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

[Andreas Schou]

With regard to Bagram, Obama's in a bind.

There's no clear dividing line between Bagram Airfield and other battlefield
detention sites -- detention sites that are clearly subject to America's
treaty obligations w/r/t the laws of war, rather than the United States
Constitution. Conceding that Bagram Airfield is not a battlefield detention
site would have implications for all battlefield detention of POWs.

There is, however, a clear dividing line between Guantanamo and battlefield
detention sites; a dividing line that the Bush Administration clearly elided
in order to produce a pretext for indefinite detention of battlefield
detainees

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

> 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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> >
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