Dispatches from the Creation Wars

In their legal complaint, the fathers of two of the young men, Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Al-Salami, both in their 20s, claim their sons were beaten, sleep-deprived, isolated, held in freezing cold or excruciatingly hot temperatures, humiliated, prevented from practicing their religion and denied necessary medication. The fathers, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, claim the young men were obviously suffering from deteriorating mental health and growing despair. Deemed "enemy combatants," they'd spent four years locked up at the Guantanamo prison camp without charge, without seeing the evidence against them, and without ever even meeting with a lawyer who could press their case in a court. Both had engaged in a prolonged hunger strike with other prisoners, and, their fathers say, clearly presented a high risk of suicide.

Yet somehow, as the Seton Hall report points out, the three men were left unsupervised in their cells for long enough that they were able to tear up their sheets and clothing and braid them into a noose; make mannequins of themselves to fool guards into believing they were asleep in their cells; hang sheets to block the guards' view in violation of prison rules; stuff rags down their own throats; tie their own feet and hands together; hang the noose from the cell wall or ceiling; climb up on to the sink in the cell, put the noose around their necks and release their weight so as to die by self-strangulation; and hang dead for at least two hours in the cell, without attracting any attention from the prison guards.

According to the report, five guards were responsible for 24-hour supervision of 28 detainees in the constantly-lit prison cells, which were also monitored by video cameras. Although the guards were initially suspected of giving false statements and read their Miranda rights, they were also ordered not to write out sworn statements, although that's required by the military's standard operating procedures. Ultimately, no one was held responsible for any wrongdoing, the report concludes.
Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall and Director of the school's Center for Policy & Research, which conducted the study of the military's investigation into the three deaths, said in a statement that the investigation shows "guards not on duty, detainees hanging dead in their cells for hours and guards leaving their posts to eat the detainees' leftover food."

Denbeaux also called the government's investigation "a cover up," adding that "given the gross inadequacy of the investigation the more compelling questions are: Who knew of the cover up? Who approved of the cover up, and why? The government's investigation is slipshod, and its conclusion leaves the most important questions about this tragedy unanswered."

All of this, once again, is being defended by the Obama administration, which has sought to have the lawsuit filed by the families dismissed - just as they have with every single case where Bush-era policies in the war on terror, whether they deal with torture or illegal surveillance, have been challenged. Glenn Greenwald sums up the position of the Bush and Obama administrations:

We can kidnap your sons from anywhere in the world, far away from any "battlefield," ship them thousands of miles away to an island-prison, abuse and torture them mercilessly, and when we either drive them to suicide or kill them, you have no right to any legal remedy or even any recourse to find out what happened.

And they take the same exact position when it comes to the government's warrantless wiretap program - "We can listen in on any communication you make with any other person on earth without a warrant or any other procedural safeguards and there is nothing you can do about, no court you can go to for justice. In fact, we don't even have to admit that we did it."

Purely as a matter of principle, is it time to begin calling for impeachment? No, I'm not joking. Barack Obama took a pledge to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. So far, on this crucial issue of government abuse and accountability, he is arguing for the same kind of dictatorial and unchallengeable powers that the Bush administration did. A president with the power to engage in any kind of surveillance on anyone they want and with the power to detain and torture anyone they want without any recourse for legal challenge by their victims is a dictator, right?