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For nearly six years, I have been researching and writing about Guantánamo and the 779 men (and boys) held there over the last ten years, first through my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since May 2007, as a full-time independent investigative journalist. For three years, I focused on the crimes of the Bush administration and, since January 2009, I have analysed the failures of the Obama administration to thoroughly repudiate those crimes and to hold anyone accountable for them, and, increasingly, on President Obama’s failure to charge or release prisoners, and to show any sign that Guantánamo will eventually be closed.

As the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo approaches, this is an intolerable situation, as the prison remains as much of an aberration, and a stain on America’s belief in itself as a nation ruled by laws, as it was when it was opened by George W. Bush on January 11, 2002. Closing the prison remains as important now as it did when I began this work in 2006.

Over the last six years of researching Guantánamo and writing about it on an almost daily basis, my intention has been to puncture the Bush administration’s propaganda about Guantánamo holding “the worst of the worst” by telling the prisoners’ stories and bringing them to life as human beings, rather than allowing them to remain as dehumanized scapegoats or bogeymen. Read the rest of this entry »

On the 10th anniversary of the horrendous terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, I’m cross-posting an article published on the website of the Center for Constitutional Rights as part of a project entitled, “The 9/11 Decade.” The article, “The 9/11 Decade and the Decline of US Democracy,” was written by Vince Warren, CCR’s Executive Director, and provides an excellent overview of the erosion of liberties and the fundamental assault on domestic laws and international laws and treaties in the United States since the 9/11 attacks — from Guantánamo to the global torture program, from the PATRIOT Act to the widespread repression of dissent in America today. In addition, the article highlights the Bush administration’s unconstitutional power grab, Obama’s refusal or inability to thoroughly repudiate Bush’s crimes and excesses, and the general failures of the courts and the judiciary to play their part in preserving the balance of power and responsibility in the US.

I should note that my interest in the article is not entirely objective, as I was involved in it as a consultant, and I have also added links that were not included in the original article.

The 9/11 Decade and the Decline of US Democracy
By Vince Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

In response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush shredded the US Constitution, trampled on the Bill of Rights, discarded the Geneva Conventions, and heaped scorn on the domestic torture statute and the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the terrible events of September 11, 2001, none of us has any desire to play down the horrors of that day, but two wrongs do not make a right, and, in response to the attacks, the Bush administration engineered and presided over the most sustained period of constitutional decay in our history. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, I was delighted to use Skype for the very first time for an interview with Russia Today in Washington D.C., for a segment of the 4 pm news, entitled, “What has the US achieved since 9/11?” in which I spoke about how we ended up in a disastrous position ten years after 9/11, because of the Bush administration’s arrogant and inept response to the attacks. The video is posted below, via YouTube.

In discussing the legacy of the attacks, I was asked whether or not America is safer today than ten years ago, and particularly whether it is significant that there have been no further terrorist attacks on US soil. In response, I explained that the “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration, with its two wars, and its vast, global program of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention, was depressingly disdainful of, and damaging to international laws and treaties, and was hideously counter-productive in that it further enflamed anti-American sentiment. Crucially, I also explained how there is no evidence that al-Qaeda had a follow-up to 9/11 planned.

I also spoke about Guantánamo, explaining how, because of the decision to declare a “war” instead of recognizing that the perpetrators of the attacks were criminals, and because of the further decision to invade Afghanistan but not to distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, we have ended with a situation in which the alleged perpetrators of the attacks, and others reportedly involved in international terrorism, have not been tried as criminals but continue to be held as “warriors” at Guantánamo, while the soldiers at Guantánamo (who vastly outnumber them) have mistakenly been regarded as terrorists, and deprived of the Geneva Conventions. Read the rest of this entry »

Just published, in the September 2011 issue of Extra!, the monthly magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), is an article I wrote about the US mainstream media’s response to the 9/11 attacks and the establishment of Guantánamo, which, of course, has been, for the most part (but with shining exceptions), a disappointment.

In the article, “The ‘Worst of the Worst’?: 9/11, Guantánamo and the failures of US corporate media,” which is available here on FAIR’s website, I examine the unwillingness of the media to criticise the Bush administration’s “war on terror” until after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004, and how the treasure trove of documents about the Guantánamo prisoners that were released under duress by the Pentagon in 2005 and 2006 were only adequately analyzed by the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey and by myself, in my book The Guantánamo Files and my subsequent work.

I also examine how, under Obama, the media have allowed themselves to be seduced by Pentagon propaganda about the numbers of alleged “recidivists” released from Guantánamo, which has contributed enormously to the skewed debate about he closure of the prison, dominated by Republicans cynically using Guantánamo as part of their political campaigning. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 30, when In My Time, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s self-serving autobiography was published, the timing was pernicious. Cheney knows by now that every time he opens his mouth to endorse torture or to defend Guantánamo, the networks welcome him, and newspapers lavish column inches on his opinions, even though astute editors and programmers must realize that, far from being an innocuous elder statesman defending the “war on terror” as a robust response to the 9/11 attacks, Cheney has an ulterior motive: to keep at bay those who are aware that he and other Bush administration officials were responsible for authorizing the use of torture by US forces, and that torture is a crime in the United States.

As a result, Cheney knew that, on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that launched the “war on terror” that he is still so concerned to defend, his voice would be echoing in the ears of millions of his countrymen and women, helping to disguise a bitter truth: that, following the 9/11 attacks, Cheney was largely responsible for the abomination that is Guantánamo, and