The Freedom Tower

The America’s highest court has thwarted the single-most effective way the United States had planned to try terrorists — by putting them on trial using secret court-systems.

In Washington, press reports said the Supreme Court dealt the Bush administration a stunning setback yesterday, ruling that terrorist suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo can fight for their rights in U.S. courts and likely sounding a death knell for the controversial offshore war-crimes trials.

The ruling “stripped Guantanamo of its reason for being, a law-free zone where prisoners can’t challenge their detention,” said Kenneth Roth, executive-director at Human Rights Watch.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered a harsh rebuke of the Bush administration’s efforts to craft war-crimes trials beyond the reach of American justice. “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” he wrote.

Yesterday’s ruling was the third straight judgment against the Bush administration concerning the rights of Guantanamo prisoners.

It cast a cloud over the entire process. Not only do Guantanamo detainees have the explicit right to challenge, in U.S. federal courts, their continued imprisonment, but the court also ruled that the process by which detainees are classified as “enemy combatants” may also be challenged.

The sweeping ruling, certain to set off a blizzard of court filings, seems likely to derail the handful of trials under way, including that of Omar Khadr, the Canadian accused of murdering a U.S. soldier, and may finish President George W. Bush’s hope of putting al-Qaeda leaders on trial before he leaves office in January.

With only few months remaining in the term of a deeply unpopular, lame-duck President and with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, the prospects for new laws to create, for the third time, another Bush administration war-crimes tribunal seem remote.

Mr. Khadr’s case, scheduled to resume next week before a new military judge after the last one was removed or retired, may be the first affected by yesterday’s ruling.

But the full scope of the court’s decision may take months of litigation and perhaps new legislation before the fate of the war-crimes trials is concluded.

Mr. Bush decried the 5-4 split decision in which the court’s liberal members prevailed.

“We’ll abide by the court’s decision,” the President said in Rome. “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.”

The President said he wanted Congress to write new laws to restore the controversial military war-crimes tribunals currently held in a makeshift courtroom on a disused airport at a U.S. naval base in Cuba, a set-up designed from its inception to be beyond the reach of U.S. law and the Constitution.

Dissenting judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, stridently denounced the majority ruling. The Guantanamo process offers “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants,” Chief Justice Roberts said.

Another conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia darkly warned that America “will live to regret what the court has done today,” adding that al-Qaeda will strike. Giving Guantanamo’s 280 terrorist suspects access to U.S. courts to challenge their incarceration and the legitimacy of the tribunals “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.”

The Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Lower Manhattan welcomed its
500,000th visitor last month.  LT Jeremy E. Vellón, USN, 31,
is an Assistant Air Officer on the USS Kearsarge.  Stationed in Virginia
but originally from Brooklyn, Vellón along with five of his family
members came to the Tribute center to pay their respects.

“I have no words to properly describe what this opportunity to visit meant
for me and my family,” said LT Vellón.  “From losing my friend and
classmate Darin Pontell at the Pentagon to deploying that week onboard
USS BATAAN for Operation Enduring Freedom to leaving my
wife Jeanie behind to wait patiently, I was affected.  Thankfully, I was
able to participate last November in Operation Sea Angel II
providing humanitarian assistance to the Bangladeshi victims of Cyclone
Sidr along with the ‘Mighty Kearsarge.’  Thanks for this honor on behalf
of the sailors, marines and coastguardsmen visiting for Fleet Week 2008.
I hope to serve my country as long as she’ll let me.”

The city of New York has lifted a stop-work order at a condemned skyscraper across the street from ground zero, according to press reports, an order that had been in effect since a fire there killed two firefighters in August. The Times and other newspapers say the Department of Buildings removed the order after contractors spent weeks building new fire control systems at the 26-story former Deutsche Bank building.
The building was heavily damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed into it, leaving a trail of toxic debris. The remains of many victims of the terrorist attacks were found there in the past two years, while regulators battled over how to dismantle the building and remove the debris.
The fire on Aug. 18, 2007, believed to have been started by a construction worker’s discarded cigarette, led to a grand jury criminal investigation and shut down work on the building.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state agency that owns the building, said 300 workers would begin six-day-a-week shifts to clean 19 floors of toxic material.
Schedules call for the building to be dismantled by the end of the year, more than two years after the original date.

Displaying the motto “Strength forged through sacrifice” and “Never forget,” the USS New York contains seven and a half tons of steel recovered from the World Trade Center. Christened the USS New York, it is the latest ship in the Navy’s LPD (Landing Platform Dock) 17 amphibious assault ship class, which has been designed and manufactured using Intergraph(R) marine design and data management technologies.

The LPD 17 was one of the first ship programs to design and build ships using an integrated data environment (IDE). Intergraph implemented the LPD 17 IDE by combining Intergraph products for computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) with enterprise-wide data management and life cycle support. The resulting collaborative computing environment is expected to contribute to more than $4 billion in estimated savings over the life of the ship class through decreased manufacturing rework and increased collaboration and innovation.

Intergraph’s latest marine design and engineering data management software, SmartMarine Enterprise, is used by commercial ship and offshore builders worldwide to speed design, facilitate global workshare and increase productivity.

“Intergraph has a nearly 40-year tradition of successfully providing key technologies to aid in the defense and public safety of our nation,” said Reid French, Intergraph executive vice president and COO. “We are proud to have played a role in the design and production of the USS New York, which embodies the best spirit of innovation and determination that make our country great.”

