.
The President deserves full credit for a succinct explanation of why the situation at Guantanamo is a humanitarian disaster and a foreign policy embarrassment. (I couldn’t find an embed containing just the President’s comments; the official White House channel includes only the full 48-minute press conference — relevant portion starts at 25:20.) If nothing else, he has brought a new level of attention to the plight of detainees.
There’s a seven-minute PBS Newshour clip at the end of this post, with Charlie Savage providing some background to Gwen Ifill. Further discussion:
Amy Davidson at the New Yorker does the math on “A Hundred Hungry Men at Guantanamo“:
… A hundred prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike at Guantánamo now—a hundred angry men, or ones who are in a state of despair. There may be more, since that is the military’s count, and the lawyers for the prisoners have been saying for some time that the number is higher. There are not, it should be said, a hundred prisoners at Guantánamo who even the United States government considers dangerous enemy combatants; that means it’s a mathematical necessity that there are hunger-strikers who shouldn’t be there, either. Eighty-six prisoners have been cleared for release, one way or the other, many of them years ago now, but have not been released. (For many, the problem is that they are from Yemen.) That leaves just eighty. They are roughly divided between those the Administration says it might bestir itself to bring a case against someday, and those it acknowledges it doesn’t have enough evidence against, but finds somehow unsettling, and so is locking up anyway. There are only six prisoners who are now facing military commissions. A month ago, there were only thirty-one hunger strikers by the military’s count, or five times as many as those being tried. Now the ratio is more than sixteen to one….
Adam Serwer at Mother Jones, “Can Obama Stop the Uprising at Gitmo?“:
… Congress has done everything it can short of making transfers illegal to prevent the administration from sending Gitmo detainees elsewhere. Current law states that the secretary of defense has to certify that, among other requirements, the detainee being transferred won’t ever pose a threat in the future, which is ultimately not something the administration can control. Although the rate of former Gitmo detainees who later join terrorist groups is relatively low—and lower than it was during the Bush administration—any failure would be politically toxic, and the certification process ensures that the Obama administration would bear full responsibility. “The restrictions have made it extraordinarily difficult, and that the process is fraught with legal hurdles,” said a defense official. “Some of the things that we are asked to do simply cannot be verified.”…
Joe Nocera, in the NYTimes, on “The Detainees’ Dilemma“:
Fadhel Hussein Saleh Hentif is one of about 100 detainees on a hunger strike in the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was captured in 2001 by Pakistanis after crossing the border from Afghanistan, and, by 2002, he was in the American naval detention facility. He was 20 years old. He has been there since.
Although the Americans contend that Hentif left his home in Yemen to become an Al Qaeda jihadist, he has always insisted that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A devout Muslim, he says he went to Afghanistan to do charitable work to honor the memory of his father — and that he then left Afghanistan for Pakistan because, as one of his lawyers, Robert Palmer, put it to me recently, “the place was a mess.” …
On April 13, Hentif was returning from morning prayers when the raid began. He was pushed up against a fence and shot with rubber bullets at such close range that five of them penetrated the skin. He was handcuffed and taken to the clinic. Now back in solitary confinement, he is worried that one of his wounds is becoming infected. Given their concerns about hunger strikers, the military medical staff haven’t been able to pay him much attention…
Slate has put online “The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi“:
Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret…
The New York Times published a ‘Room for Debate’ roundtable on “The Ethics of Force Feeding Inmates“:
Incarceration creates not only a loss of freedom of action, but of decision making. When a person is incarcerated his health care and life are now the responsibility of the prison or jail staff. Institutional policies are directed at preventing self-destructive behavior as well as preventing violence to others…
In some jurisdictions it may be necessary to obtain the consent of the court, or a legally appointed patient guardian, for such intervention. To my knowledge, case law in this country has not failed to support life-saving interventions in such instances.
Health professionals regularly make decisions about the continuation and discontinuation of treatment and they have to accept patients’ decisions to refuse treatment even if this may result in their deaths. The right to refuse medical interventions to provide nutrition and hydration should also be extended to prisoners as autonomous individuals…
Nurses who refuse to participate in force-feeding are, in my view, acting in accord with their professional values. Force-feeding is not part of nurses’ caring repertoire.
Moreover, there cannot be a health care solution to a political problem. We can only hope that President Obama, with his characteristic wisdom, demonstrates compassion and justice so that prisoners at Guantánamo will not feel they need to resort to such extreme measures to be heard.
Just Some Fuckhead
The very least we can do is let the prisoners that want to die kill themselves.
