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By Steve Knopper
$19.76
By Benny Morris
$17
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commons.wikimedia.org
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With statements such as “if the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong” guiding our government’s thinking during the formation and implementation of interrogation techniques, it’s no wonder Carl Levin and others were outraged in the Senate on Tuesday.
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Is someone soft on terror because he thinks the president shouldn’t be able to indefinitely imprison anyone, for any reason? John McCain and his surrogates seem to think so. Barack Obama fired back on Tuesday, blaming Osama bin Laden’s freedom on the failure of Republican strategies.
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By Marie Cocco — The forceful language of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s decision in the case granting detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp the right to contest their confinement in federal court is the voice of a Supreme Court majority that is fed up.
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How did the two presumptive presidential nominees react to Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in court? Find out on “Left Right & Center,” KCRW’s weekly radio show on current events and politics, featuring Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer and guest host Amity Shlaes filling in this week for right-leaning regular Tony Blankley.
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By Eugene Robinson — It shouldn’t be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can’t have individuals taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they’ve been unjustly imprisoned—not even on grounds of mistaken identity.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley, pool
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The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled Thursday that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right to trial in civilian courts. As Justice Anthony Kennedy of the majority wrote, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It has been widely speculated that such a ruling would ultimately force the closure of the detention facility.
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AP photo / Brennan Llinsley
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A military lawyer for a Guantanamo detainee says it was standard operating procedure to destroy evidence of torture (or harsh interrogation techniques, as some call it) in order to “minimize certain legal issues.” Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler is concerned that, because of the policy, he will not be able to challenge the alleged confessions of his client, who was detained at the age of 15.
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Flickr / SqueakyMarmot
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World leaders are about to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, but leading human rights organization Amnesty International says they should first apologize for failing to tackle widespread abuses around the world. The group’s annual report cites 81 countries for torture or maltreatment and chastises the United States for setting such a poor example.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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By Robert Scheer — Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of a 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture.
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By Marie Cocco — Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, if we were to seek a portrait that is emblematic of the way the U.S. has tried—and failed—to bring those responsible for the heinous plot to justice, we would have to produce a photograph of Mohammed al-Qahtani.
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By Amy Goodman — Sami al-Haj is a free man today, after having been imprisoned by the U.S. military for more than six years. His crime: journalism.
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By Amy Goodman — The American Psychological Association is in the midst of its own heated presidential campaign. The central issue is whether APA members should be banned from participating in “harsh interrogations.”
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Truthdig
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer interviews documentarian Alex Gibney about his 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a compelling examination of the circumstances that led Americans to commit torture.
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AP photo / Javier Galeano
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By Robert Scheer — The Cuban president, who is resigning after five decades in power, has caused his people suffering, but the giant to the north bears even greater responsibility for the island’s plight.
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By Eugene Robinson — The campaign for the White House is great fun, but it can also be a distraction. While the leading contenders to replace Bush continue to duke it out, the president and his lieutenants are still trying to justify torture in the name of protecting this once great democracy.
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By Amy Goodman — At a time when Attorney General Mukasey dodges Senate questions about waterboarding, Americans should be asking a question of their own: Can we call ourselves civilized if torture is practiced in our name?
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By Michael Gorra — The Nobel Prize-winning author of such stunning (and controversial) novels as “Waiting for the Barbarians” and “Disgrace” offers up his 19th book, about a South African writer, like Coetzee himself, who now lives in Australia and tries to understand the role of a writer caught between hope and history.
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AP photo / Dennis Cook
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Activists around the world took to the streets Friday wearing orange jumpsuits in protest of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which Amnesty International calls an “unlawful black hole.” Eighty demonstrators were arrested in or near the Supreme Court building, where justices are reviewing the legality of the government’s detention program.
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dw-world.de
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U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, who in June 2005 ordered the Bush administration to protect “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees” at Guantanamo Bay, has now ordered the administration to explain why it destroyed two videotapes of such treatment just five months later.
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By Marie Cocco — The Supreme Court will soon revisit the constitutionality of Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of men languish without any real legal recourse.
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guardian.co.uk
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Web site Wikileaks has uncovered a 238-page manual that addresses almost every aspect of detainees’ lives at the Guantanamo detention facility. Cooperative prisoners, for example, should be allowed three showers a week instead of two, the manual says.
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AP photo / Haraz N. Ghanbari, file
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A new book by two ACLU lawyers, “Administration of Torture,” includes documents in which one Gen. Michael Dunlavey claims that President Bush gave him “marching orders” to get the Pentagon’s approval of more severe interrogation methods at Guantanamo. Also, it alleges that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani.
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AP photo
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By Chris Hedges — The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak, unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.
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worldisround.com
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The Iranian parliament has taken the I’m rubber, you’re glue approach to dealing with the U.S., labeling the United States Army and the CIA terrorist organizations, just days after Congress suggested the same designation for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
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By Andy Borowitz — Fresh on the heels of its reality show “Kid Nation,” in which children are sent to perform hard labor on a ranch with no adult supervision, CBS announced today that it is readying a reality show in which children will be sent to the federal detention camp at Guantanamo.
