The fundamentals of our economy may not be strong-
The fundamentals of Wall Street may have lost their way-
The fundamentals of our banking system may be corrupt and unethical-
The fundamentals of our health care is in need of sweeping changes,
But the fundamentals of the following exchange
between our president
and
Kroft of 60 Minutes is rock solid...
OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don't bear him out. I think he is... that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many... how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment, which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.
KROFT: Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo.
OBAMA: Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting rough who are truly dangerous individuals that we've got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that, somehow, the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not.
KROFT: What do you do with those people?
OBAMA: Well, I think we're going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they are not released and do us harm, but do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this... this is the legacy that's been left behind and, you know, i'm surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How... how long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until, you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I... I don't know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that was the right approach.
SEAN HANNITY: That’s somewhat frightening, you’re going to close Guantanamo Bay, you don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know where you’re going to put these people. [1/23/09] GLENN BECK: Somebody told me that if this goes through and we put 200 people into this system, that it will shut down our justice system. Our justice system just won’t be able to do it.[1/20/09] BRIAN KILMEADE: You’re talking about the worst of the Taliban, the worst of al Qaeda, and we have to let them go, give them trials? Why do we need to do this and compromise the CIA and our intelligence bureau — a lot of the intelligence was built on these guys, was done using our clandestine operations. So we have to expose that for these trials? [1/22/09]
Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) said last week that the U.S. could hold the detainees in federal prisons, just like we hold thousands of other dangerous inmates. This morning, Fox and Friends responded by sending a reporter to Murtha’s district to flash photos of suspected terrorists — their only identification being Muslim headgear — and ask residents, “Would you want a guy like this living in your backyard?” Watch it:
Despite Fox’s suggestion that detainees could be pitching a tent in your backyard, Guantanamo detainees transferred to the U.S. for trials would be housed in federal prisons — where dozens of dangerous terrorists are already held. In fact, the United States has already successfully prosecuted 145 terrorism cases in federal court, a sharp contrast to the series of debacles in Guantanamo prosecutions.
Later in the segment, the Fox hosts repeated some of the right wing’s favorite myths about Guantanamo. They endorsed the “great idea” conservatives have been pushing of sending detainees to Alcatraz or a “haunted” prison in West Virginia:
CLAYTON MORRIS: We’ve got Alcatraz that exists. We give tours out there. Put them out on an island on Alcatraz, which is under our jurisdiction. What about Moundsville State Penitentiary? Someone from West Virginia wrote me and said it’s a haunted prison. It’s vacant.
In other words, Fox News and the right wing would prefer to send Guantanamo detainees to theme parks rather than to maximum-security federal prisons.
“One year from now, Gitmo won’t be closed…. If it is, there will be an uproar in the U.S. about where to put these people.”
Indeed, it will be very difficult to close Guantanamo, made harder in fact by the incompetence of the Bush administration. This weekend, the Washington Post reported that the administration’s plans to “quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the [Gitmo] detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.” Update: Today’s Progress Report debunks the right-wing myths about closing Guantanamo.
And then, we have that as well:
Gregory allowed 61-detainee falsehood to stand unrebutted on Meet the Press
On the January 25 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host David Gregory allowed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to repeat the falsehood that, in Boehner's words, "we've already found" that 61 detainees released from the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay are now "back on the battlefield." In fact, the figure, which comes from the Pentagon, includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having "return[ed] to the fight." Moreover, even the Pentagon's claim that it has confirmed that 18 former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield has been questioned by experts.
After Gregory asked if President Obama's executive order requiring that the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay be closed within a year was "realistic," Boehner responded: "[W]hat do you do with these 270 prisoners? Some of them you might be able to release, but we've already found 61 of those that we've released back on the battlefield."
Gregory did not note that according to the Pentagon, the 61-detainee figure includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having engaged in terrorist activity -- detainees who have not been "already found [...] back on the battlefield," as Boehner asserted. Indeed, as Media Matters for Americanoted, during a January 13 press conference, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell stated: "The new numbers are, we believe, 18 confirmed and 43 suspected of returning to the fight. So 61 in all former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight."
