Gitmo: The End Of Law

Last week the America Civil Liberties Union confirmed what most thinking people know:

President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq.

A few days ago it was revealed that the United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial:

The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.

Now a Vanity Fair article (based on 60 hours of interviews with 10 former detainees) proves that sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners continued at least three months after the Abu Ghraib scandal was revealed, and presumably continues today.

Mike Whitney at The Smirking Chimp sums up what the continuing horror of US state-sponsored torture means:

"The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay is the brightest star in the Bush firmament. It towers over the political landscape like a monument to human cruelty. That's why the administration chose to slap it up in full view of the world. It's their way of announcing that the fundamental rules of the game have changed...

Guantanamo is intended to send a message that the internationally accepted norms of justice have been rescinded. From now on, all law proceeds from Washington...

Guantanamo is a deliberate effort to overturn every legal protection that safeguards the individual from the arbitrary actions of the state. Simply put, it is the end of the law."

Elsewhere, Robert Scheer calls for an invasion of Cuba to "put an end to what has become another Devil's Island in the annals of government-sanctioned torture."

Unfortunately, we look more and more like our enemies every day. On an island invaded, sabotaged and barred from U.S. trade and even tourism in the name of spreading our version of democracy, we have erected a massive torture chamber any deranged dictator would envy.

There should be tent cities of protestors camping outside the White House - and they should have been there a year ago. Stand up, America!