Why's Obama Joking About Killing w/Predator Drones?

Adapted from a diary originally posted at Daily Kos

Take a look at this YouTube video clip of a portion of Barack Obama's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner the other day.

President Obama made the following "joke" about killing the Jonas brothers with predator drones. Given that this comes from the man who orders such strikes, which have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, I don't find it funny. In fact, if Bush had made such a joke, the progressive community would have been all over it.

"The Jonas Brothers are here; they're out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But boys, don't get any ideas. I have two words for you, 'predator drones.' You will never see it coming."

(Link if the embed doesn't work for you)

The drone killings have been quite controversial. Human rights organizations have criticized them. Even with conditional support, the conservative Brookings Institute noted last summer:

Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.

New America Foundation reported that from 2006 through part of 2009, over 300 innocent people were killed by U.S. predator drones in Pakistan. Adding even more controversy, the New York Times reports that contractors from Blackwater have been assembling and loading the pilotless drones from secret bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Of course, the government is currently saying (reported via Reuters) that the drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas "have killed more than 500 militants -- the vast majority of them low-level -- but fewer than 30 civilians..." Meanwhile, the ACLU is suing to see government documents that might tell us more about the program.

As controversial as their purported effectiveness, and the human cost of its killings, is its supposed legality. DefenseNews recently reported that assassinations by drones may bring legal trouble for the Obama administration:

Speaking on March 23 before the House Oversight and Government Reform national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, American University law professor Kenneth Anderson said "at some point, there will be a collision" between the U.S. government and the international legal community unless the Obama administration moves to address the legality of drone strikes over nations with which the United States is not at war.

In an article at The New Yorker, Jane Mayer described what a Predator attack looks like:

People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. “You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,” a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.) Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: “squirters.”

Given all the above, what do you think about Obama's "joke"? Vote in the poll below. I'm sure I'll also get some, ahem, comments. [Note: In the original Daily Kos diary, I put in a poll asking how people felt about the joke. At Daily Kos, approximately half felt it was "funny, harmless, no big deal, etc"; a quarter thought it was "tasteless, outrageous, obscene, etc"; approximately 10% thought "Obama should apologize for his remarks," while another 12% or so thought my diary "another Obama-bashing outrage". All together, the poll as of writing had 307 votes.]

H/T for the video to Adam Serwer at the American Prospect (via Jamelle Bouie at Attackerman/FDL)

ACLU Files FOIA on CIA Drone Attacks

Thanks, Spencer Ackerman, for noticing, with everything else going on, that the ACLU has filed a "Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA and the Departments of State, Justice and Defense for documentation establishing the legal basis for the drone strikes."

Additionally, the civil liberties group wants to see the government’s estimates for how many civilians the drone program is responsible for killing. A recent New America Foundation report arguing that most drone critics overstate overstate civilian casualties still found that one in every three Pakistanis killed by the drones is a civilian, not a combatant.

The drone attacks were profiled in an amazing piece last October by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.

Consider the following selection from Mayer's article. Note the bolded, emphasized text. It's quite indicative of how morally bankrupt, even corroded the U.S. has become, as it practices naked assassination from flying bomb-holding drone robot planes in the sky.

Defining who is and who is not too tangential for the U.S. to kill can be difficult. John Radsan, a former lawyer in the C.I.A.’s office of general counsel, who is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota, says, “You can’t target someone just because he visited an Al Qaeda Web site. But you also don’t want to wait until they’re about to detonate a bomb. It’s a sliding scale.” Equally fraught is the question of how many civilian deaths can be justified. “If it’s Osama bin Laden in a house with a four-year-old, most people will say go ahead,” Radsan says. “But if it’s three or four children? Some say that’s too many. And if he’s in a school? Many say don’t do it.” Such judgment calls are being made daily by the C.I.A., which, Radsan points out, “doesn’t have much experience with killing. Traditionally, the agency that does that is the Department of Defense.”

