is rather remarkable that the kinder, gentler, supposedly Obama administration, their first Guantanamo trial is of a child soldier.
Well they, I guess, beat a plea deal out of the cook the other day, right?
It was funny that it made all the top of the hour Fox News that, hey we got a conviction, we got a guilty plea.
And then the next day the headline was 75% who get a habeas hearing and this is of the ones that are left after they freed hundreds.
That didn't make the top of the hour news somehow.
No, it didn't make it on Fox News or unfortunately probably on many other news sources.
But yes, over 600 detainees have been freed, which, you know, makes you think that all these claims that these have been the worst of the worst all along are quite bogus.
And of the 51 detainees still there who have applied for release with habeas petitions, I think 37 have had their habeas petitions granted.
Some have been released, some are still at Guantanamo.
So what any of this has to do with keeping America safe and our national security, I really don't know.
I do not think that the conviction or a plea deal with Al Qaeda's cook really makes us safer.
Well, and I think this is the second cook that they've gotten, right?
Two cooks and a chauffeur.
Yeah, we got the chauffeur, we got the cook.
And, you know, this is something quite notable about Guantanamo as well and the military commissions.
Their great virtue that's been heavily advertised by the Department of Defense is that these military commissions are great because they're very quick, they're very efficient.
Well, guess what?
We've only had four convictions in the whole course of Guantanamo and the military commission.
It's just four commissions.
Meanwhile, we have processed over 100 terror suspects through our federal civilian courts.
Yeah, most of them completely innocent too.
Well, now, there's so many different directions we can go with this.
I guess I always like the different answers I get to this from lawyers that I interview on the show.
How is it a war crime for somebody to throw a grenade at an invading army in their own country?
Is that a war crime?
That's an excellent question.
I mean, that assumes that he did what they say he did, this 15-year-old kid.
That's right.
Sorry for rhyming like that.
Many reasons to be skeptical of the government's claim that Omar Khadr was the guy who threw their grenade.
But let's talk about murder on the battlefield as a war crime because, in a way, that's even more remarkable than the fact that we're throwing the book at someone who was captured at the age of 15.
Now, murder is frequently an element of a war crime, one of the necessary components of finding someone guilty of a war crime or a crime against humanity.
But murder just on its own, murder in violation of the rules of war, is not conventionally recognized as a war crime in international law.
Is throwing a grenade at a soldier considered murder?
It's not a murder if the soldier kills the person throwing the grenade.
It's certainly bizarre, isn't it?
Morally, it is to me, you understand.
But I mean, legally, it's considered, hey, he was defending himself or, hey, that's war or whatever.
This is what soldiers do.
They throw grenades.
They fight.
They shoot.
They kill people.
That's what combat's all about.
But, you know, for the military commissions and their manual of rules, they have cooked up murder in violation of the rules of war as a war crime.
And this is quite unprecedented.
This is something brand new in the history of armed conflict.
So you're quite right to be skeptical of trying a soldier for murder.
You know, this never happened to American POWs in Vietnam.
This never happened to American POWs in Germany.
And, of course, you know, our soldiers there were shooting at and trying to kill enemy soldiers.
Why?
What makes this different?
Well, I guess our country thinks that we can just remake the rules here.
Again, how this makes America safer or contributes to our national security is rather mysterious to me.
Well, you know, it's a funny thing.
On one hand, it's sort of like let's go save the people of Iraq.
You know, on one hand, we have to talk about what's really going on here.
On the other hand, we have to explain how this won't really save the people of Iraq.
You have to take the argument at its face when the real truth is it's not about saving them.
And we know that.
That's why we're against it or one of the reasons, right, kind of thing.
So same thing here.
We have to pretend that this has anything to do with anything but PR for the American people to make them think that there were ever more than a few dozen or maybe a couple of hundred of these guys and that they weren't almost all of them obliterated off the face of the earth by the U.S. Air Force and CIA guys with laser pointers back in 2001 and that there was actually a war on terror to be fought.
And so they just rounded up 700 and something innocent people and they locked them at Guantanamo and it was all basically just a Karl Rove PR skit, just like when they brought in the rotten old tractor and hay bales to pretend that George Bush lived on a ranch in Texas, which they did in the year 2000.
I mean, it was after he declared he was running for president.
They just went and made up a Hollywood set of his ranch.
It's the same thing, right?
I think it's very similar.
I think Guantanamo at this point, its purpose is more retroactive PR and justifying some of the mistakes that we've made rather than contributing to any kind of national security.
