Hell, it violates our OWN laws.

From Yahoo News...
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.

Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a "desperate act" but "scarcely surprising".

"We must be clear about this: the United States is in clear breach not just of its own commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to uphold," the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged four years ago to close the controversial facility, opened by the Bush administration in January 2002 to hold men captured in counter-terrorism operations after the deadly September 11 attacks on America.

Pillay voiced deep disappointment at the U.S. government's failure to close Guantanamo despite its repeated commitments, but welcomed comments by a White House spokesman last week reiterating the intention to do so while citing congressional legislation as the prime obstacle.

About half of the current 166 detainees have been cleared for transfer either to home countries or third countries for resettlement, Pillay said. "As a first step, those who have been cleared for release must be released," she said.

Guantanamo Bay Garage Sale

From Acerbic Politics

Gitmo

It is the hope of just about every fair-minded American that Barack Obama will stop the torture of prisoners and close Guantanamo Bay shortly after noon tomorrow. Even the prisoners in the island prison are aware of what's going on and are letting their feelings be known. From Times Online...

Nearly a fifth of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay have gone on hunger strike with the aim of attracting the attention of Barack Obama, military officials have told The Times. Most of them are being force-fed.

Of the 248 inmates inside the detention facility, 44 are refusing food — but 33 of those are receiving nutrition with tubes that are forced up their noses and into their stomachs.

Gunatanamo is a Hell Hole

The morality of those in the Bush Administration, along with their professed love for the Christian Word, must lead one to believe, if they are to be believed, that their God is a heartless, cruel and demonic God.

The following is from Daily Kos - click the link to read more.

Lt. Col. Colby Vokey has served in the Marine Corp for the last twenty years, and spent the last four as chief of the Corps' defense lawyers for the western United States. Everyone who knows Vokey has described him as the straightest of straight arrows.

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The U.S. has imprisoned hundreds of "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay in a military legal system that Vokey denounces as "horrific." Vokey saw the system first-hand when he agreed two years ago to defend a teenager there who had been charged with murdering a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Vokey said he knew the case would be difficult, but he discovered that the legal system at Guantanamo is a "sham."

Vokey's 15 year-old Canadian client had been tortured into signing a confession, including being used a "human mop" to wipe his own urine off the floor after being left chained in painful positions for many hours at a time. Vokey was kept from meeting with his client, or from seeing the evidence against him.

Whistleblower on Guantanamo

Not much more new here either - another man with a conscience finally wakes up to tell the truth. From the Independent - click the link to read more.

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants".

The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".

Did You Know - Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz

If you've ever wondered what sort of moral values the Bushies carry in their hearts, you need do no more than read this article...

From Courage to Resist...

On May 18, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz was sentenced to six months in a Navel brig and removal from the Navy for courageously upholding the constitution of the United States. Apparently this is a very serious crime in America today. Lt. Cmdr. Diaz is actually counting himself lucky, as the 41-year-old officer with 19-years of service to the U.S. Navy faced a possible 14 years in prison.

Diaz was a military attorney assigned to investigate abuses of prisoners at Guantánamo, the legal black hole dungeon that operates outside of domestic and international law according to the Bush administration. Taking this assignment seriously not only some-what predictably ended his military career; it might have landed himself in prison until the year 2021.

Did You Know - Innocent but Incarcerated

More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

The compassionate Bush administration continues to show it's zeal for protecting innocent human beings, no matter what their nationality. Maybe GWB could save everyone a lot of trouble if we just treated them like other enemy combatants, and turn them loose on the streets of Baghdad! From the Washington Post...

Guantanamo Detainees

Perhaps I wouldn't object so much to the poor treatment of detainees in our military prisons if the right people were imprisoned there. Nah - that's not true either - everyone deserves some basic civil rights. Even these lowlifes.

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