Musicians are sending/have sent Obama a letter about no touch torture of some music…

See the UK Reprieve site Clive Stafford Smith’s site

The dehumanizing, degrading treatment men, women and children have been subjected to is horrendous in-and-of itself yet to further subject them to more abuse by the “judicial” system is not only atrocious it sets back the advancement of social justice and human rights.

After spending 6 years in solitary confinement Mohammed Jawad, one of Bush’s “too dangerous to release” prisoners, will be released due to the lack of credible evidence. Although the Obama administration lawyers originally took the same position and fought against his release, they did reverse that decision.

But it took a military judge who ruled Jawad’s torture-induced confession inadmissible, the lead prosecutor’s sworn affidavit validating Jawad was tortured and the testimony from Jawad’s interrogator before they dropped the case.

For someone who spent his adult life fighting for social justice, Obama’s inexplicable decision — to deny prisoners deemed “too dangerous to release” the right to due process and reinstate military commissions allowing tainted evidence to be presented at trial — doesn’t make sense.

Bush’s attempts to justify the unjustifiable, defend the indefensible, argue the inarguable and claim justice was served were an abject failure.

While reversing positions on Jawad’s case is a step in the right direction it is not near enough. Policies that hearken back to the Bush era that were unacceptable then are equally unacceptable now and if allowed to continue would be a travesty to the cause of human rights, social justice and freedom.

The continued incarceration of these men is outrageous and unconscionable. The real reason they are being held is that some Americans in positions of power are afraid of them, not because of any crime the prisoners can be proved to have committed.

Fear as the basis of incarceration is really bad–really dangerous–policy. Nothing has to be proven, no crime has to be committed, the only “crime” is the fear the jailers have of the prisoner. For that, a sentence longer than that served for murder in the US. How absolutely absurd. “I fear you–therefore you are a criminal”…that is the sum of the case against these victims of insane American powermongers.

And after being treated with such cruel injustice, why wouldn’t their hate of America be etched deeply into the very tissue of their souls? Why wouldn’t they die just for the satisfaction of watching Americans die?

These inept American employees have most likely created monsters obsessed with hatred of America, because said inept employees are so scared they violated all norms of civilized behavior, incarcerating men not for crimes committed, but out of fear, and in how many cases, torturing, lying to the American people until they have no credibility, and abusing the good name of our nation.

The only way America can regain any moral legitimacy is by vigorous prosecution of the criminal perps of this violation of civilization, from the bottom to the top.

Let them all go with large settlements. We have done enough damage in the name of “national security,” holding people without cause indefinitely…it’s evil, and we need to make amends and stop it now before we create a lot more “terrorists.” I don’t believe there’s even one person held at Guantanamo who deserves to be there. And it will take a lot of evidence to convince me otherwise.

As the Supreme Court explained, right after the Great Rebellion, aka the Civil War, in 1866’s Ex Parte Milligan:

“The next paragraph lays down the chief condition that can justify martial law, and also marks the boundary between martial and civil law:

‘While the laws are silenced by the noise of arms, the rulers of the armed force must punish, as equitably as they can, those crimes which threaten their own safety and that of society, but no longer; every moment beyond is usurpation. As soon as [71 U.S. 2, 55] the laws can act, every other mode of punishing supposed crimes is itself an enormous crime.’

-snip-

The military commission, under our government, is of recent origin. … It is a rude substitute for a court of justice, in the absence of civil law.

-snip-

If [Milligan, or Guantanamo's prisoners] cannot enjoy the immunities attaching to the character of a prisoner of war, how can [he or they] be subject to their pains and penalties?”

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=71&invol=2

Will ANY American Senator stand with the wise and humane 1866 Supreme Court, next week, to block Carl Levin’s latest uncalled-for version of martial rule, now inserted into the 1000-page defense authorization bill??

Or will Leahy, Dodd and Feingold DUCK again, as they ducked when Levin and Harry Reid, on behalf of the Senate minority, helped speed the unConstitutional Military Commissions Act through the Senate in late 2006?

CitizenLegislatorCC, who keeps making some very valid points, wrote:

So let’s see…

We have MILITARY judges, MILITARY prosecutors, and MILITARY defense attorneys at war with each other, in the name of providing “justice” for their long-abused foreign prisoners whom the U.S. government refuses to classify (and treat accordingly, which means NO NON-voluntary interrogation) as either Prisoners of War or criminal suspects.

While the U.S. Congress admiringly studies its own navel, and files its nails, these absurdly non-neutral Military Commission proceedings continue, at an exceedingly leisurely pace, OUTSIDE our OPEN and sitting regular civil courts of law.

Of course, in the event that some legislators have a mind to observe the setting and proceedings blessed by their profoundly unjust (and Supreme Court-decreed unConstitutional, at least in part) Military Commissions legislation, Congress’s long indifference and contemptible dereliction of duty will come back to haunt them, as ABC is reporting:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8108591

These Military Commissions are, in effect, martial rule, despite the distance and time from any battlefield or active conflict in Cuba, today, and the fact that our regular courts have never been closed or threatened since 2001.