Detainees from the war on terrorism are being interrogated in compliance with U.S. laws, the general in charge of detention said Saturday.
Oh, for the love of .... Well, it's an interesting piece of misdirection, anyway, if a somewhat silly one. The issue was never that detainees would be questioned in compliance with US laws. At the moment, it would seem that they do not, in fact, apply (pending the federal judge's decision about jurisdiction). The issue was questioning and treatment in compliance with the Geneva Convention.
... there's a Taliban member from Sweden. Sweden. What on earth ....
If we're only holding 158 at Guantanamo, and 370 in Afghanistan ... what happened to the rest of them? Weren't we holding thousands of them at some point? Where'd they all go? I mean, did we just release them, even though it probably wouldn't be terribly good for Afghanistan to do that? What?
In any event, other than perfectly silly remarks made by commanders, things seem to be going startlingly well at Camp X-Ray (NY Times, registration required -- and how the hell did the prison get such a silly name, anyway?) Who knows; maybe it will prove to be unusually effective propaganda to treat people well and provide much needed medical care. Granted, such treatment may be compromised by the Shrub's tribunal plan, should it ever get off the ground. (You notice that we've been hearing about the things for ages, but nothing has actually happened? The administration doesn't actually seem to be moving forward to construct the machinery for the tribunals, but they were announced four months ago. Surely in that amount of time, they could have done something to get the process underway.) I suspect that at some point we'll have one of those wonderful ironies of the US justice system. Well, we've treated you, repaired major injuries, and you're a hale, healthy, hearty human! So now we'll just have to kill you a little! In any event, the American Bar Association has essentially come out against tribunals, attaching a list of recommendations to a document forwarded to the president. M. le Shrub had wanted them to keep quiet, because he didn't want "inflexible" conditions that could tie the President's hands. I must admit, I'm baffled as to how they could restrict him in any way whatsoever. He's entirely free to ignore them. It's entirely likely that the detainees will be appointed military lawyers, who are NOT free to decline the appointment because the conditions don't meet the ABA-requested standard. So what earthly difference does it make?
Posted by iain at February 05, 2002 11:38 AMComments