The New York, christened on March 1, 2008, is the newest of ten San Antonio-class ships developed by the LPD Avondale Alliance that was created to design, build, and maintain the configuration of the Navy’s next generation of powerful amphibious assault platforms while reducing total ownership cost for the program. Alliance partners include Intergraph, Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and Raytheon. The last ship in the class is expected to be delivered after 2012.

The Virginia Pilot reports:

The World Trade Center may have come down, but some of the steel that was once part of its backbone will soon serve in the nation’s defense.

On Saturday, the Navy’s newest San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, the New York, is to be christened in ceremonies at the Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding facilities in Avondale, La., near New Orleans.

It is named in honor of the city and state New York, as well as the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that leveled the Trade Center. And within its hull is 7 1/2 tons of steel salvaged from the wreckage of the Twin Towers.

That steel was melted and given new life in fashioning the ship’s “stem bar.” That is the most forward portion of a vessel.

“After the keel, the stem is the most important structural part of a ship,” Drew Demboski, assistant design manager for the San Antonion Class program, told MarineLink.com.

“Use of this steel symbolizes the spirit and resiliency of the people of New York,” the Navy said in a press release this evening. The official motto of New York is: “Never Forget.” The ship will call Norfork, Va. its homeport.

A Yahoo photo slideshow of Ground Zero allegedly demonstrates the bias news agencies frequently insert into captions., according to a  website called NewsBusters (newsbusters.org). ”Instead of just describing the photo, Yahoo included captions with partisan cheap shots unrelated to the image to score typical anti-War On Terror points.
Out-of-place comments about waterboarding, the downturn in the economy and a criticism of Rudy Giuliani were captioned under photos of a smoking World Trade Center and Ground Zero rubble
Go to the site and you’ll  see morning light that illuminates the wreckage of the World Trade Center on September 25, 2001 in New York. The site says the head of the CIA is saying that it is uncertain whether the use of waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely condemned as torture, would be lawful if used today against Al-Qaeda detainees. This photo and those comments have nothing to do with each other and when juxtaposed in a story like this, the message it suggests is clear to me.
In the same photo, the caption says  CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly Tuesday that the agency had used “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning, in interrogations of three top Al-Qaeda detainees nearly five years ago.

Yahoo also used a photo of the “Tribute in Lights” at Ground Zero  to criticize Giuliani, which is, of course, the appropriate time to address his fatal decision to locate a police command center in Ground Zero after earlier attempts to destroy the buildings had failed.
“The ‘Tribute in Lights’ shines on the skyline of lower Manhattan as the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center is observed in New York, September 11, 2007. A detailed 1998 New York Police Department analysis opposed the city’s plans to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center but then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration overrode the objections, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

This series of six photos perfectly illustrated how the media skew captions to drive home a specific message. In this case, Yahoo used photos of Ground Zero construction to make negative comments about the economy. The news agency started with different captions for each photo and then cut-and-pasted the same negative statement about the economy into each one.”

A Star is born. Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

9/11 has made us stupid. This is the sentiment of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.
Quoting from The Onion, the satirical newspaper which preceded the now wildly popular satirical broadcast The Daily Show, Friedman says we’ve become The United States of Fighting Terrorism.
Pardon the awkward references and quotes but Friedman, The Onion and The Daily Show are all attempting to revive an American consciousness that has been shot to hell ever since 9/11 and we’ve become the victims of a victim’s mentality.
The Onion’s contribution pokes fun at us by running this fake news story:
“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”
I am willing to bet a donut against a dollar this fake news will be reported as news before September turns into October.
“9/11 has made us stupid,” Friedman said. “I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day,” he said, “but our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.
“… in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.”
The writing is awkward but the point Friedman makes is dead on.

The world is watching construction of the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero. Dailymation.com posted a video with some passive commentary from Ryuchu Ryuichi. Although he is speaking Japanese, he is comparing this Ground Zero with an earlier Ground Zero. It is the memorial at Hiroshima. The video juxtaposes construction of the Freedom Tower with a tight shot of the Japanese Ground Zero memorial. If you recognize the irony, this short video is startling. This is not a smooth link so copy the address below and go to:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x33fdc_sakamoto-ryuichi-in-ground-zero_music

From: Jeanne ( JeanneIris@earthlink.net )Ms. Marion Eggleton (posted from the Camden Courier Post) states the fearful message with vigor. Common? Yes. Sensible? I wonder.

Does she realize that her words support the very fear tactics of the generals whom she fervently admonishes, who are sworn to uphold the decisions made by their Commander in Chief?

The United States has intelligence operations in place at this very moment. It was our intelligence that assisted the capture of those involved with the recent terrorist activity in Europe. We should all pray that young women and men with high ingenuity and resourcefulness will continue to choose to enter the professions dedicated to preserving our peace. They work with intensity and intention 24/7, 365.

Our country is strong. We have intelligent, creative leaders who are ‘chafing at the bit’ to receive the winning number of votes of educated citizenry in the next election. Right now, the duty of every U.S. citizen is to analyze the evidence before us. Read, listen and, most of all, question those who wish to be the leaders in the upcoming years. Accept only logical answers. Encourage discussion.

Inventing fearful scenarios will only perpetuate ignorance. We have had enough ignorance!

We attract into our lives those conditions, which dominate our consciousness. I don’t know about you, but I intend to live a fulfilled, productive life, and I wish the same for my children along with those of my relatives and friends.

As long as there is breath in me, I will be the United States citizen who concentrates on and contributes to the advancement of this nation, illustrating to the world its strength of character, altruism, creativity, intelligence and stewardship. That is the only way to maintain a secure future for our loved ones.