Obama Acts: Guantanamo to Close

OK, now I'll join the optimists who expect an Obama Administration commitment --- despite the last, desperate interference of Vice President Dick Cheney --- to shut down Camp X-Ray soon after the Inauguration in January 2009:

The Defense Department is drawing up plans to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in anticipation that one of President-elect Barack Obama's first acts will be ordering the closure of the detention center associated with the abuse of terror suspects.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates still technically works for George W. Bush, so the confirmation from the Pentagon indicates that the current Administration is standing aside. More importantly  the Department of Defense, which helped launch this illegal and counter-productive regime, is now prepared to shut it down.

The downside of this process is that it will still take months to find and implement an arrangement for the 250 detainees still at the prison. It is unclear how many will be kept under lock-and-key in the American system and if those released can return to their home countries, have to be accommodated in the United States, or will be accepted by a third country such as Portugal.

Just a Reminder on Torture: Dick Cheney is a Liar

It's one thing, from your office of Vice President, to make an unprecedented grab for Executive Power. It's another to lie blatantly about your efforts.



Dick Cheney to ABC News, 15 December 2008:

On the question of so-called "torture", we don't do torture, we never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.

Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody, December 2008:

The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) interrogation program included at least one SERE* training technique, waterboarding. Senior Administration lawyers, including Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and David Addington, Counsel to the Vice President, were consulted on the development of legal analysis of CIA interrogation techniques. Legal opinions subsequently issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) interpreted legal obligations under U.S. anti-torture laws and determined the legality of CIA interrogation techniques. Those OLC opinions distorted the meaning and intent of anti-torture laws, rationalized the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody and influenced Department of Defense determinations as to what interrogation techniques were legal for use during interrogations conducted by U.S. military personnel.

*SERE stands for Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape training, exposing US forces to techniques “based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years”.

Fact x Importance = News (16 Dec): Camp X-Ray, Khatami, Bad Cheney, Lovely Obama

Other stories we're following:

SHHH! DON'T MENTION THOSE UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS

In contrast to the glare of publicity the Bush Administration shone on its trial of 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, cut short when he and other defendants tried to plead guilty, all the President's men and women are keeping quiet about the latest developments at Guantanamo Bay.



Three of six Bosnians held at Camp X-Ray will soon released, according to defense lawyers with information from Guantanamo and Bosnian officials. Last month, a Federal judge ruled against the Bush Administration, declaring there was insufficient evidence to show that five of the six, all of whom were born in Algeria, were "unlawful combatants". No word, however, on the fate of the others, including Lakhdar Boumediene, whose name is associated with a Supreme Court decision regarding the legal rights of detainees.

Meanwhile, "the Supreme Court yesterday kept alive a lawsuit by four British citizens who had been detained as terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay and had alleged that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials were responsible for their torture and the denial of their religious rights".

TODAY'S NON-APOLOGY: CHENEY STILL GROWLS


For anyone who thought Vice President Dick Cheney might be regretting any of the Executive Power he grasped with his detaining/surveilling/renditioning/torturing/war-fighting/Constitution-shredding hands over the last eight years. Facing the tough interrogation of Rush Limbaugh, he held firm:

Once they get here and they're faced with the same problems we deal with every day, then they will appreciate some of the things we've put in place."

And...

Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE:

The BBC's Today programme confidently reported this morning that the United Nations was on the verge of endoring "the Arab proposal", first mooted by Saudi Arabia in 2002, for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

There has been no further word, however, and The New York Times has a different perspective:

Senior Arab ministers met with the quartet of Middle East peace negotiators at the United Nations on Monday and lamented the lack of any concrete results after a year of renewed efforts

KHATAMI: WILL HE RUN, WON'T HE RUN?

From Iran, The New York Times offers a non-too-veiled boost to former President Mohammad Khatami as he continues his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to challenge for the Presidency next spring.

TODAY'S LONGEST LOVE LETTER: I HEART OBAMA


Helene Cooper writes in The New York Times, allegedly on President-elect Obama and foreign policy team:

[Obama] has read “Ghost Wars,” the history of the long adventure by the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan and its fruitless effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. He has sought the counsel of an old Republican realist — Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser — who has long argued against an ideologically driven foreign policy.

And he has one-upped President Bush’s six intelligence briefings a week by demanding seven, prompting Mike McConnell, who handles presidential briefings as the director of national intelligence, to joke, “I don’t know if there’s some kind of competition going.”

Etc., etc. for 1000 words.

The Torture Blame Game: Better Late than Never?

Most newspapers note the report of the Senate Armed Services Committee concluding that top Bush Administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, authorised torture in the name of the War of Terror.



Of course, the report doesn't use the T-word, couching its findings:

Senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.

Nor does the report implicate the originator of the "aggressive techniques", Vice President Dick Cheney, who began seeking authority for such an approach within days of 9-11. Because the report starts its narrative from a Presidential memorandum signed 7 February 2002, it omits the story --- told in articles and books by Jane Mayer, Philippe Sands, and Barton Gellman amongst others --- of how Cheney's office led the attempt to circumvent Congress and the courts to expand Executive power for detention and torture.

The 250-page report is still classified, but a 19-page unclassified executive summary has been released.