Further, the Pentagon's definition of "returning to the fight" has been challenged by some analysts. As CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen noted on the January 23 edition of Anderson Cooper 360: "[R]eturning to the fight, in Pentagon terms, could be engaging in anti-American propaganda, something that's not entirely surprising if you have been locked up in a prison camp for several years without charge." Bergen further stated: "[W]hen you really boil it down, the actual number of people whose names we know are about eight out of the 520 that have been released [from Guantánamo], so a little above 1 percent, that we can actually say with certainty have engaged in anti-American terrorism or insurgence activities since they have been released. ... If the Pentagon releases more information about specific people, I think it would be possible to -- to potentially agree with them. But, right now, that information isn't out there."
Additionally, Seton Hall University School of Law professor Mark Denbeaux -- who has written several reports about Guantánamo detainees, including some challenging the Pentagon's definition of "battlefield" capture and published detainee recidivism rates -- has disputed the Pentagon's figures.
In a new telephone survey, Rasmussen Reports has found that 25 percent of voters “believe President Bush and senior members of his administration are guilty of war crimes.” Forty-four percent of Democrats and 21 percent of unaffiliated voters believe that war crimes were committed while just 4 percent of Republicans believe the same.
Only 25% percent of Americans realize, or understand, or accept the reality that war crimes have been committed - are still being committed - in their names.
(...) the barbarians and their savage followers are still living among us indeed ... and they are doing everything they can to keep us down to their primitive, uncivilized and savage level.
The problem here is that the primitive mind-thinking barbarians and savages appear to constitute the majority ...
More Articles on GITMO Closure::::
Read the DRAFT Document here about GITMO Closure, Please note that it acknowledges the Geneva Conventions...and yes, it RESTORES Habeus Corpus...really. 5 Pages.
How BBC reported it.
AP reports World Reaction and UN Reaction.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
6PM update:::
It is interesting in Foreign papers they are mentioning that CIA Black Prisons will be shuttered as well, the Guardian explores this issue closer.
Perhaps I am wrong (I always hope that I am on such matters) with regards to our democracies losing themselves beyond redemption. Just this week alone, some rays of hope have been shining brightly which leaves me to wonder if we are indeed on the road to reclaim our democratic, civil liberties and human rights values in order to hold onto them honestly and sincerely once and for all:
A federal judge ordered the release yesterday of a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the government's evidence is too weak to justify the man's continued confinement.
It is the second time that U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon has ordered the release of a detainee after examining government evidence, most of it classified. Leon said that the Justice Department failed to prove that Mohammed El Gharani, 21, is an enemy combatant because it relied heavily on statements made by two other detainees whose credibility is questionable.
"A mosaic of tiles this murky reveals nothing about this petitioner with sufficient clarity" to justify his detention, Leon ruled.
Gharani, a citizen of Chad, was picked up in Pakistan and turned over to the United States in 2002. Since then, he has been held at Guantanamo Bay.
The government alleged that Gharani traveled to Afghanistan and trained at an al-Qaeda-affiliated military camp, fought in the battle of Tora Bora and was a courier for high-level al-Qaeda members.
The government also accused Gharani of belonging to a London-based al-Qaeda cell in 1998, an accusation that Leon questioned. Gharani was 11 at the time, living with immigrant parents in Saudi Arabia, his attorneys said.
Case #2: Former Gitmo prosecutor rips military trials, calling interrogators' practices 'despicable' (also via here)
In a declaration submitted to a Washington D.C. District Court Tuesday, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a former prosecutor in the Military Commission trial system, delivered perhaps the most blistering attack on the US military's detention program by a former member of the Pentagon's team to date.
Speaking of the man he was once tasked to prosecute, Vandeveld said prisoner Mohamed Jawad's continued detention is "something beyond a travesty," and urged that Jawad be released given a "lack of any credible evidence."
Some of this information was revealed in September 2008, after Vandeveld resigned as a prosecutor, complaining that "potentially exculpatory evidence" had "not been provided" to Jawad's defense team, and that his accidental discovery of information relating to Jawad's abuse helped convert him from a "true believer to someone who felt truly deceived."
