Hold your praise for Bush's turnaround on the overseas detention of suspected terrorists. The ACLU explains why:

"The president also proposes to gut enforceability of the Geneva Conventions by amending the War Crimes Act to completely immunize from prosecution civilians who subjected persons to horrific abuse that may have fallen short of the definition of 'torture.' As a result, government officials and civilian contractors who authorized or carried out waterboarding, threats of death, and other abuse would get a 'get out of jail free' card under the president's bill. The nation's soldiers and sailors would remain liable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but civilians would be immune from prosecution under the only statute that applies to many of these acts. That is simply wrong.

"The new Army Field Manual avoids some of the worst problems with earlier drafts and clarifies that those held by the military or at military facilities must be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. However, it then creates loopholes for so-called 'unlawful combatants' by depriving them of the same protections--and specifically authorizes holding persons in isolation. And, the new manual does not apply to those held by the CIA. The Bush proposal is lip service unless the executive branch actually holds people accountable for violating it.

by TChris

A father wants his son to be free.

My son, Fawzi, was a schoolteacher in a region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border before he was captured by bounty hunters. I'm told that he now lives alone in a cell at Guantanamo; our only contact with him consists of outdated letters with whole sections blacked out. The anguish is endless for families that have been kept in the dark for over four years while their husbands, sons and brothers suffer in a secret world.

His request is simple: if his son committed a crime, put him on trial.

My son is not a terrorist. He was, in fact, a great admirer of American political values and legal principles before he was kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo. Our family is nonetheless willing to undergo the ordeal of trial and judgment, if only the U.S. government would allow it to happen.

Matthew Diaz, a lawyer for the Navy, has been charged with disclosing documents pertaining to Guantanamo.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz, who was stationed at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay for six months, could face more than 36 years in prison if convicted at a military trial of the three charges he faces, Navy Mid-Atlantic Region spokeswoman Beth Baker said.

A charge sheet released Tuesday says Diaz, 40, printed out secret information related to national defense "with intent or reason to believe that the said information was to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." The document also says Diaz "did ... wrongfully and dishonorably transmit classified documents to an unauthorized individual."

In plain English, according to Reuters:

Diaz was accused of mailing "a multi-page classified document that contained the names and other identifying information" about Guantanamo detainees from that base to "a nongovernmental organization not authorized to receive it," Baker said.

Diaz has been in the Army or Navy for the past 19 years, a career guy. He's not in jail and he continues to work for the Navy in Jacksonville, Fl. How dangerous could he be?

The Senate Armed Services and Judiciary Committees began consideration today of Bush's latest proposal for trying detainees. It's a sandbag, as worse if not worse than the plan thrown out by the Supreme Court in June. Call your Senator and tell them to vote against it and insist that detainees be tried under standards that meet the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. As the ACLU states in a new press release:

Specifically, the White House proposal would: gut the enforceability of important Geneva Convention protections; allow the use of evidence obtained through cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment during interrogations; take the unprecedented step of allowing the federal government to convict a defendant based on secret evidence; bar a defendant from being present at his own trial; and allow the use of the types of hearsay evidence banned from every military and civilian court in America.

The ACLU's July 31 letter outlining the deficiencies is here. The Washington Post reports:

Major General Geoffrey Miller, former commander of Guantanamo, has resigned. You can read his letter here. (pdf.)

Miller chose to retire without seeking promotion and a third star, in large part because his legacy has been tarnished by allegations of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to military officials and congressional sources. Miller had hoped to retire in February, but his departure was delayed because members of the Senate Armed Services Committee wanted to question him while he was still in uniform about his role in implementing harsh interrogation techniques at the two prisons.

Miller was allowed to retire only after he assured members of the Senate panel in writing that he would make himself available to testify if called. Congressional sources from both political parties said yesterday that they were not satisfied with several investigations into Miller's actions while he was commander at Guantanamo Bay and are still skeptical of his truthfulness in Senate testimony after the Abu Ghraib abuse surfaced in spring 2004.

The AP is reporting that new documents obtained by an FOIA request show that the detainees at Guantanamo repeatedly have been abusive to the guards.

Pentagon incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press show Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They've been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

Contrast this with the report issued by Seton Hall Law School in early July, Guantanamo Detainees in Detention (pdf) also based on official Pentagon documents:

If you thought Guantanamo was likely to close soon, think again. Camp 6, a permanent prison, is set to open in September.

....Camp 6, a state-of-the-art maximum-security jail built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will be able to hold 200 prisoners. Commander Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said the $30m, two-storey block was due to open at the end of September. He added: "Camp 6 is designed to improve the quality of life for the detainees and provide greater protection for the people working in the facility."

Amnesty International responds:

[Reconstructed from Google Cache]

President Bush has submitted a new plan for detaining terror suspects under which U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts.

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

Drug War Rant connects the dots.

by TChris

Interviews of soldiers conducted by Human Rights Watch confirm that abuse of detainees in Iraq continued to be routine even after the well-publicized mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Human Rights Watch concludes that military investigations have shielded those in the chain of command who ordered or condoned abuse.

"Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," said John Sifton, the author of the report and the senior researcher on terrorism and counterterrorism at Human Rights Watch. "These accounts rebut U.S. government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional - on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used."

by TChris

Senator Lindsey Graham wants to use the military court-martial model to try detainees, but other Republicans "say it could cripple the government's ability to protect the nation by giving detainees too many rights." Too many rights? Which ones are superfluous? The right to know what you're accused of doing? The right to see the evidence? The right to attend the trial and to confront the accuser?

While "some other Republicans argue that terrorists do not deserve legal or human rights," those Republicans apparently lack an understanding of the difference between a terrorist and an accused terrorist. Putting aside the rights that may apply to someone convicted of an act of terrorism in a fair and meaningful trial, can these Republicans explain why the presumption of innocence shouldn't apply to alleged terrorists? Even if the administration were competent, why would we trust the government to make error-free accusations without insisting that those accusations be proved?

As Graham points out, fair trials benefit the country, not just alleged terrorists.

On July 8, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on the Monica Crowley radio show. The Defense Department kindly has put up the transcript. Here's a snippet:

this is not an army fighting an army under the laws of war. This is a world that's confronted by terrorist networks that are -- don't wear uniforms, and they don't carry their weapons publicly, and they kill innocent men, women and children. And their goal is to terrorize people and to alter free people's behavior.

And the idea that we need to treat them as though they're stealing hubcaps off the streets of our cities and then have a jury trial and then send them to jail for a month is certainly not going to work. The people down in Guantanamo Bay are people that have been deeply involved in killing Americans and in threatening to kill people, and they're bad people. This fellow Hamdan was a -- one of the drivers and associates of Osama bin Laden.

The Bush Administration has announced that it will now give detainees their rights under the Geneva Convention.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President Bush. That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

The policy, described in a memo (pdf) by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, appears to change the administration's earlier insistence that the detainees are not prisoners of war and thus not subject to the Geneva protections.

What to make of it? Read Law Prof Marty Lederman at Balkinization who says the "devil, of course, will be in the details."