In the upcoming April 17 issue of the New York Review of Books, veteran investigative reporter Raymond Bonner reviews four books that cover aspects of Guantanamo. But as is often the case for the best NY Review of Books stories, Bonner’s piece is less review than it is a comprehensive essay on the issue that the books generally cover—which is, in this instance, the ghastly moral and legal bungling that has characterized the Bush administration’s handling of terrorists suspects both at Guantanamo Bay and the various “black sites” that we, the lowly American public, have learned about only in disturbing dribs and drabs.

Here’s the opening of Bonner’s essay:

On February 11, 2008, the Pentagon announced that charges were being filed against six men in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the attacks and one of al-Qaeda’s most senior members, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a leader of the Hamburg cell that included several of the September 11 pilots. It has taken nearly seven years for these men to be indicted—while more than 240 other prisoners continue to remain at Guantánamo in a state of indefinite detention without charge. In contrast, Britain, after one of the longest and most expensive trials in its history, has already convicted and sentenced four men for the failed attacks on the London subway on July 21, 2005.

Last year, British officials also arrested three other men for involvement in the deadly attacks on three London subway lines and a bus on July 7, 2005, two weeks earlier; they are scheduled to go on trial at the end of March. Spain has convicted twenty-one of twenty-eight men charged in connection with the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004; and Indonesia has held lengthy trials and convicted four men who were accused of the terrorist attacks in Bali in October 2002, two of whom have been sentenced to death, and two to life imprisonment.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a guiding principle of the American criminal justice system. The Bush administration has ignored this principle with impunity, and America’s image abroad has suffered greatly as a result.

The administration could have avoided much of the criticism it has received for its handling of terrorism suspects. It didn’t have to listen to the civil libertarians and human rights lawyers. All it needed to do was heed the advice of the country’s military lawyers…..

[snip]

As the Bush administration, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, began hurriedly drafting rules to try suspects, the most senior military lawyers, from all four services, were “appalled” at the lack of rights that the administration proposed granting the defendants….

Bonner’s essay goes a lot further, including references to what the three presidential candidates have been willing to say—and not say—about Guantanamo and torture. For example there’s this:

“Only Obama makes a point in his speeches that he would restore habeas corpus for Guantánamo prisoners,,” writes Bonner. “It generally brings loud applause.”

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Three separate stories tonight—one on television, two on radio—addressed the idea that the Bush Administration has created what many have called an Imperial Presidency—a presidency that believes itself above the US courts, above the necessity to honor long-standing government treaties, and above international law.

The first of the three stories was the much ballyhooed 60 Minutes segment about Murat Kurnaz, a German traveling in Pakistan who was nabbed three months after 9/11 and transported to Afghanistan where he says he was tortured severely. It seemed to matter little that the FBI, U.S. intelligence and German intelligence had reportedly concluded that Kurnaz was innocent of the terrorism charges brought against him. He was subsequently transferred to Guantanamo where charges against him fell further apart. In 2002, German intelligence agents wrote their government, saying, “USA considers Murat Kurnaz’s innocence to be proven. He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.” Instead, Kurnaz was kept in Guantanamo for an additional three and a half years.

When contacted, the US Department of Defense responded to 60 Minutes in letter form that called Kurnaz’ accusations outlandish and unsubstantiated.

The second two stories were on this week’s This American Life. In one episode, TAL tells about the more than a hundred foreign women who got married to Americans, then had their spouses die less than two years after the marriage. The US government responded to their grief and loss by curtly informed the widows “You’re no longer married to Americans. Your citizen application is denied. Now get out of the country.” The widows went to court over the matter, and the court told the government that it had to let the women stay. But the US government ignored the court and told them they have to leave anyway.

Story three was about an American couple who lived on the Canadian border and decided to build a retaining wall inside the ten-foot buffer zone that is on either side of the international boundary. The International Boundary Commission told the Americans that they couldn’t have the wall inside the buffer zone and would have to take it down. The Americans sued the Commission, the bi-national entity created by a 1925 treaty to inspect and oversee the US Canada border. And that’s when the Bush administration stepped in….

You can hear the rest on This American Life here. (The promos up now, and podcasts will be available of the program in a few days)

In a way this is all an old issue. We have long been aware that in instances ranging from FISA to signing statements, when the Bush administration doesn’t like a law or a legal ruling it pretty much does what it pleases regardless of restrictions placed on it by Congress or courts.

But the real question is, what will happen next January when we have a new president? Wll he or she keep the newly established Imperial presidency, or dismantle it.

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(NOTE: Above graphic shamelessly heisted from Ross Blog at NBC.com)

I’ve been in a non-blogging state of mind….working on another deadline, and generally enjoying the lovely fall weather. But will be back in full force tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, aside from the various news stories on Blackwater, gang “rent” payments, and DWP rate hikes, out of Sunday’s papers, I recommend the following:

FROM THE LA TIMES:

The Facebook Revolution - No this isn’t a social justice issue, but it’s an interesting read anyway, unless you’re planning to live like Christopher McCandless, the Into the Wild guy. (And things didn’t turn out that well for him anyway.)

