1115.org

(1)
Ah, fun and games! Fun, and games people play.

All governments engage in a certain amount of what can only be described as meaningless masturbation, but the Bush government likes to do it with people’s lives and their freedom and their inalienable human rights:

The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense.

There are no plans to free any of the men, and the military said it could reinstate charges later.

Can anyone explain what’s the point of these meaningless games? We have dropped the war-crimes charges. But dropping the war-crimes charges means nothing. We were screwing the sh*t out of their human rights before. We are screwing the sh*t out of their human rights now. And we’ll keep screwing the sh*t out of their human rights, at least until we have domestic regime change.

Let’s be clear about the title of this post. “Games People Play” refers to the American people. Bush, and those who blindly follow him without any twinges of conscience, do this in our name. And every day that we do not protest and denounce this garbage is a day that we too are morally responsible for inflicting these cruelly Kafkaesque nightmares on the Guantanamo detainees.

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Which is not to say that some officers and gentlemen have not had twinges of conscience. But when they do, it invariably leads to black comedy (written in military-speak). Here, very briefly, is a prime example, the story of Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, U.S. Army, who decided not to stain his personal honor and the honor of his uniform:

America’s first war-crimes trials since the close of World War II have come under persistent criticism, including from officers appointed to prosecute them. Some of the harshest words came last month from the very man who was to prosecute the five men against whom charges were dropped.

Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld said during a pretrial hearing for a sixth detainee this month that the war-crimes trials are unfair. Vandeveld said the military was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense in that case, and was doing so in others. He resigned over his concerns.

But the chief Guantanamo prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said Tuesday’s announcement was unrelated to Vandeveld’s accusations. He said the charges were dismissed because evidence “is being more thoroughly analyzed.” He would not elaborate on the nature of the evidence but said the review began before Vandeveld’s testimony.

Charges were dismissed because evidence is being more thoroughly analyzed. Excellent! No, brilliant! Certainly a first in the annals of American justice, military or otherwise. (I’m not sure, though, if this reason is more in the spirit of Lewis Caroll or of Franz Kafka.)

And we must, of course, always remember that filing and dismissing charges is meaningless in the context of Guantanamo. So it is only fitting that when charges are filed or dismissed, only perfectly meaningless reasons should be advanced. Anything else would place too much stress on the fabric of the universe.

Army Col. Lawrence Morris wasn’t done, by the way, with his efforts to preserve harmony in the universe:

“Rather than refine the current charges, it was more efficient and more just to have them dismissed and charge them anew,” he told The Associated Press.

More efficient and more just! See what I meant about military-speak and black comedy?

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I may call these meaningless games, but the efficient and just U.S. Army always has its reasons:

Dismissing the charges allows to (sic) Pentagon to avoid deadlines set by the Military Commissions Act to bring the men to trial.

“The way to stop the clock and get a new clock is to dismiss the charges and start again,” said retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor who quit in October and later testified about alleged political interference in the military trials.

I’m not sure I can understand why anyone in the current hierarchy cares two hoots about violating deadlines set by the Military Commissions Act. It isn’t as if anyone would ever have any action taken against them for doing so. (But, hey, what’s the harm in preserving appearances? Especially when doing so leads to so much fun and games.)

But what I really don’t understand is why the efficient and just U.S. Army would want a new clock. What good could possibly come of that? All it does is force you to dismiss the charges again down the road, to stop the clock again. Once the best lawyers in the land — they are the best, aren’t they? — have decided that you can hold someone indefinitely, whether or not charges have been filed, whether or not he has been tried and found innocent, why muck around re-starting and re-stopping the clock? The efficient thing to do would be to flush the clock down the same apparatus that they all flushed their consciences down. And, by the standards of the Bush administration, it would be just too. Wouldn’t it? Or, at least, as just as anything else Bush has done.

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The detainees against whom charges were dropped are Mohamed, Noor Uthman Muhammed, Sufyiam Barhoumi, Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi and Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani.

This information is provided in the penultimate paragraph of this AP story. Because, you know, who really cares anyway? Not even the AP, apparently, not even when it’s highlighting the injustice done to them.

(5)

Also Tuesday, the Pentagon said it will allow victims of terrorist attacks and their relatives to attend trials at Guantanamo. Five people at a time will be selected randomly to travel to the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. Others will be allowed to watch the trials at closed-circuit television sites in the U.S.

Closed-circuit television sites in the U.S. where the sound can be turned on and off at will? Just like we switch the charges on and off?

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Maybe I just don’t understand this whole concept of terrorism very well, but isn’t the whole point of terrorism to terrify the target population? So isn’t everyone who was terrified by the 9/11 attacks a victim of terrorism? And hasn’t the Bush administration done everything under its power to terrify every single one of us about the 9/11 attacks? Let’s all of us join the live audience lottery. Let’s all of us demand to watch on CCTV.