New York Times Editorial: It’s Time to Close Gitmo

Here is a powerful editorial from The New York Times arguing for the need to close the gulag at Guantánamo Bay:

Ever since President Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through Congress to lend a pretense of legality to his detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, we have urged Congress to amend the law to restore basic human rights and judicial process. Rulings by military judges this week suggest that the special detention system is so fundamentally corrupt that the only solution is to tear it down and start again.

The target of the judges’ rulings were Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels that determine whether a prisoner is an “unlawful enemy combatant” who can be tried by one of the commissions created by the 2006 law. The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

On Monday, two military judges dismissed separate war crimes charges against two Guantánamo inmates because of the status review system. They said the Pentagon managed to get them declared “enemy combatants,” but not “unlawful enemy combatants,” and moved to try them anyway under the 2006 law. That law says only unlawful combatants may be tried by military commissions. Lawful combatants (those who wear uniforms and carry weapons openly) fall under the Geneva Conventions.

If the administration loses an appeal, which it certainly should, it will no doubt try to tinker with the review tribunals so they produce the desired verdict. Congress cannot allow that. When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game.

There is only one path likely to lead to a result that would allow Americans to once again hold their heads high when it comes to justice and human rights. First, Congress needs to restore the right of the inmates of Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions. By the administration’s own count, only a small minority of the inmates actually deserve a trial. The rest should be sent home or set free.

Second, Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act and start anew on a just system for determining whether prisoners are unlawful combatants. Among other things, evidence obtained through coercion and torture should be banned.

And Congress should shut down Guantánamo Bay, as called for in bills sponsored by two California Democrats, Representative Jane Harman in the House and Senator Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. Both lawmakers are intimately familiar with the camp and have concluded it is beyond salvaging.

Their bill would close Gitmo in a year and the detainees would be screened by real courts. Those who are truly illegal combatants would be sent to military or civilian jails in the United States, to be tried under time-tested American rules of justice, or sent to an international tribunal. Some would be returned to their native lands for trial, if warranted. The rest would be set free, as they should have been long ago.

The Guantánamo camp was created on a myth — that the American judicial system could not handle prisoners of “the war against terror.” It was built on a lie — that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists. And it was organized around a fiction — that Mr. Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.

It is time to get rid of it.

Here is a link to the editorial:

• Gitmo: A National Disgrace

Tracking Transience: Telling Big Brother Where You Are 24/7

Although this probably isn’t advisable for most American Muslims simply because of the sheer volume of civil liberty abuses by the U.S. government, it’s an interesting experiment. Check out his Web site in the links at the end of the post.

An excerpt from a Wired Magazine article:

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. “It’ll go public in a few seconds.” Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you’ll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

Elahi’s site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you’re on, it’s hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he’s doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

The globe-hopping prof says his overexposed life began in 2002, when he stepped off a flight from the Netherlands and was detained at the Detroit airport. He says FBI agents later told him they’d been tipped off that he was hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit; subsequent lie detector tests convinced them he wasn’t their man. But with his frequent travel — Elahi logs more than 70,000 air miles a year exhibiting his art work and attending conferences — he figured it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. He might even be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so he decided to call before each trip; that way, they could alert the field offices. He hasn’t been detained since.

Read more:

• Professor Hasan Elahi’s Web Site: Tracking Transience
• Wired Magazine: The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online

Mitt Romney Tries to Prove Just How Delusional He Is

In a sickening scene that resembled a game to prove who was the most delusional, Republican candidates for president at their second presidential debate took turns trying to prove who would be the toughest candidate.

Perhaps the most obscene comment of the night came from Mitt Romney:

“Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.”

As the Washington Post writes:

He added that terrorism suspects should be kept in the military prison camp to keep them without access to legal counsel.

“I want them in Guantanamo where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons. I want them there,” said Romney.

As impossible as it may seem, Romney has less of an appreciation for basic civil liberties and less of an understanding of “innocent until proven guilty” than even the Bush Administration does.

Read more:

• Washington Post: Romney, Giuliani terrorism comments draw criticism
• Washington Post: A Question of Torture

Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

Even though 82 inmates have been cleared by military review panels to leave Guanatanmo Bay, U.S. officials could take months or even years to free them from captivity.

An excerpt from a Washington Post article:

More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

Read more:

• The Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo