Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed — an Egyptian-born British resident and current Guantanamo Bay detainee — have been engaged in a long-running legal battle to prove his innocence and ultimately win his release. Last week, the British High Court ruled against releasing documents describing torture techniques used against Mohamed while in U.S. custody, reportedly because the documents also prove British collaboration in his torture.

Two days ago, Clive Stafford Smith, one of Mohamed’s lawyers, wrote a letter to President Obama in an appeal to make the documents public and to inform him of his client’s case. However, the letter was sent back, with the entire section detailing Mohamed’s torture redacted, as Smith told the UK’s Channel 4 News:

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: The world has gone totally mad. We are trying to get the information to the President of the United States so he can assess whether this torture material should be made public. The censors in Washington, the military censors, won’t let their own commander in chief see it. It’s bizarre.

Watch the report:

The Guardian notes a possible motive behind the move. “It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment.”

Indeed, the documents reportedly contain “details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, ‘is very far down the list of things they did,’” one British intelligence official said.

Yesterday, the Obama administration agreed to let British officials visit Mohamed — who has been described as “just skin and bones” after a long hunger strike — at Gitmo to “prepare for his return.” “We are working as fast and hard as we can to secure Mr Mohamed’s release from Guantanamo and return to the UK. We want him to be released as soon as possible,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.

UPDATE: Ken Gude, CAP’s Associate Director of International Rights & Responsibility, has a separate response to the Smith story:

The last eight years have justifiably conditioned us towards outrage, but we really need to calm down, take a deep breath, and think a little more critically about what is going on here. Clive Stafford Smith is a fantastic advocate on behalf of Guantanamo detainees that have suffered through years of tragedy, but his allegations in this instance are simply incorrect. Whatever the motivations of the DOD official that blacked out the material attached to Clive’s letter, it was certainly not to prevent President Obama from seeing it. In order for that to be true, we would have to construct a scenario in which a presidential aide brings to Obama this letter asking that specific information be de-classified, but when Obama asked what information, he was handed two completely blacked out pages and that’s the end of the story. Seriously, does that sound plausible?

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Steven Walt writes that Israel’s relentless expansion of settlements is steadily making a two-state solution impossible. Ezra Klein agrees, and asks the Israel hawks to “tell me what’s wrong with Stephen Walt’s logic.” Jon Chait responds “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s wrong is that settlements are reversible.”

To make peace with Egypt, Israel abandoned settlements in the Sinai peninsula, forcibly uprooting residents there. It did the same when withdrawing from Gaza recently. It was prepared to do the same in the West Bank in 2000 and 2001, though it never had to follow through because negotiations collapsed.[...]

If Israel’s government and population can be convinced that a real peace is attainable, then they should be able to dismantle the settlements.

It’s true, the settlements are reversible. I’ve heard this frequently from Israel hawks, and it’s always struck me as a brutally cynical argument. Leaving aside the myriad other ways in which settlements negatively impact the conflict, the fact is that there are people and families making their homes in these places, in many cases having been encouraged to do so by their own government. “Dismantling the settlements” doesn’t just mean taking down buildings and houses, it means breaking up neighborhoods and support networks that have been built up over many years. It makes no sense to me that someone would offer the prospect of the eventual destruction and expulsion of these communities — that is, of course, what their “reversal” entails — as some kind of mitigating factor. To my mind, this only compounds the immorality of the settlement enterprise.

Our guest blogger is Nina Hachigian, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Some progressives might not like to hear me say this, but compared with the rest of its foreign policy legacy the Bush administration did OK in Asia. That’s mostly because they did very little. In the first term, when the administration did veer from its strategy of “benign neglect” to focus on North Korea, US foreign policy was, true to form, highly dysfunctional and counterproductive. Pyongyang went ahead and built its very first nuclear weapon on the Bush Administration’s watch. In the second term, Asia received practically no high-level attention, so the professionals were left to keep things going as best they could, without a captain steering the ship.

America should do better than that. We have enormous interests in Asia, after all. It is welcome news, then, that Secretary of State Clinton is breaking with tradition and making Asia the destination of her first overseas trip instead of Europe. Here are a few suggested priorities for U.S. policy in Asia, in order of the secretary’s itinerary:

Early and Often. Just showing up more regularly will go a long way toward communicating that the U.S. does understand that the world has changed — Asia now accounts for 60% of world GDP, 50% of world trade, and 40% of the world’s population. The fact that Secretary Rice skipped two meetings of the Southeast Asian Nations’ Regional Forum — the first US Secretary of State ever to do so –- still rankles, and was taken as symbol of a U.S. disinterest in Asia. Not only should Secretary Clinton go to the traditional meetings, she should also support a new Northeast Asia security forum, evolving out of the Six Party Talks on North Korea, so the region has a more robust mechanism to address tensions in the various bilateral pairings of Japan, South Korea and China, for example.

Tokyo. The U.S.-Japan alliance has been the bedrock of our Asia policy for over half a century, and it will assuage fears in Japan of “Japan passing” that Secretary Clinton stops there first. Beyond managing the issues of American military bases and North Korea, both of which are sensitive, the question is how the alliance can focus more intently on the new security threats of today — climate, non-proliferation, terrorism, disease, and fragile states — not to mention the economic crisis. She should discuss with her counterparts whether there are issues on which Japan, the U.S. and China, the three elephants of East Asia, can work in conjunction.

Seoul. It’s a little crazy in Seoul politics these days, what with chainsaws in the parliament and all. But South Korea is also a longtime U.S. ally and the relationship needs active attention. The first order of business is to better harmonize our positions on North Korea, but beyond that, we need to figure out a new frame for the alliance. What do the U.S. and South Korea together stand for? What should be our goals?

Beijing. With our all differences, China still has significant influence on U.S. security and prosperity and vice-versa. Secretary Clinton should make good on her intentions to forge a holistic approach to China, not one driven solely by the Treasury Department, as was the case in the Bush second term (though that was better than it being driven by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.) We’ve got four major potential catastrophes to avert with China — the economic crisis, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and avian flu. Washington and Beijing see more or less eye to eye on addressing the financial crisis and North Korea. Avian flu could be worse, but China continues to block U.S. actions in the UN security Council on Iran. Getting both China and the U.S., who together account for 40% of global emissions, to act aggressively enough on global warming is a huge diplomatic challenge. A fifth potential catastrophe — humanitarian — in terms of China’s actions or lack thereof in Sudan, Zimbabwe and Burma, must also be on Secretary Clinton’s agenda.

Jakarta. In Indonesia and elsewhere, Secretary Clinton needs to make clear to China’s neighbors that while the U.S. welcomes a strong China, we are not going anywhere and will continue to play the role of security guarantor in the region. Indonesia is also the world’s largest Muslim country, and Clinton can continue the conversation that President Obama has begun with the Muslim world. Here she can also highlight America’s interest in engaging with and building out the security architecture of Asia.

Secretary Clinton is not always going to like what she hears as she travels around Asia. She is bound to get an earful about America’s irresponsible actions on the financial crisis. But fielding such complaints is par for the course as we dig ourselves out of the diplomatic hole we are in. It is about time we paid closer attention to those 3ish billion people on our left. Secretary Clinton’s trip is an excellent start.