POLYCONUNDRUM - The US President and Congress have involved themselves in one of the most cowardly public displays in US history. It is shameful that this system of detainee abuse was ever instituted by George W. Bush in the first place, but that it still exists some 11 years later is unbelievably disgraceful.
What absolutely irks my soul is knowing that most of the previous residents and remaining individuals left in Guantánamo are actually there because the US government payouts to Iraqis and Afghans involved in a capitalistic money-making scheme. The detainees are most likely only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that the US system has already determined and acknowledged that many of the detainees should have been released years before and that they are still there, is the ultimate in bureaucratic insolence.
As an ex US military man, I am particularly disturbed and uncompromising about the treatment of detainees as if they were actual combatants. But the fact that most are clearly not, is absolutely inexcusable.
A Desperate Situation at Guantánamo: Over 130 Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Dozens Being Force-Fed
DEMOCRACY NOW - The U.S. military has acknowledged for the first time the number of prisoners on hunger strike at the military prison has topped 100. About a fifth of the hunger strikers are now being force-fed. Lawyers for the prisoners say more than 130 men are taking part in the hunger strike, which began in February.
One of the hunger strikers is a Yemeni man named Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel. In a letter published in The New York Times, he wrote: "Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made. I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late." We speak to attorney Carlos Warner, who represents 11 prisoners at Guantánamo. He spoke to one of them on Friday.
"Unfortunately, they’re held because the president has no political will to end Guantánamo," Warner says. "The president has the authority to transfer individuals if he believes that it’s in the interests of the United States. But he doesn’t have the political will to do so because 166 men in Guantánamo don’t have much pull in the United States. But the average American on the street does not understand that half of these men, 86 of the men, are cleared for release."
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POLYCONUNDRUM - While torturing by water-boarding and some torture under the Obama Administration may have stopped, other tortures such as forced feeding, sensory deprivation, holding without charges, and solitary confinement in both military and other prisons foreign and domestic are still widespread.
U.N. Official Says Gitmo Force-Feeding Violates International Law
THINK PROGRESS - A United Nations official called the practice of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay “torture” on Wednesday, adding the world body to a growing list of those concerned over U.S. treatment of detainees there.
POLYCONUNDRUM - I found the President's recent comments regarding the situation in Guantánamo to be more whining than explanatory. While true that Congress has thrown up road blocks to his keeping his promises, it is especially clear that prisoners in Guantánamo are fully under the authority of the US military and thus its "commander in chief" -- thus current practices there with detainees rest fully on the President's shoulders and his conscience.
Obama Blasts Congressional Inaction On Guantanamo Hunger
ALL IN (MSNBC) - President Obama blasted congressional inaction in a wide-ranging news conference Tuesday by re-igniting the call to close Guantanamo particularly in light of the growing crisis there in the form of a hunger strike.
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POLYCONUNDRUM - What a dilemma our leaders have become. It seems the ones with conviction and forcefulness lack scruples and conscience and the ones with scruples and conscience lack forcefulness and fortitude.
