[Vision2020] The more things change the more they stay the same

[Paul Rumelhart]

In my opinion, it's wrong to torture prisoners AND it's wrong to hold 
them indefinitely.  If I'm understanding this correctly, Obama just 
failed us all here.

Paul

Glenn Schwaller wrote:
> I'm not certain that having beaten or not beaten people is really 
> relevant.  Had the detainees at Guantanamo not been beaten or 
> tortured, it would then have been perfectly OK to hold them 
> indefinitely?  I was under the assumption (and this could be part of 
> the problem) that creating prisons outside of the law, holding 
> prisoners without charges, repeatedly interrogating them with no 
> attorneys present, in short - denying them basic rights, was a key 
> issue behind the arguments to close Guantanamo.  I think a little 
> clarification to your statement is needed Sunil.
>
> GS
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Sunil Ramalingam 
> <sunilramalingam at hotmail.com <mailto:sunilramalingam at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Disgusting.  If we hadn't beaten people to death there this might
>     be different.  But we have, and people have been held there before
>     being moved to Guantanimo and elsewhere. 
>
>     Sunil
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:04:24 -0800
>     From: vpschwaller at gmail.com <mailto:vpschwaller at gmail.com>
>     To: vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>
>     Subject: [Vision2020] The more things change the more they stay
>     the same
>
>
>     By NEDRA PICKLER and MATT APUZZO
>
>     WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration, siding with the Bush
>     White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have
>     no constitutional rights.
>     In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it
>     agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to
>     challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
>     "The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different
>     path has not turned out as we'd hoped," said Tina Monshipour
>     Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the
>     Bagram Airfield. "We all expected better."
>     The Supreme Court last summer gave al-Qaida and Taliban suspects
>     held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to
>     challenge their detention. With about 600 detainees at Bagram Air
>     Base in Afghanistan and thousands more held in Iraq, courts are
>     grappling with whether they, too, can sue to be released.
>     Three months after the Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo Bay,
>     four Afghan citizens being detained at Bagram tried to challenge
>     their detentions in U.S. District Court in Washington. Court
>     filings alleged that the U.S. military had held them without
>     charges, repeatedly interrogating them without any means to
>     contact an attorney. Their petition was filed by relatives on
>     their behalf since they had no way of getting access to the legal
>     system.
>     The military has determined that all the detainees at Bagram are
>     "enemy combatants." The Bush administration said in a response to
>     the petition last year that the enemy combatant status of the
>     Bagram detainees is reviewed every six months, taking into
>     consideration classified intelligence and testimony from those
>     involved in their capture and interrogation.
>     After Barack Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave
>     the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to
>     stand by Bush's legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean
>     Boyd says the filing speaks for itself.
>     "They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons
>     outside the law," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the
>     American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.
>     The Justice Department argues that Bagram is different from
>     Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and the
>     prisoners there are being held as part of a military action. The
>     government argues that releasing enemy combatants into the Afghan
>     war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their
>     legal cases, could threaten security.
>     The government also said if the Bagram detainees got access to the
>     courts, it would allow all foreigners captured by the United
>     States in conflicts worldwide to do the same.
>     It's not the first time that the Obama administration has used a
>     Bush administration legal argument after promising to review it.
>     Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a review of
>     every court case in which the Bush administration invoked the
>     state secrets privilege, a separate legal tool it used to have
>     lawsuits thrown out rather than reveal secrets.
>     The same day, however, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter
>     cited that privilege in asking an appeals court to uphold
>     dismissal of a suit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally
>     helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists to allied foreign nations
>     that tortured them.
>     Letter said that Obama officials approved his argument.
>
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