Militant Atheists are Wrong - an anti-anti God essay that has some interesting and discussion-provoking points to make. “Their assault on religious faith amounts to an attack on the human imagination,” writes author Lee Siegel.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

On Torture and American Values - “Truly banning the use of torture would not jeopardize American lives,” writes the NY Times, “experts in these matters generally agree that torture produces false confessions. Restoring the rule of law to Guantánamo Bay would not set terrorists free; the truly guilty could be tried for their crimes in a way that does not mock American values.” Expert opinions on this matter are pretty close to unanimous. So why does American policy dictate otherwise?

Race Gap: Crime vs. Punishment - An interesting and nuanced essay that asks the questions: IF criminal legal proceedings seem to turn out differently for people of different races, when does a constitutional problem exist?

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

The WaPo has its own torture-memo-related editorial, but the big Must Read from today’s Post is this story: An Exit Toward Soul-Searching: As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound.

AND ABOUT CERTAIN SPORTS DEVELOPMENTS having do with (cough) damned Stanford (cough), I have no freaking comment.

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Imporant newly proposed immigration legislation….another MacArthur Park march and rally….a strongly worded new ACLU legal filing regarding the LAPD….

Yesterday was a full day.

I’m finishing up a deadline so I’ll be back with a new posting late this afternoon.

In the meantime, here’s a post from the always interesting ProfsBlog about how bad California’s prison system really is. It’s titled “Golden State Guantanamo.” Here’s the main ‘graph:

One of the least covered and most important areas of California’s socio-legal landscape is its bloated and inhumane prison system that now holds approximately 80,000 prisoners more than the 100,000 its 30+ prisons were designed to house. While Guantanamo has rightly been a subject of constant attention in the main stream media and the legal blogosphere, California’s prison crisis constitutes a human rights abuse of equal if not greater significance. Three separate federal courts now have jurisdiction over different aspects of the crises created by the endless growth of this system. The overcrowding has transformed the state’s already warehouse like prisons, which lacked educational or treatment facilities, into something that deserves the term “camp”, with gyms and hallways packed with bunk beds. Such conditions, and a chronic shortage of guards, has a more hellish twist when you consider that most of these prisoners are considered players in a racialized gang order that involves more than a dozen different factions (many divided within ethnicity). But suffering can be more mundane as well. In a new report prepared for one of the federal courts (described in today’s SF Chronicle), that of Hon. Thelton Henderson (N.Dist CA), the special master appointed by Judge Henderson criticized the system for being as many as 2,700 guards short and noted that plans to add thousands of new beds would only increase the numbers of people exposed to the system’s broken health and dental systems (the subject of the case before Judge Henderson). I’m not an expert in the metrics of pain, but how many unset broken bones or uncared for dental abscess equals a case of water boarding?

Now before anybody labels this an over-the-top rant by some no-nothing bleeding heart, you should know it was written by Jonathan Simon, the Associate Dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School. Simon’s own blog, Governing Through Crime, is full of other interesting takes on California’s crime and prison policies.

In fact, here’s something he wrote on my fabulously smart friend, Joan Petersilia, the state’s top expert (and one of the nation’s top experts) in prison reentry and parole policy.

Okay, back soon. In the mean time, please inform, argue, opine, take issue and discuss this— or any of the other pressing topics of the last 24 hours.

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UPDATE: Blogfather Marc Cooper has a good take on the immigration package, as I knew he would.

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This weekend the NPR radio show, This American Life, replayed an updated version of its 2006 Peabody Award-winning episode, Habeas Schambeas.

(The link can be found here.)

The Habeas episode is a terrific piece of radio journalism that has gotten more important, not less, since its original broadcast in March of last year. I urge you to listen.

Here’s a snippet from TAL’s own description of the program:

The right of habeas corpus has been a part of this country’s legal tradition longer than we’ve actually been a country. It means the government has to explain why it’s holding a person in custody. But now, the war on terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that the prisoners should not be covered by habeas — or even by the Geneva Conventions — because they’re the most fearsome terrorist enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?

Just to be clear: the right of habeas corpus is not a right or left issue. It is one of the most fundamental freedoms that the great experiment known as the United States of America has pledged to protect.

In September of 2006, some six months after the show was originally broadcast, the Republican members of Congress members along with most of their Democratic brethren, voted to pass the Military Commissions Act, a fear-based piece lawmaking that, in one legislative swoop, took away the ancient right of habeas corpus for any non-citizens declared to be “enemy combatants”

At that juncture, the rest of us-–if we’d had any sense—should have marched in the streets over the issue. But we didn’t. Okay, water under the bridge. But as of late last week, two new things have happened regarding our nation’s relationship with the Great Writ.:

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Los Angeles Times has three readers’ letters in today’s paper that all have to do with the treatment of the British sailors captured—and recently released— by Iran, versus America’s treatment of prisoners similarly snatched and held in Guantanamo and other far less pleasant places. The sentiment in all three missives can pretty much all can be summed up in the last line from the first of the reader notes:

“I think I’d rather be captured by the Iranians any day.”

Yeah. No kidding. Sadly.

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UPDATE: Just to be clear, the above was more a comment on American policies, not Iranian. No, I don’t think for a second that Iran is any kind of paragon of civil liberties. Quite the opposite. As a longtime board member for PEN USA I’ve been involved in a number of initiatives to get Iranian writers—and in a couple of cases, bloggers—out of prison. Once or twice we’ve had an effect. But, with Iran, most times not.

According to Human Rights Watch here’s one of Iran’s most recent moments in trampling on civil liberties.

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