I am pleased to report that Candace’s still-detained-at-GTMO client… has finally… FINALLY… been cleared for transfer. He’s been detained there for just about TWENTY YEARS. A yuuuge thanks to Andy for breaking this great news. It is not an understatement for me to say that I have been following the case of Said Bakush (one of many spellings for the Alegerian detainee known on base as ISN 685) as long as I have known Candace, to wit, since I interviewed her in 2007. I have followed her travails both with respect to Mr. Bakush (including traveling to Washington both for...

I would usually be the last person on Earth (particularly given my twitter handle) to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing something incredibly stupid (as opposed to, you know, evil or otherwise Macchiavellian). But with the brazen seemingly all-out military assault on Ukraine in the last 48 hours, Mr. Putin has effectively flushed virtually any and all moral authority he had. He had some good “moral authority” arguments to respond to what the West would claim as his prior aggression, to wit, that the people of Crimea wanted to leave Ukraine and join Russia (and overwhelmingly voted so...

Today marks 20 years since the opening of the military-prison-for-Muslim-men on the grounds of the American naval air station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Events to commemorate this were held all over the place; I participated at the one in New York City, masks a plenty in the omicron era. Our friend Candace has some listing of commemorations here, and a new web-site from our friends at CAGE in honor of the occasion, here. Our friend Andy, who would usually join us from London at this time of year, remains on the other side of the pond as a result of...

It’s the end of a year that began with the sitting President of the United States staging a murderous attempted coup in a half-assed means to hold power (for which he had a powerpoint and everything), as we transitioned to a new President. The new President’s agenda was immediately thwarted by his own party in a stupid attempt to impeach the last idiot. But then the new guy managed to pass his super-duper COVID relief package (only stripped of the $15 minimum wage) BECAUSE THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN (as if that’s really even a thing). BTW, the stimulus check in that...

So here we are, coming to nearly two years into the COVID-45 plague (and around 22 months after it has more or less hijacked all other business here in the US of A, other than, of course, Der Ex-Fuhrer Donald J. Trump’s extra-legal efforts to hold on to the presidency despite losing an actual election). We have now reached “the omicron point;” we have no idea how to handle it (insanely virulent while– apparently– being just as nasty in generating illness). And so… we have “test to stay” policies for school children (meaning that while once an exposure meant everyone...

It seems the military jury hearing the case of Majid Khan, who pled guilty to acts of terrorism at the GTMO kangaroo kourt/military commissions, has recommended leniency for him, after hearing his version of the extent of torture he suffered at the hands of the CIA. Khan has been cooperating with the government for years, and has been awaiting sentencing… for years, after his guilty plea. He may be eligible for release no later than 2025 (although his sentence would run to 2038). It seems a lot of the pretense surrounding GTMO as some kind of thing necessary to protect...

And so we come to the end of another trip around the sun, this time making it 59 for me. Barring some kind of unlikely Biblical scale longevity, we’ve been playing the back nine of life for a few holes now, and have reached the strange time in my life where that unavoidable reality seems more comforting than terrifying. Maybe the endless four years of the You-Know-Who “presidency” (with a threat of more to come) will do that. Amazing what the loss of [what was left of] your country’s soul will do to your overall attitude. Meanwhile, stuff is happening!...

I wouldn’t have expected the first GTMO related case taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in over a decade to involve our old friend Abu Zubaydah (a/k/a Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husain) and his quest to break through the state secrets fortress wall in order to get accountability for his egregious torture at the hands of the CIA at a black site in Poland… against the CIA’s contractor psychologists and torture consultants Drs. Mitchell and Jessen, but that is the case argued last week. Andy has more in a comprehensive take on the subject. [To be fair, the Ninth Circuit...

I would be remiss if I did not use this occasion to wish Mrs. TD a happy anniversary. As of today, we have been married for thirty years. I can only say that three decades’ time– literally the majority of my own life– is difficult to contemplate (even if it is the common term of, say, a home mortgage loan.) Since that autumn day in 1991 when we were married, the world, at least as I observe it, is both terrifyingly different, and terrifyingly not different. Certainly, many kith and kin present that day are no longer with us lo...