“RECOMMENDATION 42: We should seek to complete the training and equipping mission [of Iraqi troops] by the first quarter of 2008, as stated by General George Casey on October 24, 2006.” – James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, Page 87 […]
10/17/2006
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, “set out rules for military commissions that appeared to permit evidence obtained through coercion. It also stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over petitions for habeas corpus brought by detainees, instead channeling efforts at judicial review into a narrower proceeding where courts […]
10/17/2006
“The Military Commissions Act of 2006 [signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006] explicitly authorized many aspects of the military commission regime that the Supreme Court had invalidated three months earlier. And it gave the President much more, including a broadened definition of ‘unlawful enemy combatant’; implicit approval for aggressive interrogations that crossed the […]
10/17/2006
The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, “authorizes the president to determine, at his sole discretion, that the authorities of a given state or possession are ‘unable, fail, or refuse’ to address a public emergency. In that event, he is authorized to ’employ the Armed […]
10/17/2006
“…President Bush’s enactment of the John Warner [National Defense Authorization] Act [on October 17, 2006, which authorized appropriations for military and defense activities]…gave him expanded discretion to determine that a ‘major public emergency’ exists and to deploy the military in response.” – Eugene Jarecki, The American Way of War, Pages 244-245 […]
10/17/2006
After the Supreme Court’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision on June 29, 2006, which restored the Geneva Conventions for detainees at Guantanamo, Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff “went on to work closely with Congress to restore virtually every aspect of the earlier executive power they had exercised over the detainees, including sole control over […]
10/17/2006
“On October 17, 2006, President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, providing for the continued controversial practices in its detention and treatment of ‘unlawful combatants.’ ‘The president can now,’ wrote American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony D. Romero, ‘with the approval of Congress–indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific […]
10/15/2006
“In mid-October 2006 a coalition of Jihadi groups announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an umbrella grouping which has established an embryonic state within a state (as the Taliban did in Afghanistan) based mainly in Anbar province but with a strong presence also in southern Baghdad, Diyala, Salah-al-Din, Niveneh and parts […]
10/15/2006
In October 2006, “four months after his [al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s] death AQI changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and appointed an Iraqi, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, to be its nominal boss. But with the death of Zarqawi, AQI no longer had a charismatic leader.” [The 15th of the […]
10/15/2006
“In October 2006, the noted British medical journal Lancet…estimated that the total deaths in Iraq in the period between March 2003 and July 2006 may have exceeded 650,000 people. The figure was astounding, as it easily surpassed all the previously published figures of casualties, which ranged from 50,000 (from the unofficial Iraq Body Count) to […]