The Raw Story / Stephen C. Webster (2009-06-13) Former Bush administration attorney John Yoo was ordered on Friday by a federal judge in San Francisco to testify in an appeal brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held for more than three years and allegedly tortured while in U.S. military custody. Yoo was [...]

The Obama administration is considering seeking a change in the special U.S. military trials for terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to allow those who face the death penalty to plead guilty without getting a full trial, the New York Times reported Friday.

With Usama bin Laden and his top deputies in hiding, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the public face of the 9/11 conspiracy. But the U.S. government has no good options to try the confessed mastermind of the attacks that killed 3,000 people.

The American Civil Liberties Union has released previously classified excerpts of a government report on harsh interrogation techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. These previously unreported pages detail repeated use of “abusive” behavior, even to the point of prisoner deaths. The documents, obtained by the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act request, contain a report by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, who was tapped to conduct a comprehensive review of Defense Department interrogation operations. Church specifically calls out interrogations at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan as “clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance.”

In a stunning admission to ABC news Friday night, President Bush declared that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA’s use of torture. Bush reportedly told ABC, “I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush also defended the use of waterboarding.