And probably some of the people who have been captured that are at Guantanamo, they may well be guilty, but we've already released 600 people for very good reason.
So we cannot pretend that these have been the worst of the worst or that this has been a good policy.
We simply can't pretend it.
So I think in the case of Omar Khadr, it's just peculiarly vindictive, vengeful, and nasty, what we're doing to this former child soldier.
Take, for instance, just the facts of the case, even beyond the wholly freshly invented war crime that we've cooked up, murder and violation of the rules of war, which is ridiculous in many ways.
And apart from the fact that he was just a 15-year-old kid, it seems to me that we are throwing the book at this young man because he's the only one left in the firefight with American troops that we can pin the death of one of our troops on.
Now, there was a firefight on July 23, 2002, between some jihadis, Arab jihadis in Afghanistan and some American troops, and all of the jihadis were killed in this firefight except for Omar Khadr.
There was one American troop who was killed, Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, and there's an attempt now, because Omar Khadr is the only survivor among the enemy troops there, to pin it on him, to pin this death on him.
Well, let's leave that right there.
We'll come back, we'll talk about his torture and his refusal to take part in the kangaroo process down there, which I guess he witnessed, so hang tight, everybody.
We'll be right back with Chase Medard right after this.
Anti-war Radio.
I'm Angela Keaton for LibertyStickers.com.
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LibertyStickers.com, everyone else's stickers suck.
Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
Anti-war Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Chase Medard.
He writes for, well first of all he's a lawyer, and second of all he writes for the American Conservative Magazine.
And you were talking, sir, about just how mean George Bush, Barack Obama, and their servants have been to this child soldier, Omar Khadr.
Yes, I think they've been quite nasty, vindictive, vengeful.
And let's talk a little bit about some of the horrible treatment that this child soldier has received while in custody of the U.S. government.
Right now what's happening in Guantanamo is some pretrial hearings for Omar Khadr to determine how much of the evidence against Omar Khadr needs to be excluded because it was tortured out of him, because it was obtained through coercion and abuse.
So again, why we're putting on a former child soldier on trial who's been tortured in U.S. custody seems like a very dumb PR move for our country in the war for hearts and minds in the world.
But let's talk about some of the specific things that have happened to Omar Khadr.
Wait, wait, wait.
Just on that point, you're saying they're holding a hearing now to say, well, he said this, but that was the day that we crucified him from the wall, hung him on the wall for 48 hours first and froze him and stuck dogs on him.
So we can't use that.
But this other day he said this, and we don't have any paperwork that says that we beat anything out of him that day.
So, Judge, we think this ought to be admissible.
You're telling me this is the hearing going on down there.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Omar Khadr was subject to a very lengthy interrogation.
He went through a whole parade of interrogators who used a variety of methods on him.
Now, one medic in the portion of the pretrial hearings that I personally witnessed at Guantanamo, this medic testified that he saw Omar Khadr one afternoon chained to the walls by his wrists, which were at about eye level in a five foot square cell with a hood tight over his head.
And Omar Khadr was just weeping inconsolably.
Now, the prosecution doesn't want to call this torture, but I think that if this kind of treatment was ever doled out to a captured U.S. serviceman, nobody here would hesitate to call it torture.
Well, Omar Khadr, he did sign a confession and he did confess to throwing the grenade that killed a U.S. serviceman.
But this confession happened.
Oh, it first happened while he was heavily sedated with a chest full of shrapnel and eyes full of shrapnel.
I don't know whether this 15 year old in such a state really knew what was going on or what he was saying.
And it seems to me that over the next several months while in U.S. custody, first at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo, that Omar Khadr was essentially taught a script, a very extravagantly detailed script about what he had supposedly done.
Much of this script is very hard to believe.
The details are just so vivid, so precise that they kind of undermines them.
For instance, he signed in this confession that he the last thing he remembered after passing out was that he looked at his watch and noticed that it was 330.
And then he tossed the grenade over the back of his head, just like in the movie.
Now, what makes this very incredible and very difficult to believe is that Omar Khadr's eyes were both full of shrapnel at that time.
So the fact that he may have looked at his watch and noticed it was 330, this seems very suspect.
But it seems that this is the kind of detail that is being used to pin the death by grenade of the U.S. serviceman on Omar Khadr.
All right.
Pardon me, Chase.
I know this is a stupid question, but what can ever be done about this?
This is outrageous.