Phil Perspective
@Just Some Fuckhead: And what do you say to the innocents still held there like Shaker Aamer?
rikyrah
there were a whole lotta DEMOCRATS that have NEVER had the President’s back on Guantanamo
Hill Dweller
Did the wingnuts say a word when Bush was releasing hundreds of detainees from Guantanamo? Dubya released approximately 600 detainees, but you’d never know it listening to the wingnuts.
Turgidson
@rikyrah:
Yeah but this is really due to Obama’s failure to lead, and also that he’s pure evil and this is actually precisely what he wanted to happen all along.
Maude
@Hill Dweller:
I remember when Bush released the old detainee with the walker.
NotMax
Under the right-side ‘logic,’ Obama sitting down for a drink (non-alcohlic, of course) with al-Zawahiri would solve everything.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Yep. That’s the problem. But a definite case of “not Obama’s fault.” I’ve got differences with him but this ain’t one of them.
@Hill Dweller:
Well, not at the time, but I’m sure that retroactively, they TOTALLY DID disagree with Bush, in fact it proves he was a liberal.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Phil Perspective:
I’d let him/them know the only thing that matters: it isn’t Obama’s fault.
Davis X. Machina
“Obama wants to close”, or “really wants to close”?
Policy-schmolicy. I want arm’s-length amateur psychoanalyis of motives, dammit, and if can’t get it here, I’ll go elsewhere.
kindness
Republicans to the Prez:
‘You can close Gitmo when you pry it from my cold dead hands’
Prez:
‘Say, that is not a bad idea’
(continuing on with our death themed day)
Eric U.
I think Obama should use the sequester to close guantanamo. Let the asshole republicans sue him
NotMax
The printing of the memoir by one Guantánamo prisoner is shattering reading, but urge people to steel themselves and read through all the installments.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Eric U.: If it didn’t cost any money to close it, he would have done so. Part of the problem is that the Republicans don’t actually care if the detainees die.
ETA: I’m not even sure if they would care if the soldiers died.
schrodinger's cat
Its not just Gitmo, the Republicans have made it impossible for Obama to govern and our press blames Obama for not showing enough “leadership”.
Poopyman
Close Guantanamo? Ha! That just what he wants you sheeple to think! In reality, he knows that the more he’s for something, the more the GOP is against it. So if he reeely wanted to close it, he’d push for keeping it open. But no! This is his vaunted 11-dimensional chess skiz finally coming through. He sold us out! Again!
Wake up, sheeple!
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Exactly. It was when the Dems had a majority in the Senate and the House that President Obama’s mandate to close Guantanamo Bay was thwarted.
PhoenixRising
We can’t afford food stamps for elderly people who worked and paid taxes all their lives, but we can afford to hold these prisoners indefinitely? Someone sequester this thing, stat.
“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”, -Bobby Sands.
We will never be safe. So what is the right price for 99% safe?
Ben Franklin
Serwer;
More detainees have died in detention than been successfully tried in military commissions,
I see the strategery.
Ben Franklin
@Just Some Fuckhead:
it isn’t Obama’s fault.
I like it. I use something similar every time I forget an important date, or there’s heavy work in the offing…..
I’m Old.
scav
@PhoenixRising: Depends. Are they waving firearms or not? That, a lawn chair and an NRA membership card makes them freedom fighters. Chik-Fil-A lunch optional but suggested.
gene108
Waiting for Warren, Sander, Franken, et. al. to step up and demand GITMO be closed, because right now Obama’s just pissing in the wind and not getting any help from Congressional Democrats.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Claire McCaskill comes to mind. As soon as President Obama signed the Executive Order she was all over my teevee about it. I think there were 96 Senators who voted to deny funds for transport and trial.
Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad vote.
joes527
@kindness: That’s a convenient way to remember it, but it is false.
The democrats in congress were marching lock step with he republicans on this one. (and they still are)
Yes, yes, saying it isn’t Obama’s fault is to a certain degree masturbatory, but it does highlight what has to change to fix this.
THE FUCKING FUCKSTICK FUCKERS IN CONGRESS.
different-church-lady
@Davis X. Machina: When one feels the need to begin an essay with the words, “To the usual group of thought police: Bug off!” one really needs to reevaluate.
Davis X. Machina
@different-church-lady: Well, let’s see if they let you into that tree-house any time soon.
piratedan
when the press starts informing the American public without the use of cameras, computers and the internet is when I’ll believe it’s Obama’s fault for not being able to govern effectively.
different-church-lady
@Davis X. Machina: Tempting to try, but I am currently limiting my resources to people who say jack-ass things about the marathon bombings.
Ben Franklin
Fooking beeyootifull…
Witnesses say the situation unfolded when as the two were looking over budget documents, they realized they needed more food than originally ordered.
