The Legal Vacuum that is…
…’Holiday Park Guantanamo:’
More money is spent on meals for detainees than on the U.S. troops stationed there. Detainees are offered up to 4,200 calories a day. The average weight gain per detainee is 20 pounds.I am so pleased someone finally cleared that up. I mean, who in their right minds would believe blatant, un-patriotic, anti-American ‘reporting’ like this from the Associated Press:
Detainees receive medical, dental, psychiatric, and optometric care at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. In 2005, there were 35 teeth cleanings, 91 cavities filled, and 174 pairs of glasses issued.
Recreation activities include basketball, volleyball, soccer, pingpong, and board games. High-top sneakers are provided.
Departing detainees receive a Koran, a jean jacket, a white T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, high-top sneakers, a gym bag of toiletries, and a pillow and blanket for the flight home.
Entertainment includes Arabic language TV shows, including World Cup soccer games. The library has 3,500 volumes available in 13 languages — the most requested book is “Harry Potter.”
…the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.Here are some more snippets from the rather lengthy article:
Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross. Yet, according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, …every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces,"…Now, I know which place I’d rather be, clean teeth and high-top sneakers included.
Toilets in Bagram, Afghanistan, now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.
Thousands of people are still being deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.
The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends — as it determines.
The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north. Being deemed neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just "security detainees" held "for imperative reasons of security," spokesman Curry said…
Iraqi authorities put forward "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority, but little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.
A total of 770 detainees have been put through Guantanamo – currently the base holds 455. Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.
In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail.
Tags: Illegal Detention, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, War On Terror, DoD Propaganda