A national disgrace

Not my words, although I think it is an apt description. The words "A national disgrace" were printed atop the commentary page in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune, above two opinion articles. One was "Scandalous state of affairs at Gitmo," by Thomas P. Sullivan, and the other was "What to do when the emperor has no clothes," by Garrison Keillor.

First, the Keillor. As host of the popular NPR radio show A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor is known to have somewhat left-of-center politics, but he's hardly a biting political commentator in the mold of, say, Jon Stewart. When Keillor criticizes, it's with a Minnesotan politeness, the edges rounded off for your comfort. But in his column this week, he does not equivocate. For brevity's sake, I excised most of the life and color from these excerpts, but here is the meat of his column:

From within the Pentagon bureaucracy, [Navy lawyer Albert Mora] did battle against ... Rumsfeld and John Yoo... They seemed to be arguing that President Bush has the right to order prisoners to be tortured.

Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?

The U.S. Constitution provides a simple, ultimate way to hold [President Bush] to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country's defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence.

Authoring the other piece is Thomas Sullivan, an attorney who is representing a Guantanamo detainee. The article describes the denial of due process to which I referred in the entry I posted here on Wednesday (the same day Sullivan's article was published). Sullivan writes from a unique perspective, having actually been to Gitmo to interview his client. He writes:

Some [detainees] may have violated international laws, some may be terrorists. But others may not. What we do know is that these people have not been charged, let alone tried... They just languish in Gitmo.

The writ of habeas corpus is enshrined in our Constitution... It is the traditional method used to require prosecutors to explain to a judge the basis for imprisoning those suspected of committing crimes. In an astounding surrender to executive power, Congress recently passed a bill purporting to repeal the prosoners' right to file habeas petitions... Translation: continued indefinite incarceration.

According to an article in today's Tribune, some of the detainees have, in fact, been charged, but the number is very few -- only 10 of the roughly 490 detainees currently at Gitmo. Yesterday, the Pentagon released thousands of pages of Gitmo documents as a result of a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuit the Associated Press recently won against the Bush Administration. These documents should finally shed some light on what our government has been doing there, in secret, for the last four years.

[Mark M: My internet connection was down Saturday evening, so I wasn't able to upload this to the server until Sunday morning (March 5).]