It’s no longer news, but I applaud the action done by a south Texas grand jury, because hopefully it will stop Cheney’s profiting from the rendition of foreign detainees to private penal institutions in which he has invested. No doubt Cheney knows that Guantanamo Bay will be closed by Obama….let’s certainly hope so, so in order to keep the business of torture alive and well and profitable Cheney has invested in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. Detainees at Guantanamo Bay when closed will have to go some place and what better place for them to go than a place set up by the former Administration to continue the same policy of torture and human rights abuses. The only way to stop such illegal activity is to throw Cheney in jail and divest him of his holdings in Vanguard. It is almost the same as with Halliburton, given no bid contracts by an Administration that started a needless war by a vice president who was once a major office holder in that company. I’m glad the people of some state have decided enough is enough. It’s even more ironic it’s the home state of the equally nefarious law breaker George W. Bush. Perhaps the good folks in the state of Texas are finally getting back at Cheney for shooting a hunting partner in the face back in 2006.
Category: Guantanamo Bay
The morning after
George Washigton’s blog has a very good synopsis of what it is Obama’s administration should do. I like his ‘to-do’ list. My three favorites are:
They have no excuse to delay war crimes charges against Bush, Cheney and company for Iraq.
They have no excuse to delay war crimes charges for torture.
They have no excuse to delay criminal charges for spying on Americans.
I would like to add to the list my favorite wish, close down Gitmo Bay and allow everyone there habeus corpus. The Democratic Party has been far too timid in asserting itself in the interests of the American people. I never really understood their reasons for that attitude, but now that they are in full control of the legislative branch of government they really have no excuse for not being aggressive. A great crime has been committed against the people of the US by the Bush Administration. As Bush was so often quoted saying, ‘the evil-doers must be brought to justice’ and it is up to the Democrats who have the power to do so. Moreover they can certainly say that Tuesday’s election results and Obama’s wide margin of victory over McCain give them the mandate to do just that. Let’s see if they are up to it.
It doesn’t get worse than this
I was speechless when I read this. People who the government claims aren’t “evil doers” and have essentially done nothing wrong face the possibility of staying in jail the rest of their lives because of OUR mistake?
Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.
No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.
*snip*
Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. “They were on freedom’s doorstep,” said Willett. “The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them.” However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.
I suppose the federal government thinks 17 Chinese muslims will pollute the gene pool of the US….or maybe carry out the jihad it has already acknowledged they had no part in, or maybe we’re just too dumb to say ‘we were wrong’. People of good faith have appealed to the government to let these men go free and have stepped up to take responsibility for them, but evidently that’s not good enough. Christians, Muslims, Americans, Chinese have all said they will sponsor these men, who are guiltless according to our own government and whose only crime is “being” to help them settle in this wide, expansive, generous land of ours and our government has said no!
The yo-yo called Gitmo
There’s a lot wrong with Guantanamo Bay and this latest episode demonstrates clearly the perils for those detained there. Seventeen Chinese Muslims who have been detained for seven years were given their marching orders by a federal judge who told them they could go. What’s extraordinary about that is since 2004 it has been known these men were not hostile to the United States, and were not declared enemy combatants, illegal or otherwise.
The United States determined in 2004 the 17 Uighurs are not enemy combatants, but has kept them at Guantanamo while trying to persuade other countries to resettle them. Officials said they were not returned to China because of credible fears they could be mistreated if returned.
The irony is that instead of turning them over to someone who officials thought might persecute them, it was decided to keep them locked up and persecuted at a US federal facility! Go figure, but that’s not the end of it. As I’ve said before, Americans are some of the kindest, most decent people alive, and they demonstrated that kindness by offering to take care of the men from China once released by the government. Relief and faith based organizations throughout the country offered to take the men in and get them settled in the US, but acting on the politics of fear, the Administration said they were unsure what such a group in the heartland might do and didn’t want to release them. I guess I can understand the fear the government would have of retribution from people who had been unlawfully detained, tortured and abuse for the last seven years. Most people wouldn’t take too kindly to that sort of treatment and might want to “get even” as it were.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. An appeals court has blocked the release of these men until further notice.
A US appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as President George W. Bush’s administration scrambles to appeal it.
*snip*
The 17 were officially declared no longer “enemy combatants” by the government in June, and the US government approved their release back in 2004.
But officials had maintained they could continue to hold the men at Guantanamo Bay if no other country accepted them.
The Uighurs were not returned to China due to credible fears they would be tortured upon return.
The White House condemned Tuesday’s ruling, saying it paved the way for extremists to demand the same freedom, and added it would continue to work to find another country to take in the men.
The article goes on to mention the resettlement of a group of the same ethnic Muslims to Albania where they live in peace but “with no possibility of returning to their families any time soon”. However these Muslims from China are not acceptable in the US……it could be they are too close to corporate media who might in a fit of conscious decide to actually interview them to expose what took place in Guantanamo Bay. In any event, their saga continues and the terrible legacy of Gitmo, left to us by this Administration, too continues and remains very much in the air.
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