Dear Bush,
I want to believe that you know what you’re doing. I want to keep our soldiers safe by either bringing them home or sending in reinforcements. I want to help the Iraqis we promised to help 16 years ago achieve a free and safe Iraq. However, I have suspicion you will escalate the war to include Iran if given the resources and I don’t trust you. Last night you said “…we have a shared obligation to ensure that the federal courts have enough judges to hear those cases and deliver timely rulings.” Yet we still hold prisoners without charges. I can’t watch you say these things and suspend disbelief long enough to put my brothers’ lives in your hands.
Sincerely,
Me
PS Stop using phrases like “death squads” and “the homeland” it sounds like your talking about Nazi Germany and you’re creeping me out.
6 comments:
Ummm, Hi, Bom,
The only "prisoners" being held without charges are Spies & Saboteurs scooped up on the battlefield (spies according to the Geneva Convention). They are to be executed, according to the GC, not fed and allowed to worship, etc.
And as for death squads, not talking about America, and the homeland, well, every other country in the world uses that phrase, most Americans are just ignorant of that. Just like we only speak one language. (and yes, that includes me, a smattering of Spanish and German does not count)
Stop buying the rhetoric
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510012007
"Ahmed Errachidi
Ahmed Errachidi, a Moroccan national with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, remains in Guantánamo. He is accused of training in an Afghan camp to learn about weapons and bomb making in July 2001. His lawyer claims that this is impossible as he was working as a chef in London and that there are payslips and timesheets to prove this. In March 2006, while Ahmed Errachidi was thought to be taking part in a hunger strike at Guantánamo, he wrote:
"I do not want to die; I want to live, and I am not living here. My struggle is not to die, but it is a struggle for the truth.""
"Omar Deghayes
"Omar has already been held for over four years without charge or trial – a complete travesty of justice. We’ve always said that we’re not looking for special favours for my brother – just for his fundamental human rights to be respected."
Omar Deghayes’ sister Amani, speaking to Amnesty International. Omar Deghayes, a Libyan national granted political asylum in the UK, was detained in Pakistan in April 2002 and subsequently transferred to Guantánamo in September that year. Amnesty International activists in the UK, particularly those in Omar’s home town of Brighton, have campaigned tirelessly for his release.
Who are the Guantánamo detainees? Case Sheet 9, AMR 51/088/2005"
"Mohamed el-Gharani
Mohamed el-Gharani (Mohamed C), a Chadian national born and raised in Saudi Arabia, went to Pakistan to study English and computer skills. In October 2001, when aged just 15, he was arrested while praying in a mosque in Karachi.
He says he was tortured in Pakistan and then felt "overjoyed" when his captors handed him to US custody as he believed his torture would end. Instead, he was hooded, shackled, beaten and threatened with death, then flown by helicopter to US custody in Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he alleges he was tortured.
In January 2002 he was one of the first detainees sent to Guantánamo. He says he has been tortured there, including by exposure to extremes of cold temperatures and loud music, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation. He says he has also faced constant racial abuse.
Mohamed el-Gharani is no longer a child. He is a young man who remains in Guantánamo with no knowledge of when he will be released, and who is suffering depression that has twice led him to attempt suicide.
Who are the Guantánamo detainees? Case Sheet 10, AMR 51/110/2005"
Five years on, hundreds of men are still held in Guantánamo. None has been tried. None has appeared in court. All are unlawfully detained. Many have been tortured or ill-treated, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere prior to their transfer to Guantánamo, or during their transfer, or as part of the interrogation process in the base, or just through the harshness of the Guantánamo regime – isolating, indefinite and punitive. By association, their families too have suffered the cruelty of this virtually incommunicado island incarceration.
Further more - I don't care if the whole world jumped off a cliff - does that mean we should?
It still creeps me out to hear him use the phrase "homeland" (shiver)
It's not "The Homeland" it's "these United States" home of millions of immigrants and their descendants. A melting pot of peoples who’s homelands are different.
Web definitions for homeland
fatherland: the country where you were born
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Definition in context
See, too close to Hitler's phrase "The Fatherland" for my comfort. Especially in light of fighting an enemy who has no face and in a war we don't know how to win or what winning even looks like. Except that each catasporhic event that DOESN't happen is a victory and soon War will actually mean winning the PEACE...oh wait... is that Newspeak?
You know you really get my goat don't you.
Not trying to get your goat, but all of those turkeys in Gitmo were picked up in the battlespace. They have all had a review by military judges, and if they were not bad guys they wouldnot be there.
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