Are House Democrats concerned that President Obama is all talk and no action when it comes to closing Guantanamo? Today they rejected his request to include $80 million in funds in a war spending bill, saying they want to see a a concrete plan first.

The House directive was part of a $96.7 billion emergency financing measure for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the House approved by a vote of 368 to 60, with 168 Republicans joining the Democratic majority in support.

But in a clear rebuke to Mr. Obama, Democratic leaders refused to include the $80 million that the White House had sought for closing the Guantánamo center. On his third day in office, Mr. Obama signed an executive order requiring that the camp be shut by Jan. 22, 2010.

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An FBI Agent who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the CIA took over testified at a congressional hearing today. He said torture doesn't work. He said he got useful information from Zubaydah before the CIA took over and began using abusive techniques.

Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over, using simulated drowning, sleep deprivation and other harsh methods. He said those techniques caused the prisoner to "shut down."

Sen. Lindsay Graham called the hearings a "political stunt."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked whether "we would have this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon."

Sounds like something Jack Bauer would say.

President Obama has reversed course and decided not to release hundreds of photos depicting prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His military advisors have convinced him the release of the photos could be damaging to the troops now serving. He's going to let the courts decide the matter.

But the court already decided and ordered the release of the photos. The Government already sought review and was denied. The Defense Department had agreed to release the photos by May 28 as part of a lawsuit filed years ago by the ACLU.[more...]

Best read of the day so far is The Guantanamo Labrynth in the Chicago Tribune, in which lawyers for Guantanamo detainees describe the restrictions placed on them in defending their clients. Some snippets:

[U]nder the guise of national security, the Bush administration unilaterally revoked all semblance of attorney-client privilege and imposed a byzantine thicket of rules and procedural dead ends that would have impressed Franz Kafka.

The typical drill goes like this: After meeting with clients in Guantanamo, lawyers are obliged to immediately turn over all of their notes to the government for inspection. The inspection can take weeks, and when copies of the notes are finally returned to the lawyer, large sections often are blacked out. The unredacted originals are kept at a secret "secure facility" outside Washington where they can be viewed by defense counsel but not removed. Government lawyers' briefs are deposited at the secure facility, and defense attorneys have to travel to Washington to see them (lawyers are not allowed to reveal the precise location of the facility).

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Via Raw Story, a human rights researcher says 98 detainees died in U.S. custody. Of them, he says 34 deaths were labeled homicides, and between 8 and 12 were tortured to death.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Sifton's article on his report is at Daily Beast. It's based on a 2006 Human Rights First report and follow-up investigations. Sifton says: [More...]

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón has decided he will investigate allegations of torture by four released Guantanamo detainees.

Via Center for Constitutional Rights:

The writ did not name specific officials as defendants but speaks of investigating the roles of those responsible for authorizing, planning and executing the torture program, particularly in light of the newly release torture memos and the Senate Armed Services Committee report. The case could lead to arrest warrants in Europe....

This is a different and broader investigation than the one we've written about here. [More...]

Judge Jay Bybee broke his silence on the torture memos Tuesday, in responses to questions from the New York Times.

The reason for breaking his silence: He disagreed with an article in the Washington Post alleging he had regrets over the signing. Bybee says:

“The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct.”

He should have just kept silent. As a Judge, he should know by now that the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination, even if just in the court of public opinion, is there for a reason: Use it or lose it.

As Big Tent Democrat wrote earlier, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed the dismissal of the ACLU lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful extraordinary rendition. The opinion is here (pdf.)

The Bush and Obama Administration's "state secrets" claim was expressly rejected. The opinion says the government must invoke the state secrets privilege with respect to specific evidence, not by moving to dismiss the entire suit.

The ACLU brought the suit on behalf of five men, Al-Rawi, Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated and tortured. The case is Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen. The ACLU's brief is here.

Can it be five years since the horrendous photos at Abu Ghraib were released? Yes.

The ACLU has been fighting all this time to obtain more photos of the abuse. As a result of their 2004 lawsuit, the Defense Department will release additional photos from Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan on May 28.

In case all you remember is Lynndie England leading a detainnee around on a leash or a hooded detainee wired and standing on a box, there were many other kinds of physical abuse that took place. Some were quite bloody and left ugly scars.

Here are some photos that were released for the first time in 2006. Scroll through them. [More...]

The Washington Post today quotes a political advisor to Condoleeza Rice on the Bush/CIA torture policies:

"The systematic, calculated infliction of this scale of prolonged torment is immoral, debasing the perpetrators and the captives," said Philip D. Zelikow, a political counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who reviewed secret Bush administration reports about the program in 2005. "Second, forfeiting our high ground, the practices also alienate needed allies in the common fight, even allies within our own government. Third, the gains are dubious when the alternatives are searchingly compared. And then, after all, there is still the law."

Also don't miss Frank Rich in the New York Times: He leads with Dave Cullen's new book on Columbine (congrats to Dave) and then moves onto Bush and torture. This week will mark the 5th anniversary of the photos showing the abuse at Abu Ghraib:

Via George Stephanopoulos on today's LA Times article reporting up to seven of the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo may be released into the U.S.

Hill sources tell me that Congressional leaders were told today that Guantanamo detainees from China - the Uighurs - are likely to soon be released into the United States, most likely to the Virginia suburbs. These notifications follow this front page story today in the Los Angeles Times.

Stephanopoulos quotes Penatagon sources as saying it's not a done deal, just a "toe in the water." Our prior coverage of the Uighurs is assembled here.

As for the remaining detainees, a jail in Montana is considering making an offer to house them. The effort has received approval from the City Council.

Ohio State Law Professor Peter Shane served as Attorney-Adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 1978 to 1981.

Today, he provides three takes on the torture memos. He ends with:

When I read the just-released opinions, I felt like throwing up. As an American, as a lawyer, as an OLC alum, I cannot help but take this personally.