ABC News’ interview with Lakhdar Boumediene and our current policies – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
First of all Glenn Greenwald deserves a lot of credit for championing basic human rights for US prisoners. In this piece he recounts the plight of Boumediene:
…who, while living in Bosnia working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released — in January, 2002 — he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.
Congress passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 which would have cemented the fate of people like Boumediene. We had no evidence to keep him, yet the Bush administration fought every attempt to release him. The Obama administration “which continues to claim that ‘state secrets’ would be jeopardized if the victims of our torture and wrongful detention such as Boumediene are permitted to have their claims heard in an American court.”
This is not how a civilized nation behaves. We ignore basic human rights as detailed on our own laws and consitiution at our own fate. We have for too long justified they very worst types of tyranny with our own fears. We have decided that the best way to fight those who “hate us because of our freedoms” is by destryoing those freedom, which is the only way terrorists could ever win.
