Let's face it, when it comes to Guantánamo, there's little to laugh
about, unless you're an Islamophobic sadist - in which case, there's
still nothing for the rest of us to laugh about.
Up to 17 ethnic Uighur Muslims are to be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to
the tiny North Pacific island of Palau. The United States has struck the
deal to avoid repatriating the inmates to China, where it is feared they
could be persecuted or executed.
The Chinese government, which has demanded their return, accuses some Uighurs
of leading an Islamist separatist movement in far western China, and Beijing
has pressured countries to reject any pleas for asylum.
WASHINGTON - A Guantanamo Bay detainee indicted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa arrived in New York on Tuesday to face criminal charges.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is the first detainee held at Guantanamo to be transferred to the United States to face criminal prosecution. The Tanzanian national has been held at the camp in Cuba since September 2006.
Ghailani's arrival in New York comes amid mounting tension between Congress and President Obama over the planned closing of Guantanamo.
It was all-too-familiar for those who recall the
run-up to the Iraq war when scary front-page New York Times stories
would be cited by Dick Cheney as proof that we needed to oust Saddam
Hussein ASAP.
It has just been reported that Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih (also
known as Mohammed al-Hanashi), a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, has
died, apparently by committing suicide.
On Friday, court-watchers received some deeply depressing news - 33
pages of unconstitutional hogwash directed at the Supreme Court by
President Obama's Justice Department (PDF),
in which no stone of dubious legality was left unturned in the
administration's desperate and unprincipled attempts to mimic its
predecessors by preventing 17 Uighurs at Gua
In the summer of 2002, as Jane Mayer described it in her book The Dark Side,
"The CIA, concerned by the paucity of valuable information emanating
from [Guantánamo], dispatched a senior intelligence analyst, who was
fluent in Arabic and expert on Islamic extremism, to find out what the
problem was." After interviewing a random sample of two dozen or so
Arabic-speaking prisoners, the analyst "concluded that an estimated
one-third of the prison camp's population
The backlash against President Obama's extraordinary proposal for indefinite "preventive detention" -- already widespread in the immediate aftermath of his speech -- continues to grow. On Friday, Sen.
Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to
close Guantánamo within one year.
The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat
Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new
president. They claimed his plan
would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released
terrorists to resume fighting against our troops. Fox News agitator Sean Hannity and Bush
team players like torture-memo lawyer John Yoo filled the airwaves and print
media with paranoia.