Though the C.I.A.’s methodology remains unknown, the Pentagon has created elaborate formulas to help the military make such lethal calculations. A top military expert, who declined to be named, spoke of the military’s system, saying, “There’s a whole taxonomy of targets.”

From the ACLU release:

The administration has used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away.

Today's FOIA request was filed with the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice (including the Office of Legal Counsel), the Department of State and the CIA.

"The use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not just legal questions but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These are not questions that should be decided behind closed doors. They are questions that should be debated openly, and the public should have access to information that would allow it to participate meaningfully in the debate."

I hope readers will want to spread the word on this story, and hopefully ACLU will not be stonewalled by the self-proclaimed transparency mavens at the White House. I won't bet my farm on it though.

Glenn and Jane on Democracy Now! -- Has Torture Been "Wiped Out"?`

Glenn Greenwald and Jane Mayer appeared on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! the other day. There was a lot to be grateful for in letting these two important voices get further exposure. Both Mayer and Greenwald agreed there were things to be concerned about regarding the Obama administration's positions re suppression of state secrets privilege in cases such as that of Binyam Mohammed. Both agreed that the Bush Administration's organization of state torture deserved investigations and prosecutions. Both warned that dangers remain for those who would see the reestablishment of basic civil liberties.

While there is much to praise in the work of these intrepid journalists (see Glenn Greenwald's column at Salon.com on any given day, or read Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side), a few of their comments at Democracy Now! bear further scrutiny.

Mayer, at one point, took umbrage at what she felt was Greenwald's overly negative representation of the Obama administration's actions thus far concerning torture, interrogations, rendition, and secrecy:

And they —- you know, I’m giving them maybe a little bit more credit than Glenn is, because I think what they did in their first week in office was stupendous. They put out executive orders that said, from here on out, everybody’s got rights, everybody’s covered by the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC gets to see every detainee, we’re closing the black site prisons, we’re going to shut down Guantanamo. They are moving on —- these things are not nothing; these things are really seriously great reforms.

Greenwald replied, in part (emphasis added):

Well, I mean, I actually agree with Jane that it’s a mixed picture, more than perhaps my answer might have suggested, because I was addressing two specific areas where I think the Obama administration has done the wrong thing. But she’s right that the executive orders issued in the first week were promising and encouraging, and there are complexities and conflicting pressures. They need to make sure the CIA doesn’t revolt over the idea that, you know, they’re going to be dragged into court for what they did. They’re figuring out ways to try and keep some of these secrets without becoming complicit in them....

As far as looking forward, you know, those executive orders were good, and they were encouraging, but they leave some of the trickiest questions open. You know, are we going to close Guantanamo but then move those due process-abridging military commissions inside the United States and call them national security courts, where they might be even worse? Are we going to, as you just asked and as Leon Panetta suggested, preserve some of the rendition policies that have led to such severe abuse and some of the most grotesque acts of the last eight years? I mean, these are all good questions that are very much unresolved.

There are two pertinent points I'd like to make here. One, Mayer's accolades regarding the Obama executive orders on torture and interrogation appear overly optimistic. While Obama and his team deserve credit for removing (for now) the CIA's approval for "enhanced interrogation techniques", such as waterboarding, and a closing down of CIA prisons, it left the door open for changes in the near future, and allowed the CIA to still operate prisons for unspecified short-term prisoners. Would that mean, say, the three or six month imprisonment and torture of a suspect by means of sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation and manipulation of fears, or administration of short-acting psychotropic medications?

The latter is not an inapposite question, as all of these techniques are allowed by the current Army Field Manual, which by executive order of Barack Obama is now the standard operating procedure for interrogations by governmental and military agencies. And furthermore, I know that Jane Mayer knows this, because I emailed her to inform her of my articles on the subject, and she emailed back that it was something she would look into.

