Obama and Guantánamo
"The level of hypocrisy defies description. The Obama administration has refused to investigate or prosecute any of those in the Bush administration guilty of ordering and overseeing the systematic use of torture—in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in secret CIA black sites around the world. Obama has not only shielded Bush officials, he has continued and in many cases expanded all of the police-state agencies and measures inaugurated under Bush."
President Obama’s order [March 7th, 2011], resuming the drum-head military tribunals at Guantánamo and institutionalizing indefinite detention, is but the latest demonstration of the continuity between his policies of militarism and authoritarianism and those of his predecessor.
The order reversing his pledge to close the US torture center came just five days after his administration added new charges in the court martial of alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, including the capital charge of “aiding the enemy.” That same day the military intensified the abuse of the 23-year-old soldier by requiring that he sleep without any clothing.
Under Obama, an American citizen who is merely awaiting trial—for the “crime” of exposing US war crimes and conspiracies around the world—is now forced to stand naked in front of his maximum custody cell every morning at 5 AM. The forms of sadistic torture associated with Abu Ghraib have, under Obama, come home to America.
As a result of Obama’s order, 124 of the remaining Guantánamo detainees face the possibility of being tried by military commissions that lack even the due process protections of regular military courts martial. The other 48 have been singled out for indefinite detention because, as the government admits, they have been so brazenly tortured that the evidence against them could not stand up even before a military commission.
Among those named as likely to be brought before a military commission is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of plotting the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. The CIA has acknowledged that he was waterboarded. Other detainees include alleged Al Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, and Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded at least 83 times.
Citing the window dressing of periodic administrative reviews of those condemned to indefinite detention without trial, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “The steps we take today are not about who our enemies are but about who we are: a nation committed to providing all detainees in our custody with humane treatment.”