Vandeveld's declaration today constitutes the most sustained criticism of the Bush administration's trial system for terror suspects since Col. Morris Davis, the Commission's former Chief Prosecutor, resigned in 2007. Col. Davis said he'd quit because of the politicization of the trial system, attempts to endorse the use of evidence obtained through torture, and the refusal of Pentagon chief counsel William J. Haynes II to accept that any planned trials could end in acquittals.
Vandeveld's statement, seen by Raw Story, explained that he joined OMC-P in May 2007, and described how, based on his civilian experience as a Senior Deputy Attorney General in Pennsylvania, he initially thought that Jawad's case "appeared to be as simple as the street crimes I had prosecuted by the dozens in civilian life."
Jawad, an Afghan national, was accused of throwing a grenade at a jeep containing two US Special Forces soldiers and an Afghan interpreter while the vehicle was stuck in traffic in a marketplace in Kabul in 2002. Vandeveld said he initially thought Jawad was guilty because he'd been arrested "almost immediately" by Afghan police officers and had purportedly "freely confessed" to throwing the grenade. In addition, he'd allegedly explained that he'd "claimed sole responsibility for the attack" and "that he would repeat the attack if given the opportunity."
According to the interrogation report, US soldiers took Jawad to an operating base, where, after initial denials, he "eventually confessed to his role in the attack, this time on videotape recorded by US personnel."
But as Lt. Col. Vandeveld began to investigate the evidence in Jawad's case, he was shocked to discover that locating relevant documents was extraordinarily difficult. He said the Commissions' prosecution department was in a "state of disarray" and "lack[ed] any discernable organization." He explained that he did not "expect that potential war crimes would be presented, at least initially, in 'tidy little packages,'" such as those that would be "assembled by civilian police agencies and prosecution offices."
"The evidence, such as it was," he wrote, "remained scattered throughout an incomprehensible labyrinth of databases... or strewn throughout the prosecution offices."
As a result, Lt. Col. Vandeveld was unable to locate crucial documents, such as Jawad's videotaped confession. Although he explained that it was "difficult" for him "to accept that the US military could have failed so miserably in six years of effort," he began to doubt "the propriety" of prosecuting Jawad.
Despite these misgivings, Vandeveld said he clung to a belief that the case could be prosecuted "ethically and successfully" until May 2008, when a succession of discoveries led to his dramatic departure.
Case #3: Air Force Major David Frakt of the Military Commissions defends Mohammed Jawad
Download | PlayDownload | Play
(h/t Heather)
This is just horrific. I was on a conference call yesterday with the ACLU and we talked about this very case. Via email:
We focused on the cases of Omar Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, both teenagers when they were captured, and how their cases speak to the larger problem of the military commissions and why Guantanamo must be closed immediately.
Bush administration is appealing a Guantánamo military judge's decision to throw out evidence against Jawad that was tainted by torture.
When Obama is sworn in I believe this trial is set to begin a week later. Major props goes to Air Force Major David Frakt for his work on this issue.
MADDOW: The big problem at Guantanamo is not that we locked up hundreds of people in an American-run prison in a foreign country without charges or trials or rights, the problem is that other countries won‘t help us out with that?
Joining us now is an Air Force Major David Frakt. He is defense counsel with the Office of Military Commissions which administers the tribunals at Guantanamo. He is defending a young man named Mohammed Jawad. He was a teenager when he was arrested and is still at Guantanamo Bay.
MADDOW: If today‘s reports are correct that President-elect Obama is getting rid of the military tribunal system, would that put you out of a job? And, in your eyes, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
FRAKT: Absolutely, Rachel. In fact, the defense counsel with the Office of Military Commissions have been trying from day one to do precisely that. That is put ourselves out of a job. My belief, I believe it is shared by my fellow co-counsel, is that this is an unfair, rigged system.
You know, we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, and we‘re doing that by serving as defense counsel and assuring that our clients are not tried in an unconstitutional system.
Case #4: Holder breaks with Mukasey, says ‘waterboarding is torture.’ (see also here)
In October 2007, during his confirmation hearings, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to call waterboarding torture and to this day has not called it torture. In his confirmation hearing today, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder clearly said that he believes waterboarding is torture:
HOLDER: If you look at the history of the use of that technique, used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes. We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.
