Vigilance

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

When the newly inaugerated President Obama signed that EO ordering the closing of G’mo last January I cheered. Right alongside many here at Docudharma who wrote countless detailed and compassionate essays on the whole subject. I thank you for my education and your vigilance … Jeff Kaye (Valtin), PDND, Buhdydharma, and more.

h/t to jimstaro (he embedded in his comments in his essay), the Miami Herald has this compelling video.

Today marks the first day of the Witness Against Torture effort by these folks who begin today in D.C. with a rally:

Today, activists and Guantanamo lawyers mark the anniversary by demanding that President Obama make good on his pledge to close the prison as first step towards restoring the rule of law. Further, the group opposes any plan for holding prisoners without charge or trial in the U.S. and denounces the White House’s expansion of Bush-style detention in Afghanistan.

I’m just going to point to a few good pieces that I hope you will have time to review.

Right here at “home” please see jimstaro’s essay and comments, Iraq War Inquiry.

At FDL’s The Seminal, this is a great piece from Jim White with a lotta linkage.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the first transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo. At nearly a year after President Obama promised to close it, Guantanamo remains a legal and moral quagmire.

At Common Dreams: Eight Years of Guantánamo: What’s Changed? by Frida Berrigan.

The response to Flight 253 hasn’t only been long lines, body scans at airports, and mea culpas from security agencies. There are also swift, loud and vicious proclamations from Republican leaders and conservative media that the only way to ensure security is to blast at our enemies and the rule of law with both barrels. Send “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Guantánamo and keep the prison open forever. Suspend plans for civilian trials of terror suspects. Revive “enhanced interrogations.” Summarily execute al-Qaeda suspects.

The Obama administration hasn’t publicly challenged this nonsense. It has, however, already made a sad concession to this fear-mongering by suspending the release of all Yemeni men from Guantánamo, even those who have been cleared through the government’s extensive Guantánamo Review Task Force. This decision, which condemns innocent men to months or years of more illegal detention, confirms a pattern of the Obama administration promising change but delivering more of the same.

In a hurry? Look at this scorecard from CCR.

Numerical Summary

Total Habeas Cases Decided: 41

Habeas Cases Granted: 32

Habeas Cases Denied: 9

Habeas Granted and Released: 20

Habeas Granted and Still Detained: 12

Current Guantanamo Population: 198

Finally, Andy Worthington marks 700 Blog Posts and the 8th year of G’mo with this post. God bless this man.

So thank you again, everyone. Please keep the comments coming to my site, to my inbox and on Facebook. The supportive words really count, as we enter a new year and a new decade that shows no sign of allowing those of us who can see pressing problems ahead – beyond constant warmongering and hysteria about terrorist threats, whether real or imagined – to move beyond the disastrous legacy of the Bush years, and to begin to shape the new world that we need to work towards if our children are to have a meaningful life beyond our general selfishness and stupidity.

In the meantime, I remain committed to doing all I can to overturn the brutalizing effect of those long years of Bush and Cheney, and to keep maintaining the pressure on Barack Obama to understand that tinkering with an illegal and immoral monstrosity is not the same as repudiating it, and to understand that capitulating to the idiocy of opportunistic fearmongers may be pragmatic, but along the way it destroys all principles.

Never look away.