Besides the information I provided, Ms. Mayer could have perused some of the statements of Center for Constitutional Rights or Physicians for Human Rights, who have indicated their opposition to these aspects of the Army Field Manual and its Appendix M, and asked the current administration to rescind these techniques.

Greenwald's reply to Mayer shows that understands the ongoing problems with the Obama administration's actions thus far. While he has yet to mention the problems with the Army Field Manual, he doesn't pretend that Obama's reforms have totally ended any danger of torture by the current administration, which is how Mayer described the current situation in her interview with Terri Gross of NPR's Fresh Air program on 2/18/2009. She told Gross that when Obama's administration put all detainees held by the U.S. under the Geneva Conventions, they "wiped out the whole issue of torture" (quote can be heard 24 minutes into the interview).

Now, maybe Jane Mayer knows more that I do. Literally. The new executive order, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations" has the following subsection:

[3](c) Interpretations of Common Article 3 and the Army Field Manual. From this day forward, unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance, officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government may, in conducting interrogations, act in reliance upon Army Field Manual 2 22.3, but may not, in conducting interrogations, rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation -- including interpretations of Federal criminal laws, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, Army Field Manual 2 22.3, and its predecessor document, Army Field Manual 34 52 -- issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009.

The provision by which the Army Field Manual claims that its techniques are legal pertains to legal reviews done by "senior DOD figures at the secretarial level, by the Joint Staff, by each of the combatant commanders and their legal advisers, by each of the service secretaries and service chiefs and their legal advisers, in addition to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the director of National Intelligence, who coordinated laterally with the CIA." It was also "favorably reviewed" by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department.

If all those legal opinions regarding Army Field Manual 2-22.3 are now rescinded, where does that leave the techniques enumerated within its Appendix M and elsewhere, including the use of partial sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, the use of fear and humiliation, isolation, and other objectionable techniques that many legal observers have termed as cruel, inhumane, and degrading, if not torture? I don't know. But leaving these techniques still in the document is like leaving a landmine intact with its fuse and only placing red flags around it. The document is still highly dangerous and violates Geneva and the Convention Against Torture. I would note that with or without legal opinions, the drafters of the AFM took care to make Common Article 3 the minimal criteria. Common Article 3 does not ban use of "coercion" on detainees, something that is specifically spelled out in the full conventions governing both POWs and Civilians.

Maybe Jane Mayer knows what the Obama administration plans to do in regards to new legal opinions on the AFM. She certainly may have the sources. But I don't put a lot of stock on intimations of insider knowledge, and besides, Mayer has suggested no such special knowledge on this point. Hence, her assertion that the issue of torture is now "wiped out" appears precipitous at best.

As for Glenn Greenwald's comments, I have no such bone to pick with its content. But I did think he revealed a certain aspect of the current situation politically that isn't emphasized enough. In commenting on the Obama administration's approach to these problems he indicated that wants to "make sure the CIA doesn’t revolt over the idea that... they’re going to be dragged into court for what they did."

What sort of a revolt does Greenwald have in mind? And why should we be so worried about it? Will the CIA go on strike? Or will they do something worse than that, i.e., strike out somehow at those they perceive as their enemies?

It's not the "revolt" aspect that is most telling. It's that a primary player in this scandal, the CIA, has so much power of intimidation, backed up by very little actual accountability to anyone. Senator Levin and the Senate Armed Services Committee did an incredible job investigating detainee abuse by the Department of Defense, but they had almost no cooperation from the CIA. The CIA's Inspector General John Helgerson reportedly wrote a stinging report in 2004 on CIA torture abuse, including the deaths of prisoners in custody, but the report has been classified. Some enterprising reporter may want to ask Obama about that at his next press conference. (Helen Thomas, are you listening?)

Over thirty years since the worst scandals related to CIA power and abuse were reported, the agency still retains its incredible power and secrecy. Its tentacles reach into the military in ways that we have yet to fully understand. (See the participation of the CIA's General Council as represented in the minutes from a meeting about interrogations and torture at Guantanamo in October 2002.) Without understanding the full consequences of how the power of the CIA is wielded in Washington, we cannot make a certain assessment of the issues at stake nor where they stand.