In another break with Bush administration officials, Holder said other countries would be violating international law if they waterboarded U.S. citizens. Watch it:
Holder also said that the President cannot immunize officials who committed acts of torture. “No one is above the law,” he stated.
(Keep reading ...)
Case #5: The Turning Point - How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture (also via here and here)
When Vice President Dick Cheney told the Weekly Standard last week, "I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party there are some people who believe that we really tortured," he probably wasn't thinking about Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general, is hardly the kind of hippie moonbat Cheney would like to poke fun at. And that's why everything changed this morning when the Washington Post published a front-page interview by Bob Woodward, in which Crawford stated without equivocation that the treatment of alleged 20th Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay was "torture."
You're wondering how it is that Crawford's claim that the United States authorized torture (not "coercive interrogation" or "enhanced interrogation" or other "nontorturous forms of interrogation" or "abuse," but torture) changes anything. After all, the Senate armed services committee issued a report just last month pointing the finger of responsibility for the military interrogations at then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his general counsel Jim Haynes. The committee did not use the T-word, however. And Crawford is hardly the first high-ranking military official to use the word. Alberto J. Mora, former general counsel of the U.S. Navy, wrote in a letter to the Navy's inspector general: "The interrogation techniques approved by the Secretary [of Defense] should not have been authorized because some (but not all) of them, whether applied singly or in combination, could produce effects reaching the level of torture." The 84-page log of al-Qahtani's interrogation has long been a matter of public record, and there is now little dispute that the treatment it describes rose to the level of torture. As described in Torture Team, London-based clinical psychiatrist and trauma specialist Dr. Abigail Seltzer studied the log and concluded that al-Qahtani had been tortured.
It's also not an accident that Crawford is a military lawyer. From the very outset of the Bush torture regime, it was the military attorneys who warned him—if they were given a chance—that his program was illegal.
What changes as a result of Crawford expressly using the word torture? First, the administration can no longer hide behind parsing the language of the Geneva Conventions and the torture statute. Whether or not Michael Mukasey is willing to call water-boarding torture—as the president-elect did on Sunday—a reputable senior military official has put that label on conduct that is arguably not as bad and has been widespread in Afghanistan and Iraq. In her interview, Crawford acknowledges that it was "the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health that led to her conclusion. 'The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. … This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him. … It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge' to call it torture." What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.
And ... Case #6: Ontario judge declares secrecy law unconstitutional
A secrecy law frequently invoked by the federal government in terrorism cases has been declared unconstitutional by an Ontario Superior Court judge, amid fears a sprawling Toronto conspiracy case risks “bogging down and becoming unmanageable.”
The landmark decision strikes down a portion of the Canada Evidence Act, a controversial law passed by Parliament after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The law effectively directed debates involving government secrecy claims away from open trials and toward specialized hearings in other courts.
The 94-page ruling made Thursday affects the case of 10 Toronto men accused of a 2006 conspiracy to train as terrorists and explode truck bombs. The highly anticipated case is only incrementally moving toward trial.
Finding that justice delayed is justice denied, Mr. Justice Fletcher Dawson, of the Ontario Superior Court, ruled that trial judges like him need to be ones who ponder questions related to government secrecy, to preserve the fair-trial rights of the accused.
Otherwise, “there is a danger this case will collapse under its own weight,” said Judge Dawson, who is now weighing preliminary arguments in the case. “The risk of it bogging down and becoming unmanageable is an ongoing concern.”
The effect of the ruling will be to bring the terrorism case closer to trial – though it's still unlikely to happen in 2009. The broader implications are that police and intelligence agencies will have a much tougher time keeping sensitive information away from open trials.
Since 9/11, Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act has been invoked in just about every Canadian national-security case of note, with the federal government arguing that it needs to shield intelligence related to the Khadr family, the Maher Arar affair, and the Mohammed Momin Khawaja terrorist trial.
These concerns stem from the possible disclosure of sources and methods used by Canadian agents and also from the intelligence received from foreign partners, such as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, or Britain's MI6.
