February 9, 2006, Gitmo Getdown (as in get down food and water through a tube...)
This post is cross-posted over at Sisyphus Shrugged, where I am but a bit player on a very, very deep bench filling in for Julia... Anyway, let's bring you the latest from the international all star assembly of the-worst-jihadists-that-the-Northern-Alliance-and-Pakistani-security-forces-could-sell-us... Camps X-Ray, Delta, Echo, etc. at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Our pals at the NY Times give us this article discussing the new and improved means of force-feeding our guests at Gitmo...
I've recently posted an interview of Josh Colangelo Bryan, one of whose clients is evidently participating in the hunger strike. In the next few days, I should be putting up another interview with still more Gitmo lawyers, whose clients are also participating in a hunger strike.
Many don't know this, because Gitmo is so damned top secret, but there was a hunger strike a year or two ago over conditions of confinement (basically, the prisoners wanted treatment more or less consistent with the Geneva Conventions, the right to select representatives, better food, and so forth). To break the strike, the Government agreed to the conditions... and then, of course... reneged.
So my understanding of the current strike is that for many of the prisoners, it's "to the death"... they know their jailers are not to be trusted. Also, they believe they have no hope of release or resolution, so they seek the resolution of death. Most ironic, of course, that the political embarassment of having one or more prisoners die seems to be more pressing to the Bush Administration than its insistence that many of these people-- the vast majority of whom the Bush Administration never intends to charge, even at its kangaroo court military tribunals-- should face the death penalty! So we must keep them alive long enough to execute!
One might think that the ultimate basic human right is to refuse food. Well, since our government insists that the Gitmo prisoners have no rights-- that these individuals, not one of whom has had a trial to prove anything against them-- are "the worst of the worst" and therefore, are to be denied all rights.
The United States of America, ladies and gentlemen. This is what we stand for now. This is what we have come to. As Dostoevsky once suggested, the health of a society can be viewed in its prisons. Take a good look at the one our country is running, if you please.
Comments
I commend this post, and the other linked posts, to your attention.
Posted by Gary Farber at February 13, 2006 8:44 PM