United States District Court Judge
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse
333 Constitution Avenue, Northwest
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 354-3433 fax)

Honorable John Bates;

I am writing to you today about Abdel Al-Ghizzawi, a detainee who has been in Guantanamo Bay detention facility for over five years. Al-Ghizzawi was sold to U.S. Troops as part of a bounty, he is not a “high value” detainee. Al-Ghizzawi was one of the “no hearings hearings” detainees who had new Tribunals convened in his absence when the initial Tribunals determined that he should never have been determined to have been an enemy combatant. Later in 2005 a new tribunal was conducted that declared him an enemy combatant. In fact, Abdel Al-Ghizzawi never fought with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or anyone else.

Abdel Al-Ghizzawi has Hepatitis B as well as Tuberculosis. His condition is worsening, and is very grave. On January 28 2008 his attorney H. Candace Gorman filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court asking the US military to provide urgent medical treatment to Abdel Al-Ghizzawi, as well as access to his medical records. Chief Justice John Roberts denied the motion.

This is shameful. Our country is supposed to be run by us – the citizens of these United States, we are supposed to be the Government. However, in the past few years we have had very little say in what goes on, and none in how this country treats it’s POWs or detainees. This needs to change. We care what’s done in our name. Our country, while once a beacon of human rights is now one of the worlds worst offenders.

I ask you to help Abdel Al-Ghizzawi by providing him with the medical care he needs so desperately. I urge you to provide his attorney, H Candace Gorman access to his medical records so that she can assure that he gets the treatment that he needs for his condition.

The world is watching. Our reputation has been sullied enough. Please act in the best interest of everyone. Give us back our good conscience.

Sincerely,

[name]

[address]

I admire your strength. The knowledge of what is being done in our names often overwhelms me with rage, grief, despair, and guilt, but it’s vital that the information be made widely available, to make it impossible for us to pretend that we don’t know (or, in a few years, that “we didn’t know!”).

I write from Arctic Norway where I teach psychology in the local university. Thank you for the essay.

Are there any kinds of criminal or civil punishments for military officers on these tribunals who knowingly do injustices that lead to the unlawful confinement of individuals?

Many in the world appreciate your efforts in this matter. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Floyd Rudmin

Thanks for the comments, Floyd. I think that we’re a long way from any kind of culpability for the individuals involved. They were, after all, mostly following orders (not that that’s really any excuse), but the chain of responsibility obviously leads right to the top of government – to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their advisors, who, I believe, should one day be held accountable for their deliberate subversion of the law.

I also received this pithy comment:

Mr. Worthington,

My congressman just came back from a “tour” of Gitmo and publicly claimed that “All is well.” Somehow, I think he is full of crap. But then what can be expected?

Thanks for reading my message.

Dave Murray
North Mankato, MN

And Chris Baker from Austin, Texas sent a snappy one-liner, which was much appreciated:

The prisoners at Guantánamo have also been abandoned by most of the people who call themselves “journalists.”

In part you said, “It really doesn’t get any worse than this.”

Of course it will get worse, until Bush & Cheney are arrested and sent to be tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity.

I wish to thank you very much for this article. I’m a combat vet of the Vietnam War, and I’m horrified at the treatment we give the detainees at GITMO. An abomination as bad as anything the N. Koreans, or N. Vietnamese did to our soldiers that they captured. I used to hear stories about stuff they did as reasons for “why we fight”. I guess we should now attack our own selves… As a kid I remember seeing newsreels of the awful condition of our soldiers returning from being POW’s in North Korea. And they had only been POW for less than three years. We’ve held guys like this poor fellow for seven years. That he is still sane at all is amazing.

I never thought my nation would stoop so low. As a kid I wondered how an evil person like Hitler could wrest control of a nation from the good people. Now I see how it’s done, as Bush and his minions have absolutely no respect for our laws.

Anyway, thanks for your article.

Wade Kane

After I replied to Wade, thanking him and asking if I could have permission to reproduce it here, he replied:

Yes you may reproduce my message … Forty years ago today I was a crew chief on a Chinook helicopter flying missions into the Citadel in Hue Vietnam. I thought I was fighting evil, never dreamed my nation could ever stoop so low. I was with Company A, 228th ASHB (Assault Support Helicopter Battalion) 1st Air Cav (Airmobile) at Phu Bai.

I vividly remember accounts by the crew of the Pueblo after their capture by the N. Koreans and of the horrific tortures the N. Koreans showed them to encourage them to talk, stuff much like we seem to be doing also. I noticed this article on the Anti-war.com site that’s similar to yours: a different man, but the same basic injustice. http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/03/Opinion/I_know_prisoner_345.shtml [Andy’s note: this is the basis of my article here – http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/?p=216

If going to a “terrorist training camp” in Afghanistan makes one a terrorist who we should lock up, shouldn’t we hunt down and lock up all graduates of the “School of the Americas” at Ft. Benning? In the eighties (Charlie Wilson’s War) didn’t we pay for the training schools in Afghanistan?? Has any nation ever been more hypocritical?

I’ve long thought we’d get better results getting information out of those who actually ARE Osama’s followers by treating them with kindness and mercy. In effect saying “your attack on our great nation was so ineffectual that we can treat you well”. We should have post 9-11 bombed Afghanistan with blankets and food.

