Guantanamo Bay and torture continue to make headlines and blog posts. Some more to read:

• Billmon
• Balloon Juice, which says some Republican bloggers are getting it now. More here.
• David Neiwert
• Obisidian Wings
• Kevin Drum
• Brad Plumer

In MSM:

• New York Times Editorial today

In the "you can't make this stuff up" department, via David Corn, Laura Rozen and Kevin Drum, we learn Halliburton just got a $30 million contract to build a new jail at Guantanamo. As Kevin says, no wonder Cheney is booking time on Larry King to sing Gitmo's praises.

Why is no one calling on Senator Bill Frist to apologize to Senator Dick Durbin? Sen. Frist, repeating a false headline in the Washington Times, accused Sen. Durbin of saying Guantanamo is “a death camp." (Frist's statement, in two parts, is here and here. (pdf)) Read Senator Durbin's remarks (pdf). He never said that.

Frist also falsely claimed that Durbin said our service members are “committing genocide and war crimes.” Durbin never said that either. Most outrageously, Frist essentially accused Durbin of encouraging suicide bombers:

“It is anti-American and only fuels the animus of our enemies who are constantly searching for ways to portray our great country and our people as anti-muslim and anti-Arab. It is this type of language that they use to recruit others to be car bombers; suicide attackers; hostage takers; and full-fledged jihadists.”

This is a transparent attempt by the right-wing to change the subject from the real problem – torture. The Bush administration’s torture policies are un-American and they put our troops and risk and make American less safe.

People should be calling for Frist to apologize and retract his comments about Durbin and for the White House to rescind their torture policies. Our initial post on Senator Durbin's comments is here and a follow-up on right wing spin is here.

Update: Atrios, America Blog, Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos, Blogging of the President, Body and Soul, Oliver Willis and Steve Gilliard join the call for a Frist apology.

Update: The FBI e-mail that Senator Durbin referred to can be viewed here. There are many more like it here.

Update: Via Armando at Daily Kos, Senator Durbin again explains his comments. My take: If Durbin was big enough to clarify what he said, Frist should apologize for his gross distortion of Durbin's remarks.

The right wing continues to misconstrue Senator Richard Durbin's remarks about Guantanamo.

Sen. Durbin was not comparing American soldiers to Nazis or suggesting that Guantanamo is analogous to a gulag. What he said was that the interrogation techniques described by the FBI agent in his e-mail call to mind techniques used by repressive regimes, including the Nazis and Soviets. In fact, many of the techniques that were explicitly authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld and remain in use at Guantanamo actually were used in Nazi camps and Soviet gulags and are used by other repressive regimes. For example, the Nazis used food, sleep, and sensory deprivation, and the Soviets used forced standing and sleep deprivation. For more on this, go here and here.

In the past, the United States has always condemned the use of these techniques. The State Department's ``Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,'' which are submitted to Congress every year, have condemned as “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment”: “threats to detainees or their family members,” “sleep deprivation,” “depriv[ation] of food and water,” “suspension for long periods in contorted positions,” “prolonged isolation,” “forced prolonged standing,” “tying of the hands and feet for extended periods of time,” “public humiliation,” and “sexual humiliation.”

Update: The FBI e-mail that Senator Durbin referred to can be viewed here. There are many more like it here.

Update: Dave Neiwert has an excellent take on this. And Fafblog sets everyone straight.

Bump and Update: Sean Hannity will be dissing Senator Durbin tonight. Call Senator Durbin and tell him you're with him, and you want him to continue to hold this Administration's feet to the fire. (202) 224-2152. Web Contact Form.

Bump and Update: 6/16: The White House is now attacking Senator Durbin. [Link via AmericaBlog.]

Update: Billmon.

Update: Markos at Daily Kos:

What is beyond belief is that the type of torture more at home under tyrants and dictators is being seen in camps flying the United States flag. If McClellan and Bush want to defend torture, that's their right. But it's not the America I believe in.

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Original Post 6/15

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) is being attacked by right-wing talk radio and the White House for making this floor statement on Guantanamo yesterday (pdf). Kudos to Durbin for calling it like it is.

Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing today that the White House believes detainees at Guantanamo can be held "in perpetuity."

Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld says we paid $100 million to construct Gunatanamo and we will pay (indefinitely, apparently, since the war on terror will go on in perpetuity) $90 -$95 million a year to run it.

Senator Bill Frist:

``Let's not shut and run because of an image problem.''

Just an image problem? Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul has more on Guantanamo, and check out this video over at Crooks and Liars, of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) refuting torture claims at Guantánamo Bay while displaying various foods, and saying "They've never eaten better."

The New York Times reports Monday that six of the detainees held at Guantanamo were under 18 when they were seized - and that at least one reports being brutalized.

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.

One lawyer said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm.

The military is denying the claim, and says that there were three juvenile detainees but that they were released in January, 2004. However, it's all in how you define juvenile:

Far from backing down from its criticism of Guantanamo last week as "the gulag of our times," Amnesty International Chief William Schulz said today on Fox News Sunday (transcript here)that the U.S. is running an "archipelago of jails" around the world.

"The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families," Schulz said.

"And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

Schultz went further, and defended his prior reference to Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales as "alleged high-level architects of torture."

60 Minutes tonight featured a segment with Ed Bradley on the Guantanamo military tribunals. The defense lawyers, all active military members in uniform, blasted the procedures. A White House lawyer, Bradford Berenson, who helped write the President's order authorizing the tribunals, defended them vigorously. A military prosecutor seemed less sure, but toed the party line, and said we should wait and see how they play out.

Only four of the more than 550 detainees have had criminal charges brought against them. What will happen to them if they are acquitted? They will go back to their cell, until the end of the war on terror, which could be decades.

So why give them a trial at all then? The military defense lawyers said it's a show trial, meaningless. Berenson, the White House lawyer, answered:

"If you’re acquitted by a military commission proceeding, it may mean that you are not a war criminal," says Berenson. "It doesn’t mean that you’re not an enemy combatant who can be held by our forces until the end of hostilities."

Some highlights:

Senator Joe Biden this morning said the U.S. should close Guantanamo.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

Time Magazine today asks, What's going on at Gitmo?

In the closest thing to an apology Maher Arar has received to date, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham said Friday he regrets that it took so long to obtain Arar's release from Syria, where he was sent by the U.S. and allegedly tortured during a year of confinement.

Testifying at a federal inquiry into Canada's role in Arar's deportation Thursday, Graham said things might have been different had Canadian officials known what they know now.

"But in the light of what we knew at the time and the nature of the practices and what we were trying to achieve, I honestly believe we did, you know, the best we could and with the best motives and everyone was trying to get Mr. Arar out as quickly as we could," he said. "Clearly we would've preferred he'd been gotten out earlier, and I'm very sorry that he was not, for obvious reasons."

After testifying, Mr. Graham walked over to Mr. Arar to shake his hand. Interviewed afterwards, Arar said: