Friday, December 13, 2013

The Price of Fear, Anger and Hatred

UPDATE II:  Says the "first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay . . . 'many of the detainees should never have been sent in the first place. They had little intelligence value, and there was insufficient evidence linking them to war crimes. . . the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong. We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantánamo, both in terms of detention and torture. Our decision to keep Guantánamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States.'"

Read Slate,"A Prison That Should Never Have Been Opened".

Read also Does the Star-Spangled Banner Wave Over the Land of the Torturers?

 
UPDATE:  Who needs due process?  You do.

"For years now, War on Terrorism hawks have been arguing that terrorists -- by which they mean people accused of terrorism -- don't identify themselves like traditional enemies; and that it's foolish to read them their rights, to bring them before a judge, to require that evidence be presented to justify holding them, or to interfere with the judgment calls the executive branch makes in war time. . .

[The case of 'Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis, who was jailed for a week, interrogated while chained to a chair as the FBI turned his house upside down, with no confession or physical evidence tying him to the ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and other public officials'] is a reminder that being accused of a heinous act, like sending a poison-laced letter to the president, does not mean that the accused is guilty. It is an eye-opening look at an FBI apparently willing to continue holding a man it had good reason to believe innocent. And it is a demonstration of why our system requires appearing before a judge, with evidence, to hold a suspect: to protect innocents from being imprisoned, and to ensure that the real bad guys are found."

Read The Atlantic, What the Framing of a Terror Suspect Says About GOP Attacks on Due Process

"[S]even and a half years at Guantánamo, without explanation" and a stain on the U.S. Constitution.

Read The New York Times, My Guantánamo Nightmare.

No comments: