Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said. “I don’t want a future vice president to say, `I’m not going to cooperate with you because I don’t want to be fodder for ‘The Daily Show.’”
Let’s recap: Some guy made a couple of afghanis by selling Fayiz to our guys so that the thug-infested Bush administration could justify their fraudulent little war and all its torture-y perks.
And what did Fayiz get? This:
While in U.S. custody in Kabul in December 2001, Al-Kandari was shackled in various stress positions for as long as 36 hours at a time. He was beaten with a chain and water hose. Photographs documenting his condition have not been released.
In early 2002, Al-Kandari was transferred to Bagram and held in a roofed tent with no sides where overnight temperatures typically reached below freezing. Photographs again documented his condition, but they have never been released. [...] He was transferred to Kandahar in early 2002, ... [where] his entire body was shaved (except for a cross on his chest, which was later shaved off) and he was initially kept awake in solitary confinement for five straight days. The abuse continued and resulted in broken ribs and severe bruising documented by medical exams performed months later.
Before being placed on the plane out of Kandahar, his sound-proof headgear was lifted and a female voice whispered, "You are going to hell in GTMO." At the time, he was also drugged, sandbagged, and placed into a head harness for the 24 hour trip.
At Guantanamo, he was again shackled into stress positions for extended periods of time. He was also urinated on and subjected to sleep deprivation, strobe lights, ear piercing music, cell extractions, and extreme heat and cold conditions in his cell via temperature controls. All told, Al-Kandari has been interrogated approximately 400 times and abused throughout the time he was in U.S. custody.
Wait, sidebar: I smell a reason for releasing those pesky torture photos everyone's talking about... evidence. Sidebar over.
So... all that torture must have worked, right? I mean, who could withstand that kind of abuse and not spill what’s left of their guts, because, you know, "some" say torture works and-- What’s that? Sorry, something’s coming through my imaginary earpiece:
A Department of Defense legal review of Al-Kandari’s case found the evidence against him "is made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no first hand knowledge of the events they describe."
Oh.
In short, the U.S. learned nothing of value from its abusive treatment of Al-Kandari and in all likelihood exculpatory materials confirming Al-Kandari’s whereabouts and accounts of abuse will be classified and withheld from public view.
Oh.
So what options are available to Fayiz and those like him? Not many. It all boils down to those infamous military commissions, Wingard's skills, and a judge who will believe Fayiz's testimony, because with the word "classified" popping up everywhere, that's all detainees like him have.
Sidebar #2: Per Barry Wingard, "the military is not behind the commissions." Sidebar #2 over.
However, Major Wingard did share one silver lining with me: He could get a sympathetic judge. Maybe. If he's lucky. But—and there’s always a pesky but-- delays and more delays are kicking that silver-lined opportunity down the road, and Fayiz is still in prison.
But at least he has one hell of a caring, persistent, ethical lawyer.
Vice-President Cheney insists that enhanced interrogations were only used on "hardened terrorists" after other efforts failed, that such efforts prevented the deaths of thousands, and that the U.S. never lost its moral bearings in its treatment of detainees. Al-Kandari is living proof he is wrong on all counts.
Trey Walker, an advisor to S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, posted an innocuous Facebook update about this morning’s escape of a Western Lowlands Gorilla from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo.
Walker’s harmless update, however was followed by a highly-questionable comment from longtime SCGOP activist and former State Senate candidate, Rusty DePass.
“I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless,” DePass wrote.
An early South Carolina supporter of former President George W. Bush, DePass has been active in Republican politics in South Carolina for decades.
Yesterday in Cairo, President Obama eloquently underscored the importance of human security, and the need for everyone to have a safe, dignified and prosperous place in the world. Realizing this aspiration is a daily challenge in the face of widespread human rights violations and vulnerability caused by persecution and conflict.
One challenge to the world's capacity to care for its citizens is taking place right now in Pakistan, where the conflict between the government and militants in the northwest has forced almost three million people from their homes. According to the UN Refugee Agency, this is the most rapid large-scale displacement the world has witnessed since the movement into the Congo after the Rwandan genocide.
More than 80 percent of the displaced are staying with host families, posing a tremendous burden to already poor people, and making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to reach the most vulnerable. While food needs are largely being met, there are severe shortages of shelter, medicine, clean water, and sanitation facilities.
Reports from relief workers in daily contact with the displaced suggest that they are discouraged by the meager response to their plight so far. A crisis of such proportion has the potential to create a mass of people who, out of despair and hopelessness, might become part of another vicious cycle of frustration and violence. The risk to Pakistan's overall stability is very real, and this ultimately poses risks to the United States and its interests in the region as well.
As someone deeply committed to refugee causes for many years, in the Middle East and beyond, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Refugees International, my plea is that the world respond more effectively to this crisis than it has to date. The most immediate need for action is simple -- for funding to be made available to agencies that can deliver assistance directly to the refugees at the village level .
The still unreleased photos relate to abuse alleged to have taken place between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Taguba, now retired, supports Obama’s decision to block the release of the photos, which Obama had previously said would be released according to a court ruling in support of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it,” Taguba said.
