GUANTANAMO: THE WRITING ON THE WALL

READ THE WRITING ON THE GUANTANAMO'S WALLS
And You Will Find the Language There Is Unamerican. Our country, formerly a leader for human rights, has fallen into an abyss of apologies for atrocities small and large committed against both the letter and the spirit of the rule of law.  What ghosts will haunt us for these spectral acts remain to be seen.  We are witness again to the total abnegation of the meaning of words, of agreements written and signed.  At Guantanamo, no law applies but what some putative king would have.

At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said Congress should help to define the legal rights of the inmates at the prison, which the panel's top Democrat called "an international embarrassment."
Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden asked Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins whether the Justice Department had "defined when there is the end of conflict."
"No, sir," Wiggins responded.
"If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay," Biden said.
"It's our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity," Wiggins said.
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REUTERS

The implications of Wiggins words are more endless than the sentences the government would hand down without trials.  We have come from a strength that extends rights to a point where we limit them for dark purpose.  What wrongs are visited upon the least inevitably extend in shadow upon the stronger. We are witness to a darkness visible, a black hole of the soul that would suck in our society and let no light out.

 

SOME LOWLIGHTS FROM WIGGINS TESTIMONY

• the military has determined that many of those individuals should be detained during the conflict as enemy combatants. Such detention is not for criminal justice purposes and is not part of our Nation's criminal justice system.

• The President explained in the Order that the creation of military commissions was necessary to “protect the United States and its citizens” and that the commissions would not be governed by the principles of law and rules of evidence applicable to criminal cases in the U.S. district courts because of the threat international terrorism poses to the safety of the United States.

• The President may approve or disapprove the commission’s findings and may change a finding of guilty to a finding of guilty on a lesser-included offense, or mitigate, commute, defer, or suspend the sentence imposed. Neither the President nor the Secretary may change a finding of not guilty to a finding of guilty.

• First, the Geneva Convention does not provide detainees with rights enforceable in the courts of the United States. In Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), the Supreme Court held that the 1929 Geneva Convention, the predecessor to the 1949 Convention, did not confer on detainees rights enforceable in our domestic, civilian courts. There is nothing in the 1949 Convention’s text or ratification history to suggest that the United States or other ratifying nations intended to revolutionize the Convention by granting detainees judicially enforceable rights. To the contrary, the Convention sets out an elaborate dispute-resolution procedure making no mention of private litigation in the domestic courts of signatory nations.

• the President has determined that the Convention does not apply to al Qaida, and even if he had not made that determination, there is no doubt that members of al Qaida, which, among other things, does not comply with the laws of war, does not qualify for POW status under the Convention.

• if military commissions must follow the same procedures as courts-martial, there is no point in having them.

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US SENATE RECORD

At some point Americans must ask when did following rules become an inconvenience. If we must lose America to save America, what is left to us?

Comments

[doinkicarus]

"It's our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity," [Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael] Wiggins said.

Absolutely appalling. A government of a "free society" cannot simply hold people because they don't have enough evidence to charge them, because that effectively negates the presumed innocence. You are now presuming them guilty, and holding out for more (if any) evidence. The question to ask, then, is: When are you satisfied that there exists no evidence that will be sufficient enough to bring charges against someone you are detaining? When do you let them go, after 2 years, or 6 years, or 10 or more, of looking for evidence-- how do you decide that it's just not there?

perpetuity. unfuckingbelievable.