Yeah, I read that. It just codifies atrocity as an acceptable Standard Operating Procedure. It's remeniscent of the process the Germans went through as the country became aculturated to naziism. Crimes and atrocities gradually became legal and, in some cases, even obligatory under German law, as if doing so gave these things legitimacy. But, the "I was only following legal orders" or, "it was perectly legal" or, "I was only obeying the law" defenses proved not to be acceptable in legitimate tribunals or courts of law. If anybody in the military or government thinks that because an act that likely shocks the conscience of the average reasonable person is described, as a set of instructions, in a document like the Army Field Manual will exonerate them, especially an international court, they are betting on the wrong horse.

...great. But what isn't explicitly stated is that they are going to be released with a clean bill of health, as free persons. And, if they are returned to their countries of origin, that's probably going to be to other prisons that are run by or under the influence of the US, like the equally hellish Baghram prison. If we cannot produce evidence of criminality, suitable for criminal prosecutions in our own courts, then they must be freed, and not transferred as perpetual prisoners to other prisons, especially if it can be reasonably assumed that they are going to be as ill-treated as they were under the Bush regime.

I accept that some small handful of the people still held are as bad as the worst people of our own citizens that we have locked in our maximum security prisons. But, Clinton and crew gave us all a good lesson in how to prosecute guys like them, and do so using the legal system that existed prior to 9/11. His Administration put them away for life without parole, violating none of the rights of the accused in the process. We have people in custody, and if we hold them on legitimate grounds, we should be able to make a legitimate case against them in a trial by jury. If we can't, then we never had any business holding them at all, regardless of what they are alleged to have done. The basis of my concern, aside from the injustice, is that the way our laws are now constructed, the same things that have been done to these GITMO internees can also be done to any citizen or resident of the U.S., without grounds, without recourse and wholly on the whims a single individual. There is literally nothing that seperates you, me or anybody else from the situation these hapless people find themselves in.

A few years ago I speculated on C&L threads that one of the overarching, but unspoken, purposes of places like GITMO was to habituate American people to atrocity. I'm still of that opinion. Aside from it's other purposes, such as evading the rule of law, GITMO is a tool of social indoctrination, purposefully crafted and deployed against the American public. It was particularly suitable for the task, because the alleged terrorists could be so easily portrayed as the dangerous "other", especially against the backdrop of relentless government/MSM partner-orchestrated campaigns of fear mongering, that we citizens could just as easily be manipulated into holding no scruples against anything that would be done in these places to these ultramega-badguy, designated-boogeymen-of-all-our-worst-nightmares. Concurrently, a centrally orchestrated campaign of xenophobia against illegal immigrants would reinforce the introduction into our national culture of eliminationist phobias about other "not us" groups (witness the concentration camps that have been constructed by FEMA on no-bid contracts in the last few years, ostensibly to "handle imigration emergencies or other situations"). Through a not-all-that-slow process of habituation, we as a people would be conditioned to become progressively more jaded about and tolerant of acts that shock the conscience, movng to majority acceptance, and finally to a self-righteous expectation that those acts be committed upon those who, by god, deserved what they get (and we could always count on the likes of FOX News or CNN to fan the flames of such expectations). Gradually, the circle that encloses around those who are "not us" would be expanded to include, dissidents, not just the uncooperative press but all journalists, war protestors, peaceful peoples like the Quakers and generally anybody who didn't get with the program (it's now come out that Bush's spy program violated all Americans, with special emphasis on exactly those groups and more). Throughout the process, we would conveniently miss the point that what is done to any of these groups can, with equal ease and perfect legality, be done to any of us. It was a process intended from its conception to corrode the national sense of right and wrong. It is a process that derives straight out of the totalitarian despot's playbook, and the Bush regime was following it to the letter.

I'd get a better feeling if Obama and Company would explicitly repudiate that process and the twisted and defective thinking that allows for it. It is something that must be done explicitly in words, followed by a series of decisive actions that unfold in deliberate and complete congruence with those words.

bring them back as they are really scary!

We had to keep the Cubans that Castro gave us because of the Cuban Adjustment Act. It meant that we could not turn back any Cuban who reached our shores. Yes, some were held in Federal prisons and some also became American citizens. But I bet if you asked Gitmo detainees if they wanted to be given asylum in the USA, they would probably spit in your face.

there. Take a hike and learn before you blither St.