One could also, by the way, add in any problematic response by the military-surveillance complex to the fight against limitless wiretapping by the U.S. government. The extent of the surveillance is wonderfully, if scarily, presented in James Bamford's excellent new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. Bamford documents the size of this empire, which includes many tens of thousands of employees and gigantic corporations -- not even counting the ongoing collaboration of the telecommunications industry in the huge surveillance scheme collecting all our telephone calls, e-mails, and Internet browsing. Along with Mayer's Dark Side, The Shadow Factory provides a two-volume introduction into the secret life of American intelligence.

A Woman Buried Alive: Update on the Siddiqui Case

More details are emerging on the news that purported Al Qaeda prisoner in U.S. custody, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Arrested last summer, and wounded after supposedly grabbing for a U.S. soldier's rifle, Siddiqui was given a Forensic Evaluation Report at FMC Carsville Texas Hospital, where she is currently held. This former neuroscientist is now said to be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings before her, and to be openly delusional.

The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Siddiqui's case denied in court NGO claims that the former MIT and Brandeis alumna was tortured or abducted by U.S. forces. He maintains there's not "a shred of evidence" Dr. Siddiqui was abused in any way.

He said it was more likely that Siddiqui disappeared in 2003 because she went into hiding after marrying an al-Qaida operative who helped facilitate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and because she knew 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

[Prosecutor David] Raskin spoke at a hearing Wednesday to discuss a psychologist's conclusion that Siddiqui, 36, is mentally unfit for trial. She is being held at a Texas facility after she was brought to the United States in August to face attempted murder and assault charges.

Raskin also denied the U.S. had anything to do with the disappearance of Siddiqui's three children. He claimed a 12-year-old found with Aafia at the time of her arrest in Afghanistan was her oldest son. While this boy is said to be now with his grandmother, the U.S. attorney was vague about the others, saying only the government denied they had been abducted.

We don't know what really happened to Dr. Siddiqui's children. They are missing, thousands of miles away, or dead. Yet according to her attorney, Aafia is under the delusion that two of her children are with her, that she lives with them.

According to the AP report (linked above), Dr. Siddiqui's attorney, Elizabeth Fink, says her client's oldest son is "heavily medicated because he is seriously disturbed and under the care of a psychiatrist." The second oldest is believed dead, and the fate of the youngest child is unknown. (Siddique's attorney, Fink, is a well-known civil liberties lawyer, a protege of William Kunstler. Most recently, she "persuaded a judge to spare Lynne Stewart, the radical attorney convicted of conspiracy for passing messages for [an accused] terrorist client, of a lengthy prison term.")

Meanwhile, Associated Press of Pakistan has reported that the Pakistan embassy in Washington has asked the United States to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui to Pakistan for health and rehabilitation purposes. According to another paper out of Islamabad, the request is considered a long-shot. It's not clear that Siddiqui would be treated well in Pakistani custody either, given the accusations of connection, or even her relation by marriage to Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

That family connection between Siddiqui and KSM raises large question marks concerning her treatment by U.S. forces and the legal system. In the mind-boggling mistreatment of this devoutly religious woman, the U.S. (and perhaps their Pakistani allies) may wish to make a statement to the jihadists that not only will they be hunted down, but any sympathetic family members will be as well. And if innocent children get in the way... well, who knows? Who knows, for instance, what happened to the children of KSM himself, taken from his house when he was arrested and disappeared under CIA/Pakistani custody? Who in America, obsessed otherwise with missing children and Amber Alerts, really cares what happened to these children?

A Ghost Prisoner?

