Two pieces essentially dealing with the same subject - from different perspectives. Bottom line they highlight an appalling situation in the US where torture is being justified and even the most scant "evidence" can be used to justify keeping someone detained at Gitmo indefinitely.
First, from TomDispatch:
"Just in case you thought that “political correctness” had been thoroughly discredited in the culture wars of the 1990s, it’s back -- and this time it’s being treated as a stalking horse for terrorism and getting pummeled all over again.
You only had to listen to the recent hearings convened by New York Republican Congressman Peter King on radicalization and the Muslim religion to know that, if the ascending right in Washington (and elsewhere) has its way, the age of tolerance in America is over. In the name of putting political correctness in its grave, a surprisingly sizeable contingent of politicians, judges, and other influential figures are now calling for transforming draconian behavior -- that once would have made Americans blanche -- into the order of the day."
And then there is this piece "Mocking the Law, Judges Rule that Evidence Is Not Necessary to Hold Insignificant Guantánamo Prisoners for the Rest of Their Lives" on CommonDreams.....worth persevering with.
"On Tuesday, demonstrating quite how open-ended this description is, Judge Kavanaugh, who wrote the judges’ opinion, declared, as ProPublica stated, “that the government doesn’t need direct evidence that a detainee fought for or was a member of al-Qaeda in order to justify a detention.” ProPublica added that the court “determined that circumstantial evidence, such as a detainee being in the same location as other al-Qaeda members, is enough to meet the standard to hold a prisoner without charge.”
In the ruling (PDF), the judges wrote, “Uthman’s account piles coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence … it remains possible that Uthman was innocently going about his business and just happened to show up in a variety of extraordinary places — a kind of Forrest Gump in the war against al-Qaeda. But Uthman’s account at best strains credulity, and the far more likely explanation for the plethora of damning circumstantial evidence is that he was part of al-Qaeda.”
First, from TomDispatch:
"Just in case you thought that “political correctness” had been thoroughly discredited in the culture wars of the 1990s, it’s back -- and this time it’s being treated as a stalking horse for terrorism and getting pummeled all over again.
You only had to listen to the recent hearings convened by New York Republican Congressman Peter King on radicalization and the Muslim religion to know that, if the ascending right in Washington (and elsewhere) has its way, the age of tolerance in America is over. In the name of putting political correctness in its grave, a surprisingly sizeable contingent of politicians, judges, and other influential figures are now calling for transforming draconian behavior -- that once would have made Americans blanche -- into the order of the day."
And then there is this piece "Mocking the Law, Judges Rule that Evidence Is Not Necessary to Hold Insignificant Guantánamo Prisoners for the Rest of Their Lives" on CommonDreams.....worth persevering with.
"On Tuesday, demonstrating quite how open-ended this description is, Judge Kavanaugh, who wrote the judges’ opinion, declared, as ProPublica stated, “that the government doesn’t need direct evidence that a detainee fought for or was a member of al-Qaeda in order to justify a detention.” ProPublica added that the court “determined that circumstantial evidence, such as a detainee being in the same location as other al-Qaeda members, is enough to meet the standard to hold a prisoner without charge.”
In the ruling (PDF), the judges wrote, “Uthman’s account piles coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence … it remains possible that Uthman was innocently going about his business and just happened to show up in a variety of extraordinary places — a kind of Forrest Gump in the war against al-Qaeda. But Uthman’s account at best strains credulity, and the far more likely explanation for the plethora of damning circumstantial evidence is that he was part of al-Qaeda.”
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