[Marxism] Guantanamo Follies (remarkable NYT editorial)

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These are some of the strongest words yet written by this most prestigious
newspaper in the United States. Let's hope this editorial is reprinted in
every newspaper in the United States, if not the world. What Washington has
done is harming the interests of the United States, as well as the prisoners
it declares it can hold, without charge or trial, indefinitely. 

Like the Elian Gonzalez case seven years ago, we see again how the weed of
crime bears bitter fruit. Washington placed Elian Gonzalez in the home of a
band of rightist Cuban exiles who refused to return him to his father, even
after a court ordered that they do so. It took the armed intervention of the
federal government to rescue the child from those kidnapping militants.

Today, Bush and Co. is putting a demonstration on for the peoples of the
world to show them what kind of "democracy" they would bring to the rest of
Cuba if they had the power to do so. The New York Times understands that
this is not how Dale Carnegie would approach winning friends and influencing
people in the world. Here the NYT encourages the newly-seated congressional
Democratic leadership to take on the administration over these issues. This
editorial rightly points out that Congress gave Bush a blank check on these
issues in the past, but with a new leadership in the Congress, it hopes for
some corrective measures to be taken. They're certainly much needed!


Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/ 
=======================================================================

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/opinion/06fri1.html

Editorial
Guantánamo Follies

Published: April 6, 2007

There has been much speculation about the Supreme Court?s decision not to
hear an appeal from a group of Guantánamo Bay inmates until they have
exhausted their legal options. Was the court signaling that the appeal had
no merit? Were the court?s liberals waiting for a better chance to review
President Bush?s unconstitutional detention system for ?illegal enemy
combatants??

Whatever the justices? intentions, we saw one clear message in their
decision, and we hope that Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Harry Reid,
the Senate majority leader, saw it too. It is past time for Congress to undo
the grievous damage done by President Bush?s abuse of the Constitution when
he created his system of secret prisons and public internment camps to
detain selected foreigners indefinitely without any real legal challenge.

In the months since Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
the administration has pushed ahead with the show trials permitted by the
law. Each development in that courtroom brings fresh evidence of how urgent
it is for the courts to strike down that law and for Congress to rewrite it.

The plea bargain: Last month, after being held at Guantánamo for five years,
David Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty to a single, relatively
minor charge in exchange for his freedom. This deal should infuriate any
side of the debate.

Americans who support Mr. Bush?s policy on prisoners accepted its premise:
that the people in Guantánamo are so dangerous that letting any out will
compromise American security. If an injustice were committed here or there,
Americans would just have to grit their teeth. How does that square with
allowing Mr. Hicks to go home and quickly go free? Worse, the plea bargain
seemed timed to help Prime Minister John Howard, a Bush ally whose inaction
on the case was becoming a re-election issue in Australia.

For Americans, like us, who are sickened by the Guantánamo prison, the Hicks
bargain was emblematic of its lawless nature. If there was evidence that Mr.
Hicks was a terrorist, we have yet to see it. He was declared an illegal
combatant by a kangaroo court created to confirm that designation, which had
been applied long before. He was denied a lawyer and censored by the court
when he tried to pursue abuse charges. Under his plea bargain he gave up his
right to sue, repudiated his own accounts of abuse and was even barred from
talking to the news media about his experience.

To understand why Mr. Hicks still found that sort of deal attractive,
remember that once a person is declared an ?illegal enemy combatant,? he
faces a lifetime in detention. He might be released by a ?combatant status
tribunal,? but his chances are very slim, and the process mocks civilized
standards of justice. If the prisoner is one of the very few that the
Pentagon plans to charge with a crime, he will be brought before a military
tribunal. That court may use evidence obtained through hearsay, coercion or
even torture. If convicted, there is little likelihood that he will be
released after serving his time. If acquitted, he just goes back to being an
illegal combatant who can be held for life.

The censored confession: On March 14, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, accused of
the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and other crimes, went before a combatant
status tribunal. According to a transcript, Mr. Nashiri said he was
tortured. But it is Mr. Bush?s policy that no prisoner may allege torture in
public, so this is what appeared in the transcript:

PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.

DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing
so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method
of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the
investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that
I knew. And if I didn?t replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).

Officials defended this censorship by arguing that interrogation methods are
so secret that they cannot be discussed, even by the prisoner. But they also
said that Al Qaeda members are trained to claim torture and that Mr. Nashiri
lied. If so, why censor the transcript? His answers can?t help Al Qaeda.
Tragically, the most likely answer is to spare United States intelligence
agents and their bosses, who could face charges if the Military Commissions
Act is ever repealed or rewritten. The law gives a retroactive carte blanche
to American interrogators for any abuse they may have committed.

The lawsuit: The case the Supreme Court turned down this week was filed by
Guantánamo inmates who contend that their detention was illegal and that the
Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional. We agree. Holding people
without evidence or charges or trial is barbaric, as is denying them the
right to challenge their detention in a real court, a right generally
referred to as habeas corpus.

Both violate the Constitution, and the court should strike down the Military
Commissions Act of 2006, and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which
limits avenues for appeal. But Congress approved the military commissions,
left in place the combatant status review tribunals and suspended habeas
corpus. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have a moral obligation to lead the way to
righting these wrongs.


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