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U[B].S. to change detainee policy [/B]
Updated 7/11/2006 5:07 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
By John Diamond and Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON President Bush has decided to give international treaty protections against "humiliating and degrading treatment" to all detainees in military hands, including the 450 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, administration officials said Tuesday.
Bush's decision, which reverses almost five years of not granting the rights set forth in the Geneva Conventions, responds to last month's 5-3 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the special military tribunals the administration created in 2001 without the involvement of Congress.
YOUR THOUGHTS: Good or bad decision?
However, the administration doesn't want to give terror detainees more protections than those U.S. citizens receive in civilian courts, Pentagon Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dell'Orto told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Military commanders were alerted to the policy shift in a memo signed Friday by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and first disclosed Tuesday by the British newspaper Financial Times.
The memo, released publicly by the Pentagon, says that as a result of the high court ruling, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 "applies as a matter of law to the conflict with al-Qaeda."
Article 3 prohibits murder, mutilation and other forms of violence as well as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Trial and sentencing of prisoners must be carried out by a "regularly constituted court," a phrase that led the Supreme Court majority to strike down the administration's secret tribunal system.
Phrases barring degrading treatment are hard to interpret, acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury told senators Tuesday. Also, he and Dell'Orto said, captives may not cooperate if they learn they have the right to remain silent.
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, said that he was willing to work on "bipartisan legislation," but that the administration's "kangaroo court procedures" damaged the U.S. reputation around the world.
Posted 7/11/2006 9:55 AM ET
HAVE WE LOST OUR FREAKIN' SPINES??????
Degrading treatment????????????? Look at this!!!!
Gitmo's 'gourmet fare'
By James Langton
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
June 29, 2005
NEW YORK -- The prison is known more for the accusation that it's a gulag than for goulash, but a new cookbook aims to counter the reputation of the detention center at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Several hundred recipes prepared for the inmates at the camp are to be published next month in "The Gitmo Cookbook," including dishes such as mustard-and-dill baked fish and honey-and-ginger chicken breast.
The recipes -- most of which use fewer than eight ingredients and originally were created to feed up to 100 persons -- were developed by the U.S. Navy cooks in charge of the camp's kitchens.
They must serve food that meets the Islamic halal requirements of the 540 detainees, who mostly are from Afghanistan, Iraq and other Arab nations. A halal meal adheres to dietary practices mandated by Islamic law.
The chance to eat the Gitmo way will be offered in the compilation of recipes by a group of Americans who say the camp's reputation for inhumane conditions and torture is exaggerated.
Freed detainees have complained of intimidation by dogs, being forced to wear pictures of scantily clad women around their necks, and being kept in isolation for months at a time, in either freezing or boiling temperatures.
Laura Curtis, one of the book's editors, says the recipes would "make a point about how well we are treating these people." Freed prisoners are said to have put on an average of nearly 14 pounds during captivity.
"We feel that the word 'torture' is a serious abuse of the language when you apply it to what's going on at Gitmo," she says. "We're pretty tired of the military-bashing that we see in the news."
On testing the recipes, one member of the book team disliked the glazed carrots but says the carrots "did not sink to the level of torture."
They don't feed American prisoners like this!!!
This is nuts!!! They have no rights!!!
Updated 7/11/2006 5:07 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
By John Diamond and Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON President Bush has decided to give international treaty protections against "humiliating and degrading treatment" to all detainees in military hands, including the 450 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, administration officials said Tuesday.
Bush's decision, which reverses almost five years of not granting the rights set forth in the Geneva Conventions, responds to last month's 5-3 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the special military tribunals the administration created in 2001 without the involvement of Congress.
YOUR THOUGHTS: Good or bad decision?
However, the administration doesn't want to give terror detainees more protections than those U.S. citizens receive in civilian courts, Pentagon Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dell'Orto told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Military commanders were alerted to the policy shift in a memo signed Friday by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and first disclosed Tuesday by the British newspaper Financial Times.
The memo, released publicly by the Pentagon, says that as a result of the high court ruling, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 "applies as a matter of law to the conflict with al-Qaeda."
Article 3 prohibits murder, mutilation and other forms of violence as well as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Trial and sentencing of prisoners must be carried out by a "regularly constituted court," a phrase that led the Supreme Court majority to strike down the administration's secret tribunal system.
Phrases barring degrading treatment are hard to interpret, acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury told senators Tuesday. Also, he and Dell'Orto said, captives may not cooperate if they learn they have the right to remain silent.
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, said that he was willing to work on "bipartisan legislation," but that the administration's "kangaroo court procedures" damaged the U.S. reputation around the world.
Posted 7/11/2006 9:55 AM ET
HAVE WE LOST OUR FREAKIN' SPINES??????
Degrading treatment????????????? Look at this!!!!
Gitmo's 'gourmet fare'
By James Langton
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
June 29, 2005
NEW YORK -- The prison is known more for the accusation that it's a gulag than for goulash, but a new cookbook aims to counter the reputation of the detention center at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Several hundred recipes prepared for the inmates at the camp are to be published next month in "The Gitmo Cookbook," including dishes such as mustard-and-dill baked fish and honey-and-ginger chicken breast.
The recipes -- most of which use fewer than eight ingredients and originally were created to feed up to 100 persons -- were developed by the U.S. Navy cooks in charge of the camp's kitchens.
They must serve food that meets the Islamic halal requirements of the 540 detainees, who mostly are from Afghanistan, Iraq and other Arab nations. A halal meal adheres to dietary practices mandated by Islamic law.
The chance to eat the Gitmo way will be offered in the compilation of recipes by a group of Americans who say the camp's reputation for inhumane conditions and torture is exaggerated.
Freed detainees have complained of intimidation by dogs, being forced to wear pictures of scantily clad women around their necks, and being kept in isolation for months at a time, in either freezing or boiling temperatures.
Laura Curtis, one of the book's editors, says the recipes would "make a point about how well we are treating these people." Freed prisoners are said to have put on an average of nearly 14 pounds during captivity.
"We feel that the word 'torture' is a serious abuse of the language when you apply it to what's going on at Gitmo," she says. "We're pretty tired of the military-bashing that we see in the news."
On testing the recipes, one member of the book team disliked the glazed carrots but says the carrots "did not sink to the level of torture."
They don't feed American prisoners like this!!!
This is nuts!!! They have no rights!!!
