A post on this blog on Tuesday described a BBC interview with Guantanamo detainee military lawyer Major Tom Fleener; after calling the commissions “show trials,” he concluded “I don’t know how we got here, but I know we shouldn’t be here.”

Please read this article, The Evil of Banality, which I found to be one of the best, most powerful understandings of the Guantanamo atrocity I’ve seen to date. You can find it at The Dissident Voice:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/…..rini14.htm

Sorry to be so disorganized and “dump” with the info, but it is frustrating that info is available, but just flat ignored.

Did anyone ask the President just how dangerous the Uighurs had been when he talked about all the dangerous folks there – - has ANYONE EVER drilled him on them? Or asked him specifics on any of these other cases when he makes his “we got us dangerous folks there” statements?

If so, I haven’t seen it (but I confess I find it so painful or infuriating to watch that I don’t much).

http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..alled-wot/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…../26/AR2006 042602390.html

I brought flowers to the isolation cell when I visited Saddiq this month. He likes to draw roses and often asks for gardening magazines.
Saddiq is one of the many mistakes at Guantanamo Bay. In 2005 our military admitted that he was not an enemy combatant, but the government hasn’t been able to repatriate him. (By a curious irony, Saddiq’s opposition to Osama bin Laden makes him too hot to handle in his native Saudi Arabia.) So he lives behind razor wire in Camp Iguana, with eight other men whom the military cleared long ago but who are nevertheless forbidden newspapers, visits from loved ones, English-language dictionaries — and flowers.

So we have someone (apparently 8 or so) that we have determined are not enemy combatants after all – this guy being one who was jailed by the Taliban for being anti-binLaden and then taken to GITMO by Americans. Held for years, finally the ooops factor, but now still held, bc his opposition to bin Laden will put him at risk in his home country (Saudi Arabia btw – but we didn’t invade them, did we?). And “how held”? No contact with his family — even now that he is “cleared.” No books, no wilted flowers.

Then there’s these guys – causing a stir in England. Which is actually having a parlimentary investigation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…../01/AR2006 040101465.html

They had some passing contact with an imman who is on the terrorist list. The Brits came to them in England to try to convince them to go undercover and collect intel. One did a little, then quit, the others didn’t want to get inovled. A brother of one of them starts a business in Africa, the three go there (and even though NO ONE raises it, I’m even going to go with maybe there were thoughts and concerns about the African nexus). When they arrive, they are kidnapped and taken to GITMO. Where they have been held. For a long long time. No charges.

Courted as spies, held as combatants.
. . .
A review of hundreds of pages of documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Defense, a British court and the men’s attorneys illustrates how the U.S., British and Gambian governments worked together in an operation that circumvented their judicial systems and, through a process known as extraordinary rendition, had two men incarcerated who had not been charged with breaking any law.
. . .
The case has caused a political uproar in Britain. Critics say the documents show the British government has helped place people in Guantanamo, despite its claims that the prison is strictly a U.S. operation.
. . .
A parliamentary committee is investigating. “The key issue that certainly concerns me is whether our government, the British government, was involved in something that I would consider to be unlawful,” said Andrew Tyrie, the committee chairman. “I don’t want to live in a country that could be complicit in such abuses.”

Slate piece on the “invisible men” I linked to here:

http://tinyurl.com/pr4oe

Guantanamo represents a spectacular failure of every branch of government. Congress is willing to pass a bill stripping courts of habeas-corpus jurisdiction for detainees but unwilling to probe what happens to them.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Rasul v. Bush conferred seemingly theoretical rights enforceable in theoretical courtrooms. The right to challenge a government detention is older than this country and yet Guantanamo grinds on.

It grinds on because the Bush administration gets exactly what it pays for in that lease: Guantanamo is a not-place. It’s neither America nor Cuba. It is peopled by people without names who face no charges. ,b>Non-people facing non-trials to defend non-charges are not a story.

Then there has been the sadly bizarre case of the Chinese Uighurs

http://abcnews.go.com/Internat…..amp;page=1

You have to read the whole interview – I can’t really excerpt. But the backstory is that everyone knew right away they were an oops. But bc no one knew what to do with them, they kept them. Under the Guantanamo conditions and with no word or notice to their families.

Their case, after lawyers BATTLED to be able to represent them, ended up before the same judge who resigned from the FISA court in protest over the NSA taps program. Gosh, that DC Circuit court position COULD have gone to someone like this. *s* Anyway – the Judge was left with no legal recourse other than to tell the Govt that their detention was illegal (in some places I believe that is called a war crime). But they couldn’t be ordered returned to their home country, bc the reason they were in Afghanistan is that they were escaping abuse in their home country, China, and had been hoping to get to Turkey.

And despite its ooops factor, the US wouldn’t take them into the US and since immigration etc. is an Exec branch or Congressional matter, court could do nothing. Did any members of congress come forward to sponsor them? Nope. So they languished until — uh, their case on appeal was just about to be listed for the S. Ct. docket.

Cowabanga and Shazaaaam. We found someplace to take them after all.

I have to go do other stuff, but this whole situation makes me crazy and ashamed.