Too Far

I am enraged. Twice today. This doesn't happen often with me; I'm normally a pretty levelheaded guy, not quick to anger. Two things today pushed me over the edge and upset my stomach. I am suddenly quite worried about the possibility that the Bush Administration is bringing us -- very literally -- to fascism.

1) Captain Pat McCarthy, the government's lead council at Guantanamo, came on the 11/1/07 Fresh Air to rebut a lawyer for one of the detainees.
A) McCarthy emphasized that detention conditions are really good these days. Detainees get three meals a day (whether they want them or not. Hunger-striking prisoners are force-fed. And not the way doctors do it; 110 cm tubes are excruciatingly shoved up the detainee's nose. This brutal method is employed to make hunger-straking "inconvenient".). Detainees get at least two hours outdoor rereation per day, and are even allowed to talk to the prisoner in the area next to them. In response to a question about a UN report describing terrible living conditions for the detainees, McCarthy proclaimed that he was not familiar with the report. Instead, he said that if three meals a day and outdoor recreation was torture, we should consider revising our definition of torture so as not to cheapen the word.
B) Lawyers for detainees are not permitted to take notes or recordings out of Guantanamo. Instead they must wait as any notes they take are forwarded to DC to be read over by representatives of the U.S. Government, who redact anything they please. Employee-client privilege, anyone? In response, McCarthy noted that lawyers had to sign an agreement to this process in order to be let into Guantanamo. If they disagreed, they should not have signed.
C) The detainee's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, cited a study from Seton Hall that 95% of Guantanamo detainees were not apprehended by U.S. military in the first place. They were instead brought to the Americans by Pakistani and Afghan authorities. These governments had issued general bounties for people to turn in anyone who they claimed was a terrorist. Therefore, shouldn't there be more skepticism toward the evidence against the detainees? No. McCarthy responded by claiming that the Seton Hall study was flawed, inaccurate. Why? Because it did not include -- wait for it -- classified information. West Point did a different study, he said, using classified information, that yielded different results. He didn't specify the results, and he was also wrong about the West Point study -- it didn't include classified info.
D) McCarthy said we shouldn't trust what Smith says, because, after all, he represents a Guantanamo detainee. Hmmm. Who else from the outside talk with the detainees, but the lawyers? And who do you represent, Captain McCarthy?

2) General Pervez Musharraf has essentially declared martial law, suspended Pakistan's constitution, and dismissed the Supreme Court. He seems to care more about defending his own regime against fair democratic process than he cares about rooting out terrorists/ He is using the military as a means of political oppression. So what, as the leaders of the free world, do we do about it? Continue to donate billions of dollars to Pakistan's military.

9/11 was a tragedy. Our actions as a nation in the aftermath of 9/11 have been a far greater tragedy. We are responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. We are tearing apart the Constitution in a futile attempt to ensure security. We are treating foreigners as if their lives and liberty did not matter, simply because they are not American. We support brutal regimes. We mock international institutions. We dismiss fairness and justice as impediments to our own sense of protection against "another 9/11."

Here's Captain McCarthy: "This is a question for the American people. How are we going to detain guys who we pick up who we know to be threats? That's a big, that's a big issue. Should we bring 'em to the United States, should we set 'em free, should we give 'em a little stipend and thank 'em for their job, maybe they can come back and do a better job next time? I don't know what it is, but this is not a question only for the military....But the way on terror -- on September the 11th it became a question for all Americans, and every American's got to ask that question, and they've got to bear the responsibility for the outcome of their answer."

Captain McCarthy, President Bush: Here's my answer, carefully considered. If we believe in freedom, if we believe in our concept of justice as an ideal and not just a bullshit requirement that restrains the government from putting people behind bars, we should treat people of other nationalities as if they had exactly the same rights Americans do. Try them in criminal court. Try them as war criminals. We were strong enough as a nation to do this at Nuremberg, to our great credit. We can do it again. Inevitably, some bona fide terrorists will be acquitted. Humans are imperfect, and unjust acquittals are the bitter price of a just system. I consider this a small price to pay, given the stakes.