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Photo by Arturo Perez y Perez / Courtesy of Malaleche
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By Rosa-Linda Fregoso — Cinema, communication and American studies scholar Rosa-Linda Fregoso takes a look at recent exhibitions and installations by the Colectivo Malaleche, a Mexican artists’ collective that addresses the plight of women, migrants and other vulnerable groups through their work.
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inthesetimes.com
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Despite fleeting promises by the administration to shut the place down, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is still up and running, complete with many of the terrible conditions we’ve all come to know and be ashamed of, according to transcripts recently obtained by the Associated Press.
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fred08.com
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Fred Thompson has just barely entered the race, but he’s already stepped in it. First the candidate painted Osama bin Laden as an irrelevant figure, but later said he had to be “caught and killed.” Then, after more reflection, he said bin Laden should get due process, which an aide later defined as Gitmo-style interrogation.
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By Amy Goodman — Last weekend, the American Psychological Association rejected a moratorium that would have prevented its member psychologists from participating in interrogations at U.S. detention centers at places like Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA “black sites” around the world.
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A British committee investigating possible UK involvement in extraordinary rendition has found that the U.S. ignored British intelligence caveats and concerns, possibly straining a historically close intelligence relationship. The committee also recommended a ban on cooperation that could lead to secret detention, which it said “is of itself mistreatment.”
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After almost six years since suspected enemy combatants started serving time without being able to challenge their detainment at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed its stance, giving prisoners—and their lawyers—some hope that their cases may eventually be heard.
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AP Photo/Dennis Cook
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Truthdig tips its hat this week to Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, whose 2004 report about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was damningly thorough and truthful—and who thus found himself contradicted and chastised by Pentagon and Bush administration officials for doing his job right.
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Although the White House says no decision is imminent, the Associated Press is reporting that the Bush administration is close to shutting down the island prison and transferring the detainees to military facilities inside the U.S., where they could face trial. The vice president and attorney general have previously shot down any attempt to close Gitmo, but anonymous sources say a consensus for closure is building.
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Sometimes the best way to tell what other nations think of the U.S. is to see how Americans are depicted in entertainment products. Judging by this translated excerpt from the Iranian television drama “Guantanamo” (granted, subject matter must also weigh heavily in the equation), our international PR leaves a lot to be desired.
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By Eugene Robinson — George W. Bush, Hero of Albania! At least there’s one place in the world where they show the Decider some love.
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By Marie Cocco — Thirty-nine individuals held in U.S. custody at one time or another are unaccounted for—missing or disappeared in the style of a Third World dictatorship. What have we become?
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nndb.com
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Colin Powell has come out against Guantanamo Bay: “Guantanamo has become a major, major problem ... in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo, not tomorrow but this afternoon.” The former secretary of state has been eager to rehabilitate his image in recent years after a disastrous WMD sales pitch at the U.N.
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By Marie Cocco — Now we’ve bungled our own kangaroo courts. Two military judges, acting separately in the cases of two alleged terrorists, have dismissed war crimes charges against both. The legal reasoning is technical. But this breakdown is no technicality—it is farce.
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By Amy Goodman — First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military detention facilities like Guantanamo.
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A Saudi prisoner at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay has apparently committed suicide, the U.S. military said in a statement. Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that indefinite detentions—some now longer than five years—combined with harsh “interrogation techniques” and unfair trials could drive detainees to take their own lives.
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Bill Maher explains why he thinks Jimmy Carter was right (before he changed his tune) when he said that George W. Bush is the worst president ever. Although, as the “Real Time” host points out, you don’t get to be the worst without just a little help from the opposition.
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A federal appeals court is looking into the legitimacy of “do-overs” for detainee tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. Critics say the practice is unfair because it effectively allows the government to retry cases until it gets the results it wants, but there may not be much the high court can do under current legislation.
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AP Photo / Mark Wilson, Pool
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Jumana Musa, advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice at Amnesty International, speaks with Truthdig about the war on human rights, why conditions at Guantanamo have only gotten worse and why she has hope for the future.
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AP Photo / Mark Wilson, Pool
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Jumana Musa, advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice at Amnesty International, speaks with Truthdig about the war on human rights, why conditions at Guantanamo have only gotten worse and why she has hope for the future.
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At least 20 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are taking part in a hunger strike to protest the harsh conditions of their confinement at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
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By Amy Goodman — David Hicks pleaded guilty Monday to supporting terrorism, probably to escape the living hell of Guantanamo Bay, with its show trials and “interrogation” chambers that continue to shame America at home and abroad.
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The military has released a confession attributed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed mastermind of 9/11. According to the partially redacted transcript of his secret hearing, Mohammed claimed responsibility for 28 attacks, including 9/11, the Bali bombing, a number of operations that were never carried out and some that were not thought to be closely related to al-Qaida.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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