Wade

Thanks again, Wade. I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about taking the moral high ground. If the treatment of captives in the “War on Terror” had followed the rules – and centered on the use of principled and capable interrogators, like the FBI’s Dan Coleman – it would have been possible to belittle the “terrorist masterminds”; to mock them for their recruitment of suicide bombers, for instance, while making sure that they themselves remained safe and sound. That’s not heroic to me; it’s cowardly, manipulative and morally repugnant.

Andy — In your article you stated near the end, “As the Supreme Court ponders whether or not to rule that the detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus (after their statutory right, granted by the Supreme Court in June 2004, was taken away in 2006′s Military Commissions Act), I can only hope that this analysis of the administration’s disdain for the law and for human suffering will help the justices to rule for the detainees, and that in the meantime Mr. al-Ghizzawi does not die in Guantánamo, scorned by a corrupt administration, and neglected and abandoned by the medical profession.”

Being an American, and a lawyer for the past 15 years, you must understand that this Supreme Court will never, ever award justice to or rule in favor of the detainees, except by half measures at best. Al-Ghazzawi is destined to die in custody, most likely from neglect, but in reality affirmatively at the hands of me and my fellow citizens who cannot be flogged into caring enough to overthrow the criminal regime that has seized the rudder of state.

There is a mean-spirited ignorance driven by irrational fear and underscored by a basic lack of proper education, intellectual capacity and intellectual curiosity that has taken root in the U.S. that persists in every office and dusty corner linings the halls of power in Washington D.C., and in the vast majority of households, down to the smallest hamlet of rural southern Virginia, that withholds justice from all but the few chosen by the privileged lords who control its meting out to their minions and supplicants in measured tidbits.

All hope for exercise of fairness, morality, and righteousness by this country, by this generation of leaders, and the next, and probably the next after that, is absolutely and utterly lost. The illusion of America’s guiding leadership in matters of justice, and doing right has been shattered over the past 40 years (since the depravity of the Vietnam conflict), and there is no hope at all of it being revived until perhaps the twilight of our lives after the system comes crashing down into ruins, and only then the work to rebuild it is begun.

You have to accept this, and you must look elsewhere in the world for what you crave – you will not find it here, you will not. The intrinsic value of America and her promise has become a lie, a hoodwink, and these cynical charlatans laugh at our naiveté as they profit from the suffering of those they plunder.

I don’t mean to be a downer, but the status quo (so emblematic of America’s rot) is Guantánamo, and there are no more heroes left to save us from ourselves, and not one man of integrity in this entire country who will be permitted to remain uncorrupted long enough to stand up and overthrow the regime.

I enjoyed your article, it was incredibly informative, and heartbreaking as well. But you have to understand that the value of a human life in America, and in this regard it is no better than anywhere else on earth, is close to nothing, in spite of all the rhetoric and bluster to the contrary.

You, me, Al-Ghazzawi, 1,000,000,000 inhabitants of the Middle East region — all of us collectively don’t amount to even raw sewage flowing in the gutter before the eyes of those who make the decisions that ultimately will affect all of our lives. Our lives are less than meaningless, they are contemptible, and we are tolerated only because we are needed as fodder and fuel for the engine of doom that runs over our land.

Our current leaders, and their children, and their grandchildren are the lost generations who have forgotten our purpose, and who care not for our dreams, and who assign no value to anything that doesn’t line their pockets. They lack the basic humanity necessary to care about whether we treat people like Al-Ghazzawi worse than a dog who is left in its cage without human contact, without sufficient means to survive, without care, and utterly without hope. They are animals – we all are animals. Once you accept that fact, you’ll learn to look elsewhere for inspiration and hope – somewhere other than these decaying shores. America has been lost, you must abandon ship and search for more suitable parts.

Wish I brought a better assessment, but thought you ought to know that true state of our union.

This was my reply:

What an epitaph for America. You’re probably right, and I don’t pretend my own country is any better. We handed the bloody baton of international empire on to you, and forged a special relationship to help keep what we could of our own land grab.

I sometimes wonder why the Guantánamo detainees called to me to tell their story, and why I then found myself talking to lawyers in the States who believe that the laws which were so important at your country’s founding are important still. I don’t know the answer to that, and it may all be futile, but I can’t respond to the situation in any other way.

And this was my correspondent’s response:

Andy – Thanks for the note. I was wallowing a bit when I read your article – which was an excellent piece I thoroughly enjoyed – thanks! As you note, the good news is that there are still people here that remain sentient enough to care about the direction our country is headed, and to do what they can to raise awareness and to try to make things better. That gives me hope. Growing up, I expected the world to be a more enlightened, and less cruel place when I became an adult. A bit of naiveté, perhaps, which has led to a certain amount of disappointment. My response was probably overly nihilistic, but I lost a friend to murder last year (2 bullets to the back of the head, like an execution) and the unbelievably corrupt law enforcement in our sleepy little southern town just refused to investigate it, called it a suicide despite ample evidence of foul play. That was the proverbial straw, for me. It’s had a profound and negative effect on me, as you might imagine.

I hope to see your writing again on Counterpunch, I check the site everyday, and find it illuminating – a bright spot in a dark time.

And my final reply:

Thanks, and sorry to hear your report about your friend. I can understand how that would cloud your opinions. I do think, however, that finding an adequate response to the general bleakness of our times is hard to achieve. 35 years ago, the campaign against the Vietnam War showed how it should be done. Now, however, it’s not just ignorance that’s the enemy, it’s also apathy; soul-hollowing apathy, for which consumerism and self-obsession are inadequate responses. I too had hopes when I was younger – and I still do today – but Thatcher and Reagan did a remarkable hatchet job on most of them that still plagues us today.