Guantanamo and Hiding The Evidence

Tonight I'll be at a bar in Los Angeles at an ACLU-sponsored "Un-Happy Hour" to recognize the 6th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. (It's from 7-9pm at "The Bar" on Sunset and Bronson).

So much has been said about the legal black hole that is Guantanamo that I find it hard to expand upon it. Hundreds of human beings, the majority of them victims of bounties for terror suspects given by the US government to greedy Pakistanis, have been sequestered at Gitmo, without the rights of citizens that 800 years of history have granted. This has harmed irreparably our standing around the world and our fight against terror, to the extent that practically everyone in the Bush Administration has signaled the need to close Guantanamo, without actually going ahead and doing it. Here's an excerpt of Meteor Blades excellent post:

Prisoners have been dehumanized, brutalized and tortured. All of it excused as necessitated by the war on terror, all of it justified by tortuous legalistic rigamarole.

While Guantánamo has been transformed from a camp with buckets for toilets and mats for beds to one of the most high-tech prisons on the planet, several hundred of its captives have been released, in most cases after years of arbitrary detention. But many who have been cleared for release still haven’t been repatriated. In some cases, that’s because their home country doesn’t want them back, a situation exacerbated because U.S. officials repeatedly called the Guantánamo prisoners the "worst of the worst" and never admitted to mistaken detentions.

Some prisoners cannot be released because it is prohibited to send them to places – like China – where they might be tortured or otherwise abused. Yet some have been repatriated to countries such as Libya, where torture occurs frequently. The most recent release was of 10 Saudi nationals repatriated in late December. Another 13 Saudis could be released soon. As of today, about 275 prisoners remain at Guantánamo.

The ACLU is asking people to sign this pledge to close Guantanamo, to put an end to torture and indefinite detention. On this very anniversary, a US appeals court refused a lawsuit on behalf of 4 Guantanamo detainees, alleging torture, abuse, and human rights violations. The only desire for this Administration is to live out their lives without indictment. Their lawmaking over the last two years has simply served to immunize their own criminal behavior. Also today, the Lieutenant Colonel who was courtmartialed in the Abu Ghraib scandal, Steven Jordan, had his conviction thrown out. We're seeing the systematic protection of those who have done such great harm to this country.

Our next President will either sustain these policies or end them. They'll either restore this nation or break any last vestiges of it. The choice is clear.

Sign the pledge.