The invariable effect of the law has been to take secrecy arguments away from main-stage proceedings to a secretive side stage at the Federal Court of Canada, whose judges have specialized national security training and, until now, exclusive jurisdiction of all Canada Evidence Act matters. Judges pondering the overall cases have been forced to await the outcome of protracted Federal Court legal debates to determine what information would be in play.
Observers of the Toronto terrorism-conspiracy case have long dreaded the implications of this, especially given that defence lawyers push for disclosure and the Crown tends to guard sensitive intelligence. The fear was that Section 38 would create a never-ending legal ping-pong match that no jury could ever withstand: The Crown might shut down the Superior Court trial whenever a secrecy question arose, force debates into federal and appellate courts, and then, once matters returned to Superior Court, repeat the process as often as deemed necessary by the government.
Contemplating this, Judge Dawson drew a line in the sand.
“There can be no doubt that the liberty and security interests of persons on trial in the superior courts are at stake,” the ruling reads. “… By depriving them of the opportunity to enforce their rights to disclosure and to full answer and defence in the court of competent jurisdiction, all the ingredients of a Section 7 Charter violation are established.”
He took pains to point out that this was not a dig at his colleagues at Federal Court, and said it's “mug's game” to argue over which judges are better suited to weigh secrecy. He simply said Superior Court judges are also up to the job and need to see all the evidence.
And those who would rather "forgive and forget" are nothing more than tacit enablers which keep the gates wide open to "do it all over" should we ever find any quaint justifications to do so again.
This in turn brings me to repeat one of my mantras:
For the sake of our continued existence, we must strive to forget nevermore that rationalizations supporting the use of violence - other than the need for the rightful exercise of self-defense when set upon by a genuinely clear, present and immediate danger - invariably constitute deceitful fabrications meant to conceal, disguise or justify incompetence ...
... including our very own for embracing such mendacity.
For what is the point of holding onto noble ideals and principles when those who would defile them remain unaccountable? What does this say of the actual value and sincerity of said noble ideals and principles?
Thus we are setting ourselves to repeat history - yet again.
Obama Plans to Close Gitmo To do now what peace should have done before To seal up fear and anguish within the whispering walls; Reverse a whore’s work and shackle hubris.
Brooks and Done “no leaders," "world of pain," "no coherent belief system." “circular firing squad” “complete disaster” “want Palin to lead them out of the wilderness” “I loved Reagan, but those days are over” Amen…
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended tough interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects approved by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, saying they were necessary to protect America from new attacks.
In her most extensive public comments about how the administration dealt with detainee interrogations in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed, Rice insisted the methods of questioning complied with both U.S. law and treaty obligations.
But she acknowledged that those rules had since changed and that the United States was a "different place" then, adding that the administration's top priority at the time had been preventing new attacks and not necessarily observing fine legal points.
"The fact is that after Sept. 11, whatever was legal in the face of not just the attacks of Sept. 11, but the anthrax attacks that happened, we were in an environment in which saving America from the next attack was paramount," Rice said.
"But even in that environment, President Bush made clear that we were going to live up to our obligations at home and to our treaty obligations abroad," she told an audience (...).
Rice noted that legal restrictions on the treatment of detainees had evolved significantly between 2002 and 2003, when administration officials had allowed harsh techniques, including one that some believe to be torture, and the passage in 2005 of the Detainee Treatment Act that prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
"Now, there has been a long evolution in American policy about detainees and about interrogations," she said. "We now have in place a law that was not there in 2002 and 2003."
"So the ground is different now," she said.
Oh, really?
We have gone from due process, habeas corpus, the 4th amendment and upholding the Geneva Conventions, to extraordinary renditions, indefinite detentions, loss of habeas corpus, torture, military commissions and the shredding of the Geneva Conventions.
That is not "evolution", but rather devolution pure and simple - and having made all of these savage grotesqueries legal after the fact (or through signing statements) only cemented the reality of this rapidly downward spiraling fall to perdition and utter perversion of every single tenet of morality, civil liberties and human rights.
