President Obama Seeks To Suspend All War Crimes Trials

I read early this morning that one of President Barack Obama's first actions yesterday was to request the suspension of all military tribunals in an effort to review the process. This was definitely welcome news. After hearing of all of the abuses that have taken place at GITMO as well as the spotty if not down right fabricated evidence that has been used to keep some of those men imprisoned for years on end I think this is a vital first step in breaking away from one of Bush's most egregious legacies. Earlier this week there was a report in the New York Times of one of the "enemy combatants", Haji Bismullah, who was finally found after six long years of detention and probable mistreatment to be eligible for release. The story was damn near heartbreaking in that here was a man, and Afghanistan, who it has been reported actually was pro-American and risked his own life to help drive the Taliban out of power in his home country. Only to be detained and taken from his wife and kids all on the word of shady members of an opposing clan. I had to ask myself, how many more Haji Bismullah are stuck over in GITMO for little or no good reason.

You know they saying "ignorance is bliss"? Well I think of that phrase a lot the more I learn about all that has happened in the name of "The War on Terror". I find its hard sometimes for my friends and family members to understand my disgust and frustration with all that happened with the Bush administration. Its easy to label it as me just being a partisan and to a certain extent I am (although I am a registered independent). But when you look at the actual facts of what happened through unbiased sources its truly hard not to be bitter and disgusted. Sometimes I spare them the details because even though I want them to understand my position and see that I am not being irrational, the truth is I realize that for many of them the fact that they don't know much about the torture and illegal detentions our country committed at Bush's direction, enables them to live a more joyous life and I don't want to take away from that. Misery in this case does not want company.

Well Glenzilla in his post about the implications of Obama's request wrote at great length about what it means in the real world. Specifically he spoke on the implications for Mohammed Jawad another "enemy combatant" who has been housed at GITMO since his teenage years under very dubious circumstances The whole thing is as usual a keeper but what I found most powerful in his post were the source links to articles supporting his statements. For that reason I will excerpt liberally primarily from those paragraphs which provide his source links. Enjoy:

Beyond the symbolic value of that act, consider what it means in specific, concrete terms. One of the Guantanamo detainees whose military commission has not yet concluded is Mohammed Jawad. Jawad is an Afghan citizen who, in late 2002, was taken into U.S. custody and then shipped from Afghanistan, his home country, to Guantanamo, where he has remained ever since -- more than six full years and counting. Nobody has ever accused Jawad of belonging either to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Instead, he is accused of throwing a hand grenade at two U.S. soldiers inside his country, seriously injuring both of them. He vehemently denies involvement. At the time of his due-process-less imprisonment in Guantanamo, he was an adolescent: between 15 and 17 years old (because he was born and lived his whole life in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, and is functionally illiterate, his exact date of birth is unknown).

The ACLU represents Jawad in his habeas corpus proceeding (a proceeding which the vile Military Commissions Act denied to him but which the Supreme Court, in its 5-4 Boumediene decision, ruled he was constitutionally entitled to have). The ACLU's habeas brief -- here (.pdf) -- details the severe abuse, coercion, and mental and physical torture which Jawad has endured for the last six years. The details, by definition, would thoroughly disgust any decent human being [just read paragraphs 15-54 for a brief glimpse (.pdf) of what was done to this teenager under the official, authorized program of the U.S. Government].

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To underscore how dubious and unreliable is the evidence against Jawad, how far away he is from a "hard-core terrorist," and how outrageous is his ongoing detention, Lt. Col. Vandeveld very poignantly wrote:

Had I returned to Afghanistan or Iraq, and had I encountered Mohammed Jawad in either of those hostile lands, where two of my friends have been killed in action and one of my very best friends in the world had been terribly wounded, I have no doubt at all -- none -- that Mr. Jawad would pose no threat whatsoever to me, his former prosecutor and now-repentant persecuter. Six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant land, for reasons he may never fully understand.

Worst of all, Lt. Col. Vandeveld explains that he began to realize the grave injustice of prosecuting Jawad as he discovered long-concealed evidence proving just how brutal and continuous the abuse of Jawad has been, and how virtually all of the evidence against him was suspect at best and almost certainly was unreliably coerced.

In Afghanistan, Jawad was severely beaten, drugged, and threatened with death for both himself and his family if he refused to confess to the grenade incident. That occurred just weeks after the incident where two Afghan detainees, including a completely innocent 22-year-old Afghan cab driver, were beaten to death -- murdered -- while detained and interrogated by U.S. troops in Bagram. The confession Jawad "signed" (with his fingerprint, since he can't write his name) became the centerpiece of the Bush administration's case against him, and yet, it was written in a language Jawad did not speak or read, and was given to him after several days of beatings, druggings and threats -- all while he was likely 15 or 16 years old.

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Jawad was never waterboarded, but no civilized human being would deny that the cumulative effect of his treatment at the hands of our country is torture in every sense of the word. And there's nothing unique about his treatment. It wasn't aberrational. Rather, it has been miserably common for detainees in U.S. custody -- not only at Guantanamo, but also in Bagram and throughout Iraq. It was what our highest political officials authorized and ordered. At least 100 detainees in U.S. custody have died since 2002, many suffering gruesome deaths. Countless others have been severely injured and irreparably wounded -- mentally crippled -- by the inhumane, brutal and patently illegal treatment to which they were subjected. Video released earlier this year showed another teenaged detainee at Guantanamo, 16-year-old Omar Khadr, weeping uncontrollably and showing clear signs of mental instability during a Guantanamo interrogation. Khadr's military commission was scheduled to start this week -- and the military judge in charge of his case has just moments ago agreed to Obama's request to suspend it for 120 days.

This is why it is so unconscionable -- almost as revolting as the original acts themselves -- to hear so many Americans arguing that their leaders who were responsible for all of these crimes should be immunized and protected and their crimes left uninvestigated and forgotten. The reasons cited for this impunity are even more wretched -- the media wouldn't like it; it would interfere with Obama's ability to get his stimulus package passed; it would make right-wing talk-radio angry; these crimes happened "in the past" and can therefore be forgotten; the criminals aren't in power any longer; it would be "divisive" and undermine bipartisanship.

When the discussion remains at a high level of abstraction, it's easy to wave away "war crimes" and the need for accountability for those who commit them. But there are actual victims of these crimes -- lots of them, many of whom are completely innocent of having done anything wrong, many whose lives have been destroyed.

That's heavy stuff man. I just wonder if President Bush ever reads these kinds of stories about the men whose lives he has totally destroyed. Men, many of them boys when first detained, who will likely never have a normal life again. Men who had families, a wife and kids. Men who, while possibly innocent, have died while being "questioned" while detained. Men who even when his administration was confronted with evidence of their innocence have still been denied their freedom.

Or maybe once again ignorance is bliss.