“Hey, could I get another pepperoni over here?” Bloomberg asked owner Antonio Benito.
“I’m sorry sir,” he replied, “we can’t do that. You’ve reached your personal slice limit.”
Mayor Bloomberg, not accustomed to being challenged, assumed that the owner was joking.
“OK, that’s funny,” he remarked, “because of the soda thing … No come on. I’m not kidding. I haven’t eaten all morning, just send over another pepperoni.”
“I’m sorry sir. We’re serious,” Benito insisted. “We’ve decided that eating more than one piece isn’t healthy for you, and so we’re forbidding you from doing it.”
“Look jackass,” Bloomberg retorted, his anger boiling, “I fucking skipped breakfast this morning just so I could eat four slices of your pizza. Don’t be a schmuck, just get back to the kitchen and bring out some fucking pizza, okay.”
“I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do,” the owner repeated. “Maybe you could go to several restaurants and get one slice at each. At least that way you’re walking. You know, burning calories.”
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/05/02/bloomberg-refused-second-slice-of-pizza-at-local-restaurant/
MomSense
@Patricia Kayden:
And it was even endorsed/approved by Sec. Gates a Republican!!
japa21
The Bush adminstrtion’s biggest success after 9/11 was turning the US into a bunch of scaredy cats worried about a small group of people wiping us off the face of the earth.
Obviously, not everybody fell into that category, but enough did that the Dems, themselves bedwetters, believed that if they in any way shape or form tried to do anything but repeat the mantra of “Be afraid, be very afraid”, they wouldn’t stand a chance in an election.
Not just Gitmo, but everything this country did in the aftermath of 9/11 is something we should be ashamed of.
The worse thing about the Boston bombing is that it has brought those fears back to the surface for a lot of people even though, and not minimizing it, it was, as terrorist attacks go, rather minor.
Tonal Crow
@Ben Franklin: Um, are you *sure* that that isn’t a satire site? Look at some of the headlines in the right column:
“Bestiality surges hours after New Zealand legalizes gay marriage”
“Palin announces 2014 Presidential run”
“Supreme Court may limit gay marriage to ‘Attractive Lesbians'”
TG Chicago
@Just Some Fuckhead: I don’t believe that’s true.
It is indeed true that Obama can’t move Gitmo to Illinois without Congress. But he can release individuals if he wants to — just like Bush did.
Steeplejack
@Tonal Crow:
It is definitely a satire site. Not the quality of The Onion, though.
JPL
@Tonal Crow: Drudge headlined with that this morning before someone mentioned that it was satirical site.
Ben Franklin
@Tonal Crow:
I can wish, can’t I?
Kay
I don’t know how The President is going to close it, but I think A President is going to have to.
No one wants this. It’s gone from branch to branch and back again.
Just a massive failure of all 3 branches.
catclub
@Steeplejack: Actually there was an article _ where? by someone who was fooled by a Daily Currant article and complaining that it was too close to real, and they could not tell, unlike the broader humor of the Onion.
Which is evidence to me that the Daily Currant is worth a look.
NotMax
@TG Chicago
And he has cleared many for release. But…
Release them to where? That is the stumbling block keeping too many (the remaining ‘freed’ Uighurs and Yemenis, particularly) in a Kafkaesque incarceration of limbo.
That the U.S. adamantly continues to not accept a single one of them is not conducive to arguing that others should.
TG Chicago
@NotMax: This is probably an oversimplified response, but it seems to me that we should either release them:
*where we picked them up, or
*their country of citizenship.
If those places refuse to take the people, then (as I believe you are suggesting) the only other choice is the US. If we’ve held innocent people for over a decade, it seems that we should be willing to set them up with a decent situation in the US as a small sort of recompense.
Of course, they’d probably have to get the equivalent of witness protection in order to prevent some Gellar nut from finding and killing them…
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: Our press? Half the problem is our liberal pundit class who can’t be bothered to avail themselves of a fact if they can get a good “stick it to the man” column on. Think of the page views!
Keith G
@schrodinger’s cat:
The GOP have created a mess that is a political marketer’s gallon-sized wet dream.
The problem seems to be that there has not been a unified command on the Democratic side to go for the jugular.
The reality caused by GOP behavior is not pretty. There is time and there are resources to continually point out this unkind reality to the media and to the electorate. But when One hopes that One can pull together a magical compromise, I guess One becomes less likely to orchestrate the presentation of important truths.
Is that a failure of leadership?
Too early to tell.
Just Some Fuckhead
@TG Chicago:
I believe these captives will die happily as long as they know Obama isn’t being unfairly blamed for their captivity. Why won’t you give them that small solace?
different-church-lady
@japa21:
The worst thing about the Boston bombing was that 3 people died, and a bunch more are now amputees.