Regardless of whatever typical double-talk, double-thinking, legalese theorycrafting-in-an-echo-chamber Madam Rice offers and which, in essence, admits on the one hand "to Hell with the law and international conventions" while, simultaneously on the other, offering disassembling platitudes regarding the respect for laws and international conventions.
To this effect, there is one, single account on which Madam Rice spoke factually: the "ground" is indeed definitely different now than before 9/11.
Let me count the ways:
1) Extraordinary renditions: Yes, now that they have been exposed and decried, that should be the end of it and we all should move along, right? Well, how about some justice for all those who were victims of such barbarous crimes (like this guy, for instance, who got Canadian justice but not American justice)? How about some trials for the perpetrators of these same crimes, including those who devised and came up with such callous disregards for basic due process, justice and civility? Oh, right - they have all been exonerated by law after the fact and if any other country in the world should decide to do the right and just thing and put such bastards on trial, well ...
Regardless, if you think that extraordinary renditions are over and done with - then guess again ...
2) Indefinite detentions: thanks to the gutting of habeas corpus, these are legal now and, apparently, retroactively at that. Why, even children and teenagers ("child soldiers") are fair game (take this one, as but one example). And if you think only "terrorists" and "unlawful combatants" constitute the sole targets of such detentions, then guess again one more time (emphasis added):
With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 19, have given false comfort that we, as American citizens, will not be the victims of the draconian measures legalized by this Act — such as military roundups and life-long detention with no rights or constitutional protections— Robert Parry points to text in the MCA that allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas corpus rights for “any person” arbitrarily deemed to be an “enemy of the state.” The judgment on who is deemed an “enemy combatant” is solely at the discretion of President Bush.
(...) While it is true that some parts of the MCA target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to US citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with non-citizen residents and foreigners. Section 950q of the MCA states that, “Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter [of the MCA] who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission.” In Section 950v, “Crimes Triable by Military Commissions” of the MCA seems to specifically target American citizens by stating that, “Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.” “Who,” warns Parry, “has ‘an allegiance or duty to the United States’ if not an American citizen?”
Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.
(...) “Under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called unlawful enemy combatants, Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress effectively created a parallel legal system for ‘any person’— American citizen or otherwise — who crosses some ill-defined line.”
Welcome to the land of liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... but don't you fret - apparently, being a detainee is pretty much like living in a frathouse ...
3) Torture: whether you call it "frathouse pranks", "enhanced interrogation techniques", "water treatment" or "waterboarding", torture has been going on, and is still going on - even after the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. In fact, many detainees have actually been tortured to death. Even children and teenagers ("child soldiers" and civilians) have been likewise tortured. Why, torture has become so mainstream that the U.S. is now in the business of torturing for, or helping in doing so ... other countries like China! Thanks to another of Bush's signing statements, the new motto is: "torture - it's not only legal, it's all good".
There is no going deeper into the pit of savagery and perversion here, folks. This is the very bottom, the lowest of the lowest, level of inhumanity.
No civilization allowed here - when the debate is about the efficiency and validity of torture in getting solid intelligence and confessions, as things are now, instead of being about the inherent immoral nature of torture, then you know you have lost any semblance of human rationality and grace.
4) Military tribunals: as pretty much anyone who deals with reality suspected, if not predicted, these tribunals are nothing more than rigged, show trials held behind closed doors. Military lawyers are pressured/harassed by their superiors to either prosecute maliciously or not defend their clients to the best of their abilities - and if they chose the high road, they will suffer the consequences. Even military judges are fair game to this effect.
And even if you are lucky enough to be finally cleared of all charges, you are either stranded as a "no land's man" or kept indefinitely as a "guest" nevertheless because, well, the Bush administration feels like it.
These tribunals are about getting results and giving way to political convenience. This is not due process and definitely not justice - this is all about the rule of whim of the moment.
Banana Republic, anyone?
And I am not even getting into the gutting of FISA and all that illegal domestic spying stuff - except to strongly suggest to those who still think that "it's all good and it can't be abused" to, well, guess yet again - I offer one small example to this effect.
So yes indeed - the "ground" is definitely different now than before 9/11: America, its constitution, its republic and its moral standing have become as ruined as the ashes, dust, rubble and metal scraps of the towers of the World Trade Center.
