My cousin insisted that I listen a show that This American Life did on 03/10/2006 called "Habeas Schmabeas" (real audio, pdf transcript) which is a much more coherent picture of the difficulties and obvious mistakes made with regards to Guantanamo and enemy combatants (or NLECs, no longer enemy combatants). Along with Moazzam Begg's book, it's pretty evident that the American MPs and other 'handlers' were just over the top in the treatment and hate of the majority of people who should've been released.
If we've labeled them as terrorists, then that's how they get treated.
In this new war, the plan was to build a prison so bleak that the detainees would give up home and talk.
Too bad most of them have nothing significant to talk about. As pointed out in this show and elsewhere, the 50 or so that do know anything are in CIA custody, in black sites, where they should be.
It brings up a lot of good points with regards to the relevance of habeas corpus in this 'new war,' or, as I like to call it, the new cold war. Since '01, I haven't been convinced that habeas should be so sanctified, but the public fallout of what we're told is, and continues to be, nothing short of egregious. The longer it goes on, the easier it gets to believe that Americans both hate and are afraid of Muslims, carte blanche, instead of thinking that this is a tight situation navigating legal precedent.
even if I were an angel, I would still be a terrorist to them, because it's the thing that they wanted. People don't want to take responsibility for their mistakes, that's it. They want to put it on others.
- Abdullah al Noaimi, a Bahraini 19 y/o who'd been to Spring Break in Daytona Beach and other places in the US, as a tourist; released in 2005
It's a good listen.
XII.
And for preventing illegal imprisonments in prisons beyond the seas; (2) be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no subject of this realm that now is, or hereafter shall be an inhabitant or resiant of this kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick upon Tweed, shall or may be sent prisoner into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Tangier, or into parts, garrisons, islands or places beyond the seas...
Habeas Corpus Act, 1679