While the toilet incident that got Newsweek in trouble was emphatically denied, the Pentagon announces — after the release of FBI interviews obtained by the ACLU — that there have in fact been incidents of Koran mistreatment at Gitmo. (Surprise, surprise.) While “the interviews underscore that U.S. government officials were made aware of allegations of prisoner abuse and Koran mistreatment within months of the opening of Guantanamo Bay in early 2002“, just last week “Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita said the Defense Department had received no credible claims of such abuse.”
Tag: Gitmo Gulag
Out with the old, in with the…old.
“To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.” After outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft showed his true colors one last time, incoming Homeland Security head (and former admin torture guru) Michael Chertoff promises to keep an eye to civil liberties at his confirmation hearings. Hmm…I’d have more faith in his espoused concern if he hadn’t already ignored the in-house Justice Dept. ethics office (and lied about it) in the past.
Gutting Gitmo.
In a boon for civil liberties, federal judge Joyce Hens Green declares that the incarcerations at Guantanamo are illegal, since the military tribunals set up by the Bushies violated due process. “In today’s decision, Green said the hearings, called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are stacked against the detainees, and deny them crucial rights. She said some detainees may indeed be guilty and pose a danger to the United States, but the government must first give them a lawful hearing on the evidence against them.” The judge also called out the Gitmo Gulag on its torture policies and excessively broad definition of “enemy combatant.”
Fear and Loathing at Gitmo.
A NYT report finds mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is much more widespread than earlier suggested by Rumsfeld and other administration officials. “One regular procedure…was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels…Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks.”
With all Deliberate Speed.
“Although these events concern different legal issues and different sets of detainees, they share a common denominator: a legal strategy to keep the rule of law out of the war on terrorism by whatever procedural, legal, or administrative means are available.” According to Slate‘s Phillip Carter, the Dubya administration is obstructing and/or ignoring the recent Supreme Court decisions on the Gitmo Gulag. Sadly, I guess we couldn’t expect any less from this crowd.
Show us the bodies.
In three separate cases, the Supremes invoke the Magna Carta and the Founding Fathers to call out Dubya for the trampling of civil liberties under his watch. In the words of the Post, “the opinions, concurrences and dissents were decisive on this: They represent a nearly unanimous repudiation of the Bush administration’s sweeping claims to power over those captives.” (Nearly unanimous because Clarence Thomas, he of the “high-tech lynching,” saw no problem with the US government holding prisoners indefinitely without cause or access to courts…perhaps he’s trying to get invited to Cheney’s next hunting trip.) It’d have been nice if the Supremes had gone farther and also decided on the Padilla case rather than kicking it back to a lower court, but still, this is a solid showing by the Bush v. Gore gang. As Salon waggishly put it, let freedom reign.
Unconstitutional…and Unimportant.
The NYT reports that the prisoners of the Gitmo Gulag are at best small potatoes — most having nothing to do with Al Qaeda at all — and that the Pentagon and Dubya administration have continually overstated the detainees’ level of knowledge about Al Qaeda in order to justify the continued existence of the Guantanamo camp. “‘It’s like going to a prison in upstate to find out what’s happening on the streets of New York,’ a counterterrorism official with knowledge of Guantanamo intelligence said. ‘The guys in there might know some stuff. But they haven’t been part of what’s going on for a few years.’” When it comes to the War on Terror, is there anything the Bush administration doesn’t lie about anymore?
Geneva Schmeneva.
Jan 25, 2002: “‘As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,’ Gonzales wrote to Bush. ‘The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.’ Gonzales concluded in stark terms: ‘In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.’ Dismissing the Geneva Conventions, two full years before the atrocities at Abu Ghreib? That giant sucking sound you hear is the void left by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’s incredible imploding Supreme Court bid. He’s probably got less chance now than Ken Starr of taking the nation’s highest bench, and for good reason.
Keeping Secrets, Keeping Suspects.
Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick reports in on the Bush administration’s twin attempts before the Supreme Court to lock up US citizens and hide their shady energy deals indefinitely. Update: The Times and Post weigh in as well.
A “Lawless Enclave.”
Despite Justice Scalia carrying water for Ted Olson and the Bush team as per usual, it seems that a majority of the Supreme Court may not be amused by Dubya’s defense of the Gitmo gulag.