SUA Staff – While America is focused on Republican candidates, debates, primaries, and caucuses, the Fast and Furious Scandal, much higher gas prices then ever before, and the conflicts in Syria, we are being distracted from what Eric Holder and his associates are really spending their time on.
Rather than producing documents pertaining to the Fast and Furious scandal, the Solyndra debacle, the sentencing of the Holyland trial convictions, or prosecuting the New Black Panther polling place thugs, he is an integral part of the Obama re-election team. The team leader in achieving Obama promises concerning the Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) detention center.
As part of that campaign, it seems they are working quietly to empty Gitmo; a ploy that will shore up their base and create a great set of campaign ‘talking points’. This all despite the fact that the Obama administration has continued the Bush era wire-tap policies. A fact that will be easily hidden behind Gitmo moves.
Meanwhile, Obama is under fire for secret detentions of Somali terror suspects, a subject the left railed about during the Bush years that are still in force:
The militant Somali group al-Shabab is one of the organisations Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame is said to have joined. Photograph: AP
The Obama administration approved the secret detention of a Somali terror suspect on board a US navy ship, where for two months he was subjected to military interrogation in the absence of a lawyer and without charge.
The capture and treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame has rekindled the debate within the US about the appropriate handling of terror suspects. Republicans in Congress have objected to Warsame being brought to New York this week to be tried in a criminal court – an attempt by the Obama administration to avoid sending the prisoner to Guantánamo Bay, which it has promised to close.
Soon, probably close to voting day in November, we will find that Gitmo is empty. Holder is feverishly working on a deal to transfer five of the top leaders of the Taliban now, trying to send them to a new home in Qatar, where a new Taliban headquarters has been erected paid for by your tax dollars. Five of the worst of the worst.
We all remember the release of Uighur detainees who were sent to live the life on the wonderful islands of Palau.
Of these detainees slated for transfer, Majid Khan, has a very nasty history and has even nastier lawyers that come from the Center for Constitutional Rights. (Videos available here.) These friends and associates act as Eric Holder’s silent law partners from both his time at Covington & Burling and now at the Department of Justice. Majid has three lawyers, Gitanjali Gutierrez, Wells Dixon, and Shayana Kadidal. Another of these worst of the worst is Ammar al Baluchi.
But what about the true picture of what Gitmo really is, ask the Belgians:
Gitmo Better Than Belgian Prisons
Inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison are treated better than in Belgian jails, an expert for Europe’s biggest security organization said on Monday after a visit to the controversial U.S. detention center. [snip]Grignard told a news conference that prisoners’ right to practice their religion, food, clothes and medical care were better than in Belgian prisons.
“I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit,” Grignard said.
This is certainly not the impression we get from any media accounts of Gitmo. On FridayTime Magazine made national headlines with the story that Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called “20th hijacker,” was recanting all of his previous testimony, claiming he made everything up because he was being tortured.
Lost amid the sensational headlines is that Qahtani’s reversal came after two recent visits with a newly appointed lawyer, Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, from the ultra-liberal Center For Constitutional Rights. Gutierrez is part of CCR’s “Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative” designed to “expand CCR’s defense of human rights and the rule of law to combat abuses of Executive power by the U.S. throughout the world.”
I sifted through the log of Qahtani’s interrogation that accompanied Time’s report and from what I read it seems as if he was treated perfectly within bounds. The full interrogation log (pdf) is here, so go read it and decide for yourself whether Qahtani was tortured or not.
Also last Friday the BBC ran a story headlined, “Guantanamo man tells of ‘torture’.” Here is an excerpt from the BBC’s interview with Fawzi al-Odah, a Kuwaiti citizen currently being held at Gitmo:
Through his lawyer, Mr Odah described his treatment during his hunger strike.”First they took my comfort items away from me. You know, my blanket, my towel, my long pants, then my shoes. I was put in isolation for 10 days.
“They came in and read out an order. It said if you refuse to eat, we will put you on the chair [for force feeding].”
Remember, these people are trying to starve themselves to death. Imagine the reaction of human rights organizations if the United States military stood by and allowed two dozen or more prisoners to die of starvation.
The idea that force feeding prisoners to keep them alive constitutes “torture” borders on the insane. These men are are being offered food and adequate care, but they are refusing. As a result the United States military is put in an impossible situation; force them to eat or let them die. The goal of critics, of course, is to make either of these choices such a public relations nightmare for the United States that the Pentagon is forced to go with the only other option: close Gitmo down altogether.
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Also, watch this video about Obama’s continued use of Bush policies here:
