Denounce Torture

From the LA Times:

"No one thinks more than a few dozen detainees will ever be tried there," said Chris Anders, the ACLU legislative counsel. "I just don't see the next Congress authorizing any significant construction for additional courtrooms."

This posted today by Glib Fortuna on Stop The ACLU:

The ACLU is demanding that terrorists never get too hot nor too cold, it never be too loud nor too silent, too bright nor too dark, never stand in one place for too long, are never subjected to “culturally inappropriate” meals, never be prevented from throwing feces and semen at Marines…everything needs to be juuuuuuuuuuuuuust right for the most dangerous people in the world. Yeah, the ACLU wants someone to be “Safe and Free,” only it’s our enemies and not innocent Americans who will certainly be killed as a result of the absolute and permanent national surrender and castration the ACLU seems to require.

So what CAN be done when interrogating terrorists, ACLU?

Glib says the "ACLU continues to define 'torture' down...and down...and down," but what's really happening is that Glib's definition of a "terrorist" is going "down and..."...well, you get the point. The fact is that there are detainees at Gitmo who've suffered torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for years without ever being charged with a single crime or given a fair trial.

Moazzam Begg was arrested in Pakistan and held by U.S. agents at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan for one year before being transferred to Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay. He was released from Guantanamo in January 2005 after more than three years of detention where he faced ill-treatment. Moazzam was never charged or tried.

Abdullah Almalki was detained and interrogated in Syria beginning in May 2003 for twenty-two months. While detained, Abdullah regularly faced intense torture and was held in abysmal prison conditions. There are troubling allegations, still unresolved, as to whether Canadian law enforcement or security agencies may have played a role in Almalki’s detention and subsequent abuse.

A Pentagon spokesperson said that the detainees were sent to Afghanistan, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Libya and Bangladesh.

Unfortunately, a ticket home does not equal a happy ending for many repatriated from Gitmo. In fact, it's just the beginning for some.  Nina Odizheva described in an Amnesty report published last spring the condition of her son after his release from Gitmo:

“It changed him…he is completely ill…he lives on pills for all his major organs…he tries not to show it or tell me details so I don’t get upset...he has no appetite…he is a different person now…”  

Excerpts from a briefing in September on the Military Comissions Act that included retired Major General John Batiste and former army interrogator Peter Bauer (among others):

Barbara Olshansky from the Center for Constitutional Rights and our very own Jumana Musa spoke at a recent panel in Wilmington on torture, abuse and ill-treatment in the U.S.-led "war on terror." Here are some of the highlights: