Archive » Gitmo

Waiting for the next Harry Potter book to arrive:
Guantanamo Bay - “War on terror” detainees at Guantanamo are avid Harry Potter readers and eagerly await the next book in the series featuring the schoolboy wizard, the camp librarian says.
While religion tops the reading lists of the overwhelmingly Muslim detainees, Harry Potter was a big favourite, [...]

Debra Burlingame blows the whistle on how an unscrupulous legal and PR campaign changed the way the world looks at Guantanamo.
Supporting links, photos, and video at 9/11 Families for a Secure America. Read this.

Saturday’s New York Times identifies by name the anonymous senior government official who talked to the WSJ’s Rob Pollock about the lawyers at Gitmo and said that major American law firms were effectively subsidizing the interned terrorists. The Times names him as Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.
Law professors [...]

We’ve seen this before, but now the WSJ’s Rob Pollock writes up a junket to Gitmo. (It’s subscriber-only at this point, but will probably show up on Opinionjournal.com in a day or two.) The terrorists are fat and happy, sittin’ in La-Z-Boys, watching Harry Potter. It tracks pretty well with Patterico’s [...]

***update: use this address***
Col. Wade F. Dennis
JTF GTMO, APO AE 09360

Bruce Kesler e-mails:
Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a sometime blogger here at Democracy Project and a personal friend. Gordon writes frequently and passionately about American forces serving around the world, and the email below, sent from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, tells of a [...]

…are the infidel-hating detainees, not our military personnel. So says an Army nurse interviewed at length by Patterico. He’s got a fascinating series on his talks with the nurse, “Stashiu,” who spoke on a regular basis with detainees with psychological and/or behavioral problems. A snippet:
“I believe that the majority of the guys there are true [...]

***updated…liveblogging***
Ahmadinejad threatens President Bush, via Drudge.
Buzz in Washington as the White House readies for a Bush speech in the next hour. Networks being asked to break in for live statement. “Significant news” expected between 1:30pm - 1:45pm Eastern.
Hot Air will have it covered.
***
Here we go. Not Iran-related. Speaking on value of intelligence-gathering from suspected terrorist [...]

It’s old news to anyone who’s been reading this site, but I’m glad to see the truth about Gitmo guard abuse getting out. And I’m glad it’s getting a siren from the Drudge Report. AP has the report with thanks to the Landmark Legal Foundation for pursuing the FOIA requests. I’ve mentioned before the detainee [...]

The manipulative detainees at Guantanamo Bay reportedly used the generous civil liberties protections we gave them to plot their suicide pact. Are you surprised? WaPo:
Three suicides at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have been part of a broader plot by detainees who were using confidential lawyer-client papers and envelopes to pass [...]

The usual suspects are up in arms.
My Vent:

O’Reilly inside Gitmo.

Charles Johnson at LGF has the outrageous details: “The guards were lured into a cell by a staged suicide attempt, then ambushed by the prisoners.” He highlights this passage from the Reuters report:
“The detainees had slickened the floor of their block with feces, urine and soapy water in an attempt to trip the guards. They [...]

Drudge siren up. Breitbart/AP reports:
Inmates at the US “war on terror” detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba tried to prevent US forces from helping one of four detainees who tried to commit suicide, a spokesman said.
One inmate tried to hang himself and three others took overdoses on Thursday.
All four were being treated and their [...]

The New York Times is back to stirring up the pot on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
If we let these enemy combatants waging publicity-seeking hunger strikes starve themselves to death, we’re torturers of the worst kind.
If we force them to eat and save their lives, we’re torturers of the worst kind.
You can’t win.

Here’s a very interesting story from Reuters: “Guantanamo prisoners tied to London bomb probe.” Excerpt:
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Prisoners at the Guantanamo base in Cuba provided important information in connection with last summer’s London transit bombings that the United States shared with authorities in the United Kingdom, the general in charge [...]

Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reports:
Harry Potter’s worldwide popularity is so broad-based that it has become favorite reading for Islamic terror suspects at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Lori, who for two years has overseen the detention center’s library, said J.K. Rowling’s tales about the boy wizard are on top of the request list [...]

