Posts tagged “Guantanamo”
Nothing-Has-Changed You Can Believe In
Remember the time of Bush? That was when the administration would ride roughshod over the legal rights that detainees should have been granted, and the courts would have to come along and slap the administration down. That was then; this is now: A federal judge ruled Thursday that prisoners in the war on terror can [...]
Turning A Blind Eye To Guantanamo Abuse?
A lawyer for Guantanamo detainees is alleging that abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office: Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards “get their kicks in” before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who [...]
Indefinite Detention Without Charges Is Still Alive And Well
So we don’t have secret CIA prisons any more (we don’t, right?), and we are going to close down Guantanamo within a year. But those who know that the U.S. can be kept safe only by holding detainees beyond the reach of U.S. laws — holding them indefinitely, without bringing charges, and without access to [...]
When Immigration Law Trumps Cruel And Unusual Punishment
On October 8, US District Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that 17 ethnic Uighurs detainees at the Guantanamo Bay camp should be released immediately since they were not regarded as enemy combatants by the administration, and there was no evidence against them. We were not just holding them indefinitely without having brought any charges yet; it [...]
The Binyam Mohamed Brouhaha: Update
The international flap over the torture of Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has taken an unexpected turn. Last week there were allegations that the U.S. government had threatened to end intelligence cooperation with Britain if a report containing seven “sensitive paragraphs supplied by U.S. intelligence services” about Binyam Mohamed’s torture were made public by two British [...]
Say It Ain’t So, Barack
Reuters reported a sad and sorry Guantanamo tale yesterday: Two senior British judges accused the United States on Wednesday of threatening to end intelligence cooperation if Britain released evidence about the alleged torture of a Guantanamo detainee. The judges quoted lawyers for Foreign Secretary David Miliband as saying the U.S. government, by reviewing intelligence cooperation, [...]
Posthumous “Surprise, Surprise!”
(1) The Bush administration may be dead and buried, but it is still capable of reaching out from the grave and surprising us silly. The Washington Post reveals how deciding what to do with each Guantanamo detainee might take a good long while yet: President Obama‘s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 [...]
Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again
Bush, Cheney and their various enablers and apologists are obviously hoping that they have so thoroughly scrambled “the choice between our safety and our ideals” that the Obama administration will never be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. (Aside: the quote is from Obama’s inaugural address. I cannot find the transcript anywhere on the [...]
Oops! Child Terrorist Is Not A Terrorist, After all!
Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon — who we last wrote about on November 21, 2008, when he ordered the Bush administration to release five Algerian natives who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years, ruling that there was no basis for holding them as enemy combatants — ordered the Bush administration [...]
Bush’s Last And Final Press Conference (Thank God!)
Eight years of presidential press conferences, and this clown still hasn’t learned how to get through one without embarrassing himself over and over again. Since this is apparently (see, I don’t trust him about anything at all) the last time I get to poke fun at a Bush presidential press conference, I’m going to go [...]