According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report on "Ghost Prisoners" of the CIA:

The Pakistani authorities have made no secret of the fact that they have handed over several hundred terrorism suspects to the United States, boasting of the arrests and transfers as proof of Pakistan’s cooperation in US counterterrorism efforts. While the majority of these detainees were transferred into US military custody in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo,49 or were transported to third countries via the CIA’s rendition program,50 some substantial number of them disappeared into CIA custody.

Was Siddiqui tortured unto insanity in at Baghram or at a CIA black site prison? Here's an account from earlier this year, prior to Siddiqui's "recapture" (emphasis is added):

Dr. Afia Siddiqui left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, Punjab province, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.

A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. The mother of the victim, Mrs. Ismat (who has since passed away) termed the NBC report absurd. She went on to say that Dr. Afia is a neurological scientist and has been living with her husband, Amjad, in the USA for several years.

On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia’s arrest he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding....

Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.

Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley [link added], called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Is it any coincidence that we hear "Prisoner 650" had "lost her mind" and the fact that a U.S. state forensic examiner has found Dr. Siddiqui unfit mentally to stand trial? Those who know the judicial system know that is very rare to receive that diagnosis and escape, or be denied, trial. You have to be very, very mentally impaired for that to happen. How did this brilliant woman become a hallucinating ghost of a human being? What tortures did she endure? Was she Prisoner 650, raped repeatedly in a CIA prison? Recent events surely strengthen that hypothesis.

It sickens the heart and chills the soul to think that such things can happen, and that the country I live in helped perpetrate such crimes, and that the millions of citizens who inhabit this country would stand by and let this and equally horrific crimes go unanswered in court of justice or in the halls of its representative Congress.

"Murder will out," Shakespeare famously said. The tell-tale heart we read about in Edgar Allen Poe's famous story beats in us all, and the shards of a broken conscience are scattered across the landscape of our society's recovery. There will be no "change," they cry out, not until we have rendered justice and restored law, and taken our victims out of the torture pit, and tried to restore them to life.

"The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui" (Updated)

I've been meaning to write my own essay on this important story for some time. Being strapped for time these days, I'm thankful to Alexa at Never In Our Names for doing a great job in her rendition of The Curious Case Against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Dr. Siddiqui was "a MIT and Brandeis alumna, originally from Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. In 2004, she was accused by the United States Government of being "associated with al-Qaeda". In March 2003, Siddiqui went missing along with her three children." Siddiqui essentially disappeared, along with her children -- probably "ghost prisoners" of the CIA -- and then surprisingly turned up under arrest in Ghazni, Afghanistan, although the circumstances of her appearance and arrest are a subject of much dispute.

I continue, quoting from Alexa's story (which should be read in its entirety):

Five years after she vanished from her parents' home in Karachi along with her three children, Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui appeared in a New York court in August, accused of trying to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan.

Accounts of her arrest and the shooting incident differ.

The Official Story is that Siddiqui, 36, was arrested outside the governor's office in Afghanistan's Ghazni province on July 17 after police searched her handbag and found documents on making explosives, excerpts from the book "Anarchist's Arsenal" and descriptions of New York City landmarks, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The next day when U.S. soldiers and FBI agents went to question the U.S.-trained neuroscientist, she attacked them, the (PDF) Justice Department said in a statement. She fired two shots using the rifle of one of the U.S.. army officers but nobody was hit. The officer then fired back at her, using his service pistol and at least one shot hit her, the Justice Department said.

Afghan police in Ghazni however, told a different story, according to a report filed by Reuters. Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behaviour and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor's house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy.

U.S. troops requested the woman be handed over to them, but the police refused, a senior Ghazni police officer said.

U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The U.S. troops, the officer said, "thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and and took her". The boy remained in police custody.

Whatever the circumstance, Siddiqui was then flown to New York where she appeared in a wheelchair, looking frail and, according to her lawyers, in urgent need of medical attention.

The case bears recounting, not just because Siddiqui is a MIT educated mother of three, but because it has roused strong passions, especially in Pakistan.