I humbly assume that I will be forgiven if I do not appreciate the "courageous" work done over the last seven years by the Bush administration and its cheerleading supporters - because from where I stand, they have spat upon and irreversibly sullied every precept of human dignity, of human respect, of Humanity, which used to be held as unassailable and uncompromising, sacrosaint values.
And it doesn't matter however much they try to justify/legalize/spin their actions - for indeed, nothing justifies indefinite detention, secret tribunals and torture.
Nothing.
Period.
And yet, and yet ...
It. Was. Necessary.
I think we've been handed the perfect excuse to justify *anything*, thanks to Madam Rice - just let your imagination - or inner savage, rather - run wild with it.
Because that's what has been happening with regards to human decency and human rights over the last seven years or so.
Vive la civilization, eh?
In the end, all I can do is dare to hope that the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America, Sen. Barack Obama, will seize the moment and the time to unequivocally renounce again all these affronts to, and perversions of, justice and human rights - and consequently renew his pledge to right such immoral, inhumane wrongs once and for all.
The following constitutes mainly a repost of something I've written last year, along with new commentary added. The reason for this is simple: there has been zero development on the matter since last year.
No - the title is not a mistake, nor a typographical error of the term "No man's land". This is about real human beings who find themselves without a land to call their own for the sole crime of having been wrongly imprisoned at Gitmo.
As of the month of August, 2007, some 80 Guatanamo Bay detainees have been cleared of all charges with regards to terrorism, as well as having been definitely established as constituting no threat whatsoever to the security of the U.S.A.
Yet they remain Gitmo detainees.
Furthermore, Army officials expect about 70 more of the remaining other 360 detainees to be likewise cleared.
Yet, most of them will also remain Gitmo detainees.
You see, once detainees are cleared of charges and whatnot, then the U.S.A. has the responsibility of transferring them to a terre d'acceuil (welcoming country) where they will not be tortured, mistreated or executed. This is in fact a matter of stated policy:
"Before it puts detainees on a plane, the U.S. must find a country to accept them. It also must obtain assurances the prisoners will be prevented from attacking the United States or its allies, and will not be tortured or face other treatment that violates international law."
Now, try to put aside the outrageously mendacious irony of these "righteous" proclamations for a moment, especially when considering what actually goes on at Gitmo or the Maher Arar affair (as one example among others), and allow me nonetheless the opportunity to illustrate to you as best as I can the real underlying reason why "no one wants them", thus condemning these fully, unquestionably innocent men to remain stuck in Gitmo.
Take the example of those 22 ethnic Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang region - Muslims one and all. They were transferred to U.S. custody by Pakistani bounty hunters after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, thereafter branded by the U.S. military as enemy combatants and consequently shipped to Gitmo. All the while, they maintained that they were en route to Iran and Turkey in order to seek refugee status in these Muslim countries - because Uyghurs are harshly persecuted in China. It was not until early 2005 that they were finally given a chance to defend themselves, whereby a (secret) military tribunal determined that they posed no threat to the U.S.A.
The problem came when U.S. officials sought to transfer them to another country - after all, they could not be sent back to China where they would be most certainly persecuted. Western countries were approached to grant these innocent men asylum, but all so approached refused - including Canada. Albania accepted to welcome five of the twenty-two back in 2006 - and those five are currently living in squalid conditions. The remaining 17 still languish to this day in Gitmo. There is no information available on whether the U.S. approached Turkey or (gasp!) Iran as well, two of the countries the detainees were seeking to reach initially, or whether the thought of doing so even crossed the obtuse minds of the officials involved in this apparently extraordinarily challenging repatriation process. Then again, perhaps these two countries have indeed been approached, but could not provide "satisfactory" assurances that "the prisoners will be prevented from attacking the United States or its allies".
(Oh-Hum)
Indeed - Heaven forbid that innocent Muslims be repatriated to welcoming Muslim countries - after all, virtually every single one of these countries is complicit in one way or another with radical Muslim terrorists, right? And forget about welcoming such people in the U.S.A. proper - if only as a small gesture of reparation for the horrific and brutal injustice perpetrated upon them - because, apparently, more Muslims are not wanted.
