On Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:55:08 -0500, Brice Yokem <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Here's something for the Supreme Court to decide.
>
>-----------------
>
>No, this is something for a jury to decide.

Brice, how about this one? 
Isn't there a ruling of the Supreme Court?
Maybe we wait, till we have new judges and then overturn the ruling, till 
next time.

Rebellion Against Abuse

LAST MONTH a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base excused himself 
from a conversation with his lawyer and stepped into a cell, where he 
slashed his arm and hung himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a 
detainee held for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of 
release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates began a hunger 
strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite confinement, and more than two 
dozen are being kept alive only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense 
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights 
investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their accounts would 
surely add to the discredit the United States has earned for its lawless 
treatment of foreign prisoners.

Guantanamo, however, is not the worst problem. As The Post's Dana Priest 
reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its own network of secret prisons, 
into which 100 or more terrorist suspects have "disappeared" as if they 
were victims of a Third World dictatorship. Some of the 30 most important 
prisoners are being held in secret facilities in Eastern European 
countries -- which should shame democratic governments that only recently 
dismantled Soviet-era secret police apparatuses. Held in dark underground 
cells, the prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the CIA 
and no checks on their treatment, even by the International Red Cross. 
President Bush has authorized interrogators to subject these men to "cruel, 
inhuman and degrading" treatment that is illegal in the United States and 
that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that 
allow the CIA prisons on their territory violate this international law, if 
not their own laws.

This shameful situation is the direct result of Mr. Bush's decision in 
February 2002 to set aside the Geneva Conventions as well as standing U.S. 
regulations for the handling of detainees. Under the Geneva Conventions, al 
Qaeda militants could have been denied prisoner-of-war status and held 
indefinitely; they could have been interrogated and tried, either in U.S. 
courts or under the military system of justice. At the same time they would 
have been protected by Geneva from torture and other cruel treatment. Had 
Mr. Bush followed that course, the abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and in 
Afghanistan and Iraq, and the severe damage they have caused to the United 
States, could have been averted. Key authors of the Sept. 11, 2001, 
attacks, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, could have 
been put on trial, with their crimes exposed to the world.

Instead, not a single al Qaeda leader has been prosecuted in the past four 
years. The Pentagon's system of hearings on the status of Guantanamo 
detainees, introduced only after a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court, 
has no way of resolving the long-term status of most detainees. The CIA has 
no long-term plan for its secret prisoners, whom one agency official 
described as "a horrible burden."

For some time a revolt against this disastrous policy has been gathering 
steam inside the administration and in the Senate; it is led by senators 
such as John McCain (R-Ariz.) and by the same military officers and State 
Department officials who opposed Mr. Bush's decision to disregard the 
Geneva accords. Their opponents are a small group of civilian political 
appointees circled around Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. According 
to a report in the New York Times, the military professionals want to 
restore Geneva's protections against cruel treatment to the Pentagon's 
official doctrine for handling detainees. Mr. McCain is seeking to 
ban "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment for all detainees held by the 
United States, including those in the CIA's secret prisons.

There is no more important issue before the country or Congress. Yet the 
advocates of decency and common sense seem to have meager support from the 
Democratic Party. Senate Democrats staged a legislative stunt on Tuesday 
intended to reopen -- once again -- the debate on prewar intelligence about 
Iraq. They have taken no such dramatic stand against the CIA's abuses of 
foreign prisoners; on a conference committee considering Mr. McCain's 
amendment, Democratic support has been faltering. While Democrats 
grandstand about a war debate that took place three years ago, the Bush 
administration's champions of torture are quietly working to preserve 
policies whose reversal ought to be an urgent priority.

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