Since the time of her disappearance in 2003, human rights groups have alleged Siddiqui had been taken into secret custody, one of thousands of Pakistanis who had disappeared in the U.S.-led war on al Qaeda and Taliban. They said they believed she was in Bagram, the U.S. air base in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities strongly denied Siddiqui was in custody, and according to the New York Times, military and intelligence officials believed her to be in Pakistan until her arrest in Afghanistan in July.

Protests have taken place in Karachi, Lahore and even outside the court in Manhattan where Siddiqui appeared. The anger is directed as much, if not more, at the Pakistani government and its agencies who are accused of handing over Siddiqui to the United States as at Washington itself.

There are online petitions seeking Siddiqui's release and others warning this is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are many others at risk. Comments on blogs reflect anger, shame and helplessness to undo what many see as a terrible wrong done to her.

Count me in on that. Aafia went to MIT and Brandeis, married a Brigham and Women's physician, made her home in Boston, cared for her children, and raised money for charities. Aafia Siddiqui was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist.

Everything about the Siddiqui case smells. Alexa quotes defense attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, courtesy of Cage Prisoners:

"We do know she was at Bagram for a long time. It was a long time. According to my client she was there for years and she was held in American custody; her treatment was horrendous."

The story continues:

On September 3, Siddiqi, 36, was produced before a federal grand jury in New York, which indicted her for possession of handwritten notes referring to a 'mass casualty attack' at various prominent locations in the US, such as Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge.

However, activists and her family believe that she is being targeted. "An ordinary Pakistani [has been] wrongfully taken to a foreign country without established judicial processes," said Dr Fouzia Siddiqui, Aafia's elder sister. Even the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has insisted that she was picked up by a Pakistani intelligence agency and handed over to the US authorities.

The picture that was released when she was brought to the court in New York showed a woman who seemed to have experienced years of torture - a broken and badly fixed nose, made up teeth, and crumbled lips. The HRCP described her as a person "almost as if on the deathbed". Gaunt, wounded, she was unable to even walk by herself....

... Aafia has been suffering and in pain in US prison for more than three months now. There are fears that she is now being brainwashed in order to render her incapable of giving evidence against any atrocities that might have been committed against her....

Two children of the victim are still missing. If they are still alive then it is possible that they are being used as hostages to pressure her. Allegations of her illegal detention, rape, etc, and the abduction of her children, are going unaddressed. Can she get justice from the US legal system?

That question will arise only after a case is brought up to seek justice for her.

The case of Aafia Siddiqui is especially heart-rending and infuriating. Nothing speaks to the inherent racism of the U.S. treatment of people from the Middle East and East Asia than the brutal indifference accompanying the disappearance of this mother's children, lost in U.S. custody, and likely held hostage. Where is the outrage in the U.S. press, who cried crocodile tears not so long ago about the way Michael Jackson held his child out a window to an admiring throng? Whose T.V. sets are filled with stories about dangers to "our" children, with "Amber Alerts", and fake concern about children and drugs? Siddiqui and her children are invisible to the Americans.

I thank Alexa at Never In Our Names for keeping hope for Dr. Siddiqui alive, and shining a bright light of anger and indignation into the darkest shadows of the U.S. "war on terror."

UPDATE: Not long after posting this article, ABC News reported that a mental health examination of Dr. Siddiqui in conjunction with her trial in New York federal court found the doctor to be mentally unfit to stand trial.

According to a Nov. 6, 2008, confidential forensic examination from a federal medical center in Carswell, Texas, mental health professionals have concluded, "Ms. Siddiqui is not currently competent to proceed as a result of her mental disease, which renders her unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense."

An excerpt of the evaluation was mentioned in the judge's order calling for a Wednesday hearing to address her mental health to stand trial.

My god, what has happened to this woman? How have they destroyed her?

Americans should demand an immediate investigation into the handling of the investigation, arrest, treatment under custody, and judicial hearings around Dr. Siddiqui.