Friday Cartoon Fun: Obama's Gitmo Edition

Wednesday Cartoon Fun: Gitmo Detainee Edition

Taibbi On Obama's Only Term

I am afraid Obama is heading toward becoming a one-termer. I am not alone...

Instead, Obama is on his way to doing exactly the wrong thing. He’s going to make a show of closing the base, but retain the underlying idea by keeping some of the prisoners in indefinite legal purgatory. In some ways this is worse than what Bush did, because Bush at least took a clear stand — he was nuts and thought this was the right thing to do. No matter how you look at Obama’s decision, it’s weighed somewhere along the line by political calculation. Either he thinks indefinite decision is right and he’s bowing to public appeals by closing the base, or else he thinks it’s wrong and is bowing to opposition outcry by maintaining the old policy.

It’s one thing to change your mind or play both sides of the fence on matters that don’t involve human lives, on theoretical/hypothetical campaign issues, but another thing to do it with actual incarcerated human beings as the key variable in the political equation.

Saturday Cartoon Fun: Gitmo Edition

We'll Let You Go If You Lie About Torture, Okay?

This is from Jonathan Turley. He was on Rachel Maddow's show last night talking about this and the Obama/Cheney exchange. His take on the Obama/Cheney thing caught me by surprise; I thought Obama smacked Cheney down. Turley thinks Obama, by even having this dialogue with Cheney, is perpetuating the slide toward changing history instead of vindicating it with war crimes trials. You need to watch the Maddow clip, he is impassioned about it, and you should be too! (in the first graf of Turley's post).

Court: United States Offered to Release Detainee If He Would Not Reveal His Own Torture

Two British High Court judges have released a very disturbing decision that finds that ormer detainee Binyam Mohamed was offered his freedom by the United States in exchange for his promise not to reveal his own torture at Guantanamo Bay. Equally disturbing is the statement from the English government that it cannot release proof of the torture because of objections from the United States government. If the Obama Administration is continuing this position, it is not only blocking prosecution of war crimes but the release of evidence of such war crimes to other nations. I discussed this and other developments on this segment of Rachel Maddow’s show.

Mohamed is an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager and was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured Pakistan and in Morocco. He was then transferred to the United States, which also tortured him.

All charges against him were dropped last year. He refused our Faustian bargain.

Lord Justice John Thomas and Mr. Justice David Lloyd Jones said that there was evidence to show Mohamed was tortured, but that the documents could not be made public because of the objections by the United States. Presumably, if the Obama Administration lifted such objections publicly, the British government would not have a basis to withhold the material.

For the full story, click here and here.

Close Gitmo And Secret Black CIA Sites

From the Washington Post:

White House counsel Gregory B. Craig, who has spent the past several weeks drafting the orders, and discussed them with senior Democratic lawmakers in recent days, briefed House Republicans on Capitol Hill yesterday. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) said Craig told members of Congress to expect "several" executive orders on Guantanamo Bay, including closure of the prison, but did not provide specific language.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement that "there are important questions that must be answered before the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay can be closed. The key question is where do you put these terrorists?"

Sources familiar with the briefings said Obama also will sign two executive orders altering CIA detention and interrogation rules, limiting interrogation standards in all U.S. facilities worldwide to those outlined in the Army Field Manual, and prohibiting the agency from secretly holding terrorist detainees in third-country prisons.