Vigil Witness: Worthington on Democracy NOW!

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Andy Worthington guests on on Democracy NOW! Jan 08, 2010: After Years in Guantanamo Prison Without Charge, Future Even More Uncertain for Yemeni Detainees

ANDY WORTHINGTON:  You know, and the Pentagon consistently produces these kind of-this kind of information at useful times. I mean, it really makes me wonder who’s running the show here. Who in the Pentagon is making this kind of material available the day after Barack Obama has backed down on releasing any more Yemenis, which is clearly part of a whole story that makes it more and more difficult to close Guantanamo? Whose side are they on? Whose agenda is being set here?

Here’s the video… thank you edger!

Mr. Worthington also writes about it on his own site:

Essentially, the Yemeni story involves inflated claims about the failed Christmas bomber’s links with Saudis released from Guantánamo, an almost total aversion to recognizing that the “Saudi recidivists” were released by George W. Bush, despite the advice of the intelligence agencies, a similar aversion to recognizing that, in contrast, Obama has been extremely careful about releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and a complete disregard for the fact that the cleared Yemenis have now been made a victim of political maneuvering.

I also spoke about how Obama’s capitulation to criticism was sadly typical, despite the fact that, on TV shows at the weekend, John Brennan made a great case for the government’s record on releasing Yemenis, and ran through a few of the men’s stories, to demonstrate how innocent men – some of them students seized in a house raid in Pakistan – are being made to pay the price for political opportunism and presidential cowardice.

Worthington has several blogposts on the topic of Yemeni’s in G’mo and the gordian knots they are tangled up in. In the D-Now video, he mentions that close to half of the remaining 198 prisoners held at Guantanamo are Yemeni.

Witness Against Torture has ongoing reports of their Action and a story on yesterday’s rally in D.C.  The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) briefing also featured a recorded statement from Mohammed Sulaymon Barre (pdf statement) from his home in Somaliland and other detainee voices, included Lakhdar Boumediene and Omar Deghayes, addressing the president.

“To those who say that they fear that those men, when released, would join enemy groups and therefore we should keep them in prison indefinitely, I say: don’t you know that keeping these detainees in prison is the very thing that feeds the animus against the United States? I say to those who believe in these notions: the thing you fear is the very thing you cause by your wrongful actions. This is what constitutes the real threat to the national security of the United States, not the closing of the prison and the release of detainees. ~Barre

Despite the political quagmire, and the constant lies pestering from The Right, this “problem” is not going to go away. If we allow these horrific violations to go unchecked, we will have to live with the poisoning of the well, our very foundation. We will see more and more stories like this one: Parents reject Mesquite board’s compromise on boy’s hair:

Four-year-old Taylor Pugh can return to class without cutting his hair if he’ll wear it in braids that don’t touch his collar, the Mesquite school board ruled Monday night.

Don’t they get it?