It's always difficult to know where to start when discussing Guantanamo. My instinct is to grab a couple of phone directories and to tear them apart with frustration and/or to resort to Anglo-Saxon verbiage aimed at George W Bush. Forming one's thoughts into any sense of structure is difficult. My sense of outrage is so visceral that my reaction is best summed up by a loud guttural roar. Articulation through the English language on this subject was surpassed some time ago.
I am hoping for a decent outcome to the latest cases going through the Supreme Court: Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v United States. The cases rest on the right of habeas corpus. So we are talking basic rights here.
I have just been listening to Tom Wilner on BBC News24. He's a lawyer for some of the defendants. His condemnation of the Bush administrations' actions was stiletto-like. In an interview with The Talking Dog a year ago, he said:
On my own reflections, as a Jewish boy growing up in this country, we like to think that things like this don't happen, we have too many checks and balances. But all the checks let us down.
...As the Denbeauxs' Seton Hall report tells us, most people held at Guantanamo are not even accused of terrorism. While some complain of the security conditions Moussaoui will now be sent to-- 23 hour a day lockdown and all-- he was convicted! My clients haven't even been charged! And yet while two are at Camp 4 with some human interaction, the others are in isolation for all but a few minutes of exercise a week, deprived of human conduct... and they are not even CHARGED.
All that is being asked for is a fair hearing for the detainees after six years of detention. Many of them were turned over for bounties and the evidence against them, which has not been shared with them, has often been procured by torture.
The real essence of Guantanamo is that it has been set up to avoid the law. It is outside the law.
Pass the Woking area yellow pages immediately....
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