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Andy Worthington on Obama’s Capitulation on Gitmo and Trials; Robert Parry on Acquittal of Terrorist Posada

Two great journalists: Andy Worthington, author of Guantanamo Files comments on Obama’s cave-in on trials of 9/11 suspects, offers new info on our prisons in Afghanistan, and compares Britain’s political struggles to our own; Robert Parry offers history and context on the recent trial of CIA asset and Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles. In this article, Worthington reports that the same week Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder yielded on the trials, the Supreme Court refused to hear habeus corpus appeals of Gitmo inmates, allowing the conservative DC Court of Appeals to control the legal issues–consigning more than 100 innocent men to indefinite detention without charge or trial. Leaders of both parties are pandering to public fears, and the courts that limited Bush’s expansive view of presidential power are now maintaining that expansion for Obama. Worthington also talks about the new prison at Bagram with about 1,900 detainees, as well as the scattered prisons in Afghanistan where prisoners are interrogated using questionable methods. And he closes with an update on the Cameron government in Britain, and how its efforts mirror GOP positions in the US.

At about 1:08:18, Robert Parry returns to talk about Luis Posada Carriles and Parry’s article that covers the jury trial and acquittal of Posada in El Paso last week. Parry recounts the role of this Cuban exile in the Bay of Pigs, as head of Venezuelan intelligence, and as a ringleader in the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner. Posada was indicted for lying to investigators about his dark past, but the 83-year-old was found “not guilty”. Parry, who helped break the Iran-Contra story in the 1980’s, notes that Posada–because he was a longtime CIA asset,–was not labeled a “terrorist” and was treated very differently from Islamic terrorist suspects.