The second worse thing is that jackasses everywhere use it to make idiotic comments about their pet issues.
The shit you’re talking about is like seventh or eighth.
Just Some Fuckhead
How about a Terrorist Zoo? Maybe in Florida, down near the touristy stuff. They’ll have somewhere they are cared for, and we can make a whole lot of money letting Americans see them, heckle them, spit on them, whatever.
I know what you’re thinking: Genius!
Keith G
@Kay:
The great and humane leaders that President Obama likes to quote are pretty clear on the need to confront actions that are unambiguously and putridly immoral.
Such is the American creation known as Camp Delta.
A moral leader should address the nation and outline the details of what exactly is happening there in our name, and what should be done as a correction. If the public is fine with the status quo then that’s the way it is and we deserve any and all blow back that this creates.
But we deserve to have a complete public discussion held at the highest level.
RaflW
So at this point, given the utter intransigence (and I’d add, cowardice) of the GOP, couldn’t Obama and the nearly-filibustered Hagel just certify maybe five of these guys and transfer them to a SuperMax. Force a confrontation with jello-wattle’d Lindsey.
He’s a screaming sissy when if comes to Gitmo prisoners. He seems to think Al Qaeda fire will rain down on the US if any of these prisoners so much as sets foot on the US mainland. I think that makes Lindsey and McConnel (who was all over Obama the other day for this) a pair of pants-pissers, and very easy to portray as such.
Do we not have the best military anywhere? Do we not have the toughest SuperMax prisons, and police and FBI and DHS and all the rest of the military-prison-industrial complex that these Republican trip over each other to fully fund? (Well, except that sequester – and they do want to reverse the military cuts…).
Tough on crime? Global hawks? Bullshit. Obama could prove it by certifying that the five best cases from Gitmo are no threat, and make those chickenshits in the GOP prove him otherwise.
RaflW
PS if the above is total fantasy, so be it. But really, the GOP is the g.damn problem.
Just Some Fuckhead
@RaflW:
Thank you. All I’m saying is let the poor imprisoned SOBs know who did this to them before allowing them to kill themselves. Maybe we could bury them with autographed pictures of Bush, Graham and McConnell.
Just Some Fuckhead
We need to stop pretending this has anything to do with the animals imprisoned at Gitmo. We don’t fucking care. Have any of you emobaggers offered up your own home as a refuge for this refuse? Have any of you TRUE PROGRESSIVES offered to adopt one of these creatures? Have you firemonkeys done anything but spout meaningless shit on a C-list blog?
This is simply your way of trying to make Obama look bad because you don’t like black people or you are too fucking stupid to see True Greatness and FDR imprisoned the fucking Japanese Americans, you worthless dbags!
muddy
I don’t know that bringing them to a US prison helps them any. They could hunger strike in there too. It’s beside the point.
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Parody?
Sometimes here it is hard to tell.
edit..Looking upthread, I see that it is. Whew.
Poopyman
@Just Some Fuckhead: So you’re saying they’re tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
Well, have I got an island for them!
different-church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: Invoking Poe’s Law for the second time today.
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead: Well done.
Ben Franklin
This is simply your way of trying to make Obama look bad because you don’t like black people or you are too fucking stupid to see True Greatness and FDR imprisoned the fucking Japanese Americans, you worthless dbags!
I admire your hate. It takes a lot of guts to impugn all the brown skins with one stroke.
Oh, except for Obama. You’re down with that.
RaflW
@muddy:
No, it’s not beside the point. Once they land ou our shores, Habeas Corpus would either come into play, or we’d finally show in plain light that our Constitution was in fact shredded by the bullshit patriots of 9/12.
Which is why I don’t think they ever will be brought to the US. We have to maintain the fiction of a right to a trial of your peers in reasonable amount of time. That fiction only stands if the Gitmos disappear down our memory hole.
RaflW
FYWP dupe
OzoneR
@rikyrah:
FIFY
marshall
I felt at the time (January, 2009), that President Obama should have just flown all of the detainees to some highly secure prison in the US within his first 2 weeks as President, and informed Congress that they were here in the US, and would be dealt with in the Courts (subject to extradition requests), and then issued an Executive Order stating that Guantanamo would henceforth be under US law
Congress has the power to prevent the President from bringing them back, but would not (in political practice) be able to compel the President to deport them. This would have caused a quickly damped firestorm when Obama had 80% popularity ratings, and would be forgotten by now (except for the incessant commercials in 2012 touting this as a kept promise).
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune…”