Nowhere near enough Change here

By BJ

While I was never under the impression that Obama was anything other than a centrist in his positions, I was at least hopeful that he would roll back some of the more radical abuses of the Bush administration. After all, following the rule of law shouldn't be considered some radical leftist position, but one that pretty much everyone, particularly a constitutional law scholar, should be able to get behind.

Cernig has already done a good job covering Obama's continuation of the, "State's Secrets", defense to keep lawsuits by former detainees from going forward, along with other continuations of Bush policies. Today come a couple of other reports that reflect poorly on the new administration, and the US as a whole.

The first isn't too much of a surprise, in that the Pentagon has decided to report that their treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is just fine, thank-you very much. I mean, was anybody expecting that an internal review by the Pentagon was going to conclude that the whole lot of them were guilty of violating the Geneva Conventions and thus guilty of war crimes?

Anybody?

The far more troublesome report is this one from the BBC involving the detainees at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says.

The justice department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights.

. . .

The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington says the move has angered human rights lawyers, with one saying the new White House was endorsing the view of the old one, that prisons could be created and run outside the law.

While a lot of attention has been focused on places like Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, Bagram has been since the very beginning one of the main models for the extralegal detention of prisoners and the torture techniques used elsewhere. Techniques that led to the death of several of those prisoners during their, "interrogations".

Memo to the Obama administration: Gitmo was symbolic of the abuses of the Bush administration and their contempt for transparency, international treaties, and the rule of law. That you've decided to close said prison is nice, but you're not going to get many props if all you are actually doing is changing the physical location of where the US is ignoring transparency, international treaties, and the rule of law.

End these activities. The sooner the better.

Comments

[zenpundit]

Settled precedent.

Eisentrager v. Johnson

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/tribunals/jve.html

[BJ Bjornson]

I don't see how the precedent applies to the detainees in Afghanistan, Zen. The petitioners in you precedent were convicted of crimes in an actual court, though a military one, and repatriated to Germany to serve their sentences.

The whole problem with the "enemy combatants" system of legal limbo is that there has been, nor are there any real plans for, any kind of trial whatsoever for these individuals to challenge their detainment. Plus, many of those detained aren't "non-residents" as the Germans fighting in China were, but actual Afghans fighting in Afghanistan. Add to that there is no "declared war" in the legal sense.

If you could show me where the US military tried and convicted these prisoners of war crimes, then your precedent might be valid. Otherwise, I don't see it at all.

[libhomo]

People need to make lots of noise.