Another example of such utter injustice provides further evidence to support my suspicions that the whole "challenging" aspect of repatriating innocent Muslim Gitmo detainees lies primarily with intellectual sloth-driven fear, mistrust and/or outright bigotry: about ten days ago, Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked for the transfer of five (innocent/cleared) Muslim British residents held at Gitmo, whereas his predecessor, Tony Blair, would not accept the detainees because they were not citizens proper.
Good on Prime Minister Brown, but bully on Tony Blair.
So, in short: Muslims come to be wrongly detained at Gitmo. Said Muslims are thereafter cleared of any charges and established as being of no threat to the U.S.A. Same said Muslims will not be granted asylum by Western countries (and U.S. allies), while Muslim countries are not likewise approached - apparently. End result: same said innocent Muslims remain incarcerated nevertheless.
Moral of the story: go to Gitmo and become a no land's man.
Oh, sure - innocent residents of Gitmo get to be moved to an "upgraded" part of the prison called Camp Iguana, where they live nine to a hut. They have a recreation room and a view of the Caribbean (oh, goody!). But they are still surrounded by barbed wire and are rarely able to communicate with their families. They still remain in utter limbo.
That. Is. Justice. For. You.
All in the sacro-sanct name of Security.
Doesn't it make you feel so proud and patriotic?
God bless America and God bless Canada, f***ing indeed.
But the ugly truth is that all of us are guilty for our silence and absence of outrage. All of us have been irremediably stained for such a sociopathic lack of basic human decency, empathy, compassion and contrition.
Period.
How's that working out for you?
(Update: 08/16/2007 - While writing this article, news came out that former Gitmo detainee/enemy combatant Jose Padilla has been found guilty-by-jury of terror charges in a Miami court. This clearly illustrates the merits and requirement of a judicial system which provides due process, justice and due punishment (if warranted) - as if we ever needed to be reminded of such a truism in the first place. The whole of my present article remains nonetheless.)
**********
So here we are, some one year later - and those poor, stranded souls remain at Gitmo ... still forgotten and faceless.
As I think of them, I also think of those dozens (hundreds?) who have been tortured over the years, thanks to the Bush administration's policy which has ever been supported - if not encouraged and staunchly defended - by pundits, lawyers, justices, politicians, warhawks, chickenhawks and all assorted fear- and hate-driven neocon enablers, supporters and apologists - including all those ostriches who would rather bury their heads in the sand rather than face the awful, ugly truth:
And who cares if some of those "evil Muslims" die in the process, right? After all, indefinite detentions, secret tribunals and enhanced interrogation techniquestorture are valuable means and tools for the defense of freedom, liberty and democracy ...
Thus I ask again: how's that working out for you?
I humbly assume that I will be forgiven if I do not appreciate the "courageous" work done over the last seven years by the Bush administration and its cheerleading supporters - because from where I stand, they have spat upon and irreversibly sullied every precept of human dignity, of human respect, of Humanity, which used to be held as unassaillable and uncompromising, sacrosaint values.
And it doesn't matter however much they try to justify/legalize/spin their actions - for indeed, nothing justifies indefinite detention, secret tribunals and torture.
Nothing.
Period.
Every single one of these fear- and hate-driven incompetents have pushed us from the moral high ground of justice, freedom and human rights into the bottomless precipice of barbarous and savage injustice.
In other words - I have naught but utter contempt for those uncivilized, primitive non-human beings.
And that is how it has been working out for me.
Update (05/15/2008): From Raw Story ... read it and weep. Really. My contempt meter just blew up.
Then, we have that:
And then, we have that as well:
Now, here's the underlying problem:
Only 25% percent of Americans realize, or understand, or accept the reality that war crimes have been committed - are still being committed - in their names.
Which falls pretty much in line with this older poll which revealed that 44% of Americans approve torture.
As I said before:
The problem here is that the primitive mind-thinking barbarians and savages appear to constitute the majority ...
Vive la civilisation, eh?
Once again: we have met the enemy ... and the enemy is ourselves.