WilliamOckham

Energy is supposed to be Sarah Palin's strong point, right? After all, she is the Governor of Alaska, and more to the point, was the chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the agency that is supposed to "protect the public interest in exploration and development of oil and gas resources, while ensuring conservation practices, enhancing resource recovery, and protecting the health, safety, environment, and property rights of Alaskans." But when she was asked about ensuring that the fruits of domestic oil drilling would go to the domestic market, her answer was complete gibberish.

In part 1, I laid out the facts surrounding the detention and illegal transfer of Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul. In this post, I want to demonstrate why this case matters. There is a pattern to the Bush/Cheney Administration's illegal usurpation of executive power. Because the pattern broke down in this case, the strategy behind that power grab is laid bare. The struggle within the administration over the disposition of Rashul and the way it was resolved helps to illuminate the true nature of the current regime. Perhaps it leaves an opening to unravel the authoritarian infrastructure that has been built within our country in the last eight years.

In June 2004, Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul had his 15 minutes of fame when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld answered questions at a press conference about the detainee known to American soldiers only as Triple X, the first ghost detainee transferred from CIA custody to the U.S. military. Rashul was suspected of being a member of Ansar al-Islam, a violent Kurdish Sunni Islamist movement opposed to the dominant Kurdish groups of northeastern Iraq. The real story of Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul wasn't his terrorist past or his time as a ghost detainee of the DOD, but his treatment by the CIA in between.