“Pentagon to Go Forward With Military Tribunals,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Pentagon to start Guantanamo military commissions,” reports the Financial Times. “Military tribunals to begin for Gitmo detainees,” reports the Washington Times.
These headlines imply that military tribunals will, for the first time, be initiated for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. But as the [...]

It won’t be the lead story on the nightly news tonight, but a key War on Terror court ruling today upholding the legality of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay is a significant victory for the Bush administration–and a big defeat for the Gitmo bashers, most of whom deny that these hearings have even taken place [...]

The New York Times shows its support for the troops by calling our female interrogators prostitutes. It admits it sees little difference between sexually suggestive interrogation methods designed to extract information from uncooperative Gitmo detainees and “what Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to ban from Times Square.”
Here’s how we will end up interrogating terrorists if the [...]

The Washington Post does its best to put a negative spin on the military’s latest report about interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay (”Abu Ghraib Tactics Were First Used at Guantanamo,” page A01).
The New York Times (”Report Discredits F.B.I. Claims of Abuse at Guantánamo Bay“), USA Today (”Inquiry finds abuse, not torture at Guantanamo“), [...]

Danny at Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas untangles the web of hyperbole and hearsay spun by Gitmo detainee Airat Vakhitov, a Russian Muslim who was released in March.
Check it out.

My latest column, bringing these arguments to my newspaper readers, is up. I’ve phoned both Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham’s offices for comment, and will report back any reaction of interest.
Meanwhile, Lee Casey and Darin Bartram, who have written cogently on this topic, shared the following thoughts with me:
The bottom line is that the [...]

Via Gerry Daly and Ankle Biting Pundits, here are the latest poll numbers on how Americans view the Bush administration’s operation of Guantanamo Bay:

- As you may know, since 2001, the United States has held people from other countries who are suspected of being terrorists at a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. [...]

One of the most common complaints about Guantanamo Bay is that the detainees have been denied trials.
Sen. John McCain made these charges on Meet the Press yesterday: “The weight of evidence [in Guantanamo Bay] has got to be that we’ve got to adjudicate these people’s cases, and…if it means releasing some of them, you’ll have [...]

John in North Carolina tips us off to rampant prison abuse in Dick Durbin’s backyard. Captain Ed notes Durbin’s odd silence.
Update: Don Singleton quips…
I would urge that Gitmo be closed down and that all of the prisoners be transferred to the Cook County Jail, except I suspect it really would be against Geneva Conventions.

Now on sale here. From the authors’ description:
If you’re tired of all the torture allegations, of hearing the media imply that handling a Quran without gloves on is the moral equivalent of beheading someone, and of all the hysteria about enemy combatants, you’ll enjoy the Gitmo Cookbook.
It contains the actual recipes and menus for the [...]

Bird of Paradise imagines it.
Hat tip: Joe Katzman at Winds of Change, who has more thoughts here and here.
***
Meanwhile, Afghan clerics want an apology for Koran abuse (does this include the abuses by the detainees themselves?)
And the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today on Gitmo so we can hear more ululating like [...]

Question: Who believes “M.C.?”
According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, a young Guantanamo Bay detainee identified as “M.C.” claims he was “suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours at a time with his feet barely missing the floor, and that he was beaten during those sessions.” M.C. also claims he was [...]

Bloggers Patrick Ruffini and Jim Geraghty think the debate about “torture” at Guantanamo Bay is a winner for the GOP in ‘06 and ‘08. They are right, but only if nervous Republicans don’t cave in first.
Update: Rich Lowry’s right on. And Lileks rocks.

Last week, I criticized President Bush for equivocating on the Gitmo question. Rumsfeld tried to do damage control then. And Dick Cheney will be attempting to do so again on FNC’s Hannity and Colmes tonight. But it’s too late.
A Republican anti-Gitmo brigade has been born:
- Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) joined the Left’s Guantanamo Bay-bashers [...]

That’s the headline you won’t be reading over this AP story filed tonight on investigative findings released by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba.
Buried down in the AP story about Quran abuses at Gitmo, we learn:
[Hood] said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans. “These [...]