In the spring of 2002, the Navy’s brig became the only military installation on U.S. soil to house enemy combatants. The first to arrive was Yaser Hamdi, a young Saudi who soon asked for a soccer ball.
A reasonable request, one brig staffer said.
“Personally, since the recreation area the detainee has access to is secured, he is under two man guard force supervision and cuffed during recreation call, I feel comfortable with accommodating the request, unless directed otherwise,” he said in an e-mail to another brig official.
But Department of Defense leaders thought otherwise, citing policies for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Obama did not do his homework very well on his decision to close Git’mo. It was all based on anti-Bush propaganda, and he would have done better if he’d actually visited there and talked to some of the people who have served at the facility.
And you don’t treat prisoners of war as criminals in the civil justice system. If Obama really thinks so then he should seek an injunction. That’ll stop them.
The good news is that there won’t be any ‘enemy combatants’ housed there, since the Administration says they won’t be using that word to refer to these fine upstanding visitors to South Carloina.
You think they’d just change the name of Guantanamo Bay to “South Carolina Bay” and that would solve the whole problem.
[blockquote]In a filing to a Distict Circuit Court in Washington DC today, the Obama administration declared that they will no longer define detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison as “enemy combatants.” Although the filing affirms the armed forces authority to detain individuals who were “part of,†or who provided “substantial support†to, al-Qaida or Taliban forces and “associated forces,†and that authority “is not limited to persons captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan.”
There isn’t much sunlight between Obama and Bush here. The one substantial difference is the use of the word “substantial” in defining the threshold for detention, but what they mean by “substantial” is not explained in the filing, and the administration is still maintaining an unlimited geographic zone for their authority to detain “enemy combatants,” indefinitely and without charges. The decision to stop calling detainees at Guantanamo “enemy combatants” is at this point, almost meaningless: they are articulating almost the same detention authority as before, only potentially slightly more limited.[/blockquote] [url=http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name=obama_administration_asserts_b]LINK[/url]
And the thing is, Obama is right to do so, but you won’t hear so much as a peep from those who tore at their hair and gnashed their teeth over the wicked Axis of Bush/Cheney.
[i] Slightly edited by elf. [/i]
<|:) Hmmm, maybe they could call them post-term fetuses. That would make their disposition/disposing of easier.
The worst and the best of the US is on display in this news report. The worst: a stripped prisoner, shackled in chilly conditions in a foetal position, mouth duct-taped over, reference to day and night occluded. Very close to torture, surely. The best: access to information by the media and any interested party; staff doing their best to improve the morale of a man at breaking point; challenging the pettifogging restrictions of officialdom. But the torture element does disturb me. Yes, I know that conditions would be worse in (say) Zimbabwe or Morocco or Pakistan. But part of the stature of the US in the world is that it does not do this kind of thing.