And it just goes on and on and on.
I saw Ralph Nader interview an Andrew Napolitano over the weekend, and he says, where are all the lawyers?
That's what's wrong with this society is that like two thirds of us are lawyers and the rest of us are y'all's victims.
And yet where are y'all when it comes to this kid?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think lawyers need to speak out and defend the rule of law.
Too many lawyers have been silent about this and have just kind of a shrugging acceptance.
But what are you going to do about it?
Not noticing the very fundamental principles of the rule of law, as we would like to know it.
And as we try to maintain it in the United States are being violated here, whether indefinite detention, whether torturing suspects and using that kind of evidence.
And it's just not right.
In the case of Omar Khadr, it just seems particularly vindictive, nasty and vengeful.
Well, and against somebody who, you know, probably didn't do it.
That's what's always so weird to me.
You know, when an innocent man gets framed for a cop that got killed.
Well, what about the guy that actually killed the cop?
They're willing to let him go in order to frame somebody that they really hate.
You know what I mean?
It's the kind of thing where, you know, I don't know.
It seems like a very poor use of our resources, of our national prestige and of just blood and treasure to go on like this.
Now, it could happen that Omar Khadr will be repatriated to Canada.
I'm sure there are many people in the U.S. State Department who would love for this to happen.
But the conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has made it clear, very clear that he does not want to repatriate this young man.
I think if Omar Khadr came from any other family in Canada, then he would have been repatriated long ago.
But it turns out that Omar Khadr's family there is immensely unpopular.
They're kind of notorious.
They're national hate figures.
His father really did have some ties to Osama bin Laden.
And to me, this just makes young Omar Khadr all the more sympathetic.
The kid never really had a chance growing up in this kind of family, being conditioned that way.
This doesn't make him guilty of any crime.
It doesn't make him guilty of the ridiculous charge of murder in violation of the rules of war as a war crime.
But it does explain why Canada has not repatriated him yet.
Yeah, well, it is a sad story.
And in the larger sense, as you kind of make it seem in the article here, this is just a signal, a weather vane or whatever.
This is America on a path to total governmental lawlessness at the same time that they're claiming total power.
They can do this to you and me now.
And I think my fellow left liberal types really need to speak up just because we have Obama in the White House does not mean that things have changed.
Things have not changed nearly enough.
We are continuing many of the disastrous national security policies that that were hatched by Bush and Cheney.
That should be a national scandal.
And instead, we have too much indifference.
Yeah, I'm afraid so.
Well, well, geez, let's see.
We've got one more minute here.
Let me ask you about J. Bybee in the news today talking about.
Oh, yeah.
The bad torture.
That was when they went beyond the memos that I wrote instructing them how to torture people.
I just think it's ridiculous that this guy hasn't been impeached.
I mean, there's so much attention to John.
You know that the students at Berkeley Law School are doing a great job, many of them anyway, of giving him a rough time.
But there's been comparably little attention to J. Bybee.
He is a federal judge.
The Ninth Circuit.
It's a very powerful position.
And he does not deserve it.
I think he's shown very clearly that he's unfit with his torture memos to have that kind of power and responsibility.
And I am incensed with the Obama administration for not impeaching him.
Yeah, you know, the best part of the Charlie Savage piece in The New York Times today, as Glenn Greenwald points out, is at the very end when they ask him, do you have any regrets?
Or it's coverage of what he said at a hearing yesterday.
Do you have any regrets?
And he said, yes, I regret that I've had to suffer criticism for this.
Oh, good Lord.
These people are shameless.
Well, I don't know.
I guess I wonder if one day, like at the end of World War II, when they forced all the people of the German towns to go and have to look at the death camps, I wonder if maybe one day we could force all the Republicans to have to go and look at the victims of their torture and have to hear it from them, what it was really like.
See if anybody could ever wipe that smirk, that perpetual smirk off their faces.
I couldn't agree more.
I think if many of these architects of, let's say, the invasion of Iraq had any shred of integrity, they would be doing civilian volunteer work in Iraq, trying to clean up the mess they've made.
All right.
Tell us, where else do you write other than The American Conservative?
I write for Le Monde Diplomatique and The London Review of Books as well as Counterpunch.
Oh, wow.
Right on.
Well, you heard everybody.
Go look them up.
And this one is at The American Conservative.
It's called Obama's Gitmo, Torturing the Rule of Law.
Thank you so much for your time, Chase.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
Take care.
