ABC's Jennings tries to knock down Guantánamo walls

[UpInArms]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/9011470.htm?1c

Pity the reporter assigned to write about the 600 or so prisoners held on the U.S. Navy base at Cuba's Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration has classified virtually everything that goes on there. Interviews with the prisoners -- about their treatment, the reasons they're being held, or anything else -- are forbidden. You can't even talk to their lawyers, because they have none. It's the journalistic equivalent of a black hole: Reporters go in, but no news comes back out.

So it's not very surprising that tonight's ABC News special on Guantánamo Bay, anchored by Peter Jennings, breaks little new ground. But it does deftly sketch the dimensions of a situation that could turn out to be extremely ugly.

Most of the prisoners were captured during the collapse of Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001. They were sent to Guantánamo Bay because it's ''the legal equivalent of outer space,'' as one Pentagon official puts it: largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

<snip>

Even if they're telling the truth -- and the stream of sickening photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison has not exactly bolstered the Pentagon's credibility on the subject -- the officials' definition of ''humane'' may not be the same one found in Webster's. ABC got hold of a 2002 memo in which Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers argued that laws forbidding torture were not relevant to Guantánamo Bay because ``infliction of pain or suffering per se does not amount to torture. The pain or suffering must be severe.''

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(couldn't tell if this was "news" or "editorial" so I posted it here)

[teryang]

1. Is GITMO the equivalent of outer space?

The administration argued that it was within the special territorial and maritime jurisdiction of the United States.

They stood the "outer space" document on its head to get out from under the federal torture statute which they say applies only "outside the United States." One could therefore infer that the Federal District Courts have jurisdiction here, and therefore, that due process applies. It follows that activities at GITMO are not a black hole and that courts could take jurisdiction of all the legal irregularities there.

Of course the lying hypocrites want to have it both ways.