Sam Stein writes for Huffington Post, Oct. 22:

McCain Surrogate: Al Qaeda Blogger Using Reverse Psychology
The McCain campaign blasted back against a story in today's Washington Post reporting that an al-Qaeda official in a "commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah," had called for the support of the Arizona Republican.

A Canadian government inquiry has found that officials of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canada Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) "indirectly contributed" to the torture of three citizens while in Syria between 2001 and 2004. The men, Ahmed Al Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin, claimed they were detained and tortured by Syrian military intelligence during trips abroad with the cooperation of Canadian officials. In the report released Oct. 21, former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci found that officials contributed to the mistreatment of the men by supplying classified, and in some cases misleading, information to Syria linking the men to terrorist activities.

The US Department of Defense announced Oct. 23 that it has filed new war crimes charges against two Kuwaiti men held at Guantánamo Bay. Fouad Rabia, a US-educated aeronautical engineer suspected of running a supply depot at Tora Bora, and Fayiz Kandari, an alleged adviser to Osama bin Laden, were charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terror. The two men, who have spent over seven years in Guantánamo, are said to have the longest-running unlawful detention lawsuits pending in the US District Court in Washington. Rabia and Kandari now face a maximum of life in prison.

Pope Benedict XVI Oct. 9 backed the beatification of World War II-era pontiff Pius XII, defending his controversial legacy and asserting that he "often acted in secret and in silence" to defend Jews during the Holocaust. Celebrating a mass commemorating 50 years since Pius' death, Benedict said: "In light of the concrete situations of that complex historical moment, he sensed that this was the only way to avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews." Benedict said he prayed the process of beatification "can proceed happily."

A US district judge ordered the Bush administration Oct. 7 to release 17 Uighur detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, ruling that the Constitution forbids their indefinite detention without cause. Judge Ricardo Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia gave the government two days to release the Chinese Muslims into the United States, marking the first time that a US court has ordered Guantanamo detainees to be freed. Urbina rejected arguments by the Justice Department that the court could not require the Uighurs' release without violating the doctrine of separation of powers. He further ordered immigration authorities not to take the Uighurs into custody upon their arrival in the US.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York Oct. 2 overturned the convictions of Yemeni cleric Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad and assistant Mohammed Zayed because of evidentiary errors that deprived the defendants of a fair trial. Al-Moayad and Zayed were convicted in March 2005 on charges that they lead a terror-funding network based in Brooklyn. At their convictions, both maintained that additional evidence on government surveillance recordings would have showed they were not guilty. During their appeal, Al-Moayad and Zayed argued that they had been entrapped by government informants and presented character witnesses who said neither of the two condoned violence and that they had spoken out against terrorist acts. (Jurist, Oct. 3)

Sarah Palin went on the offensive this weekend, accusing Barack Obama of "paling around with terrorists." (LAT, Oct. 5) When Obama's tenuous ties to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers were brought up a few months back, we pointed out that some of those making hay out of it were themselves far cozier with "terrorists"—such as Pat Buchanan, whose 1996 presidential campaign advisor Larry Pratt "pals around" with Klan and Aryan Nations types. Buchanan now enthuses that "of the four debaters we’ve seen, she [Palin] was the most interesting, attractive of them all." (NYT, Oct. 3) Indeed, there's much evidence that Palin and Buchanan—and his vile sidekick Pratt—are the proverbial birds of a feather...

Iranian-born, neocon-friendly pundit and "journalist" Amir Taheri has been implicated in fabricated news reports—so take his sneering analysis of Barack Obama's recently released foreign policy positions as a propagandistic exercise. What he is aghast at we can perhaps take heart at. Will Barack Obama be the post-GWOT president? From the United Arab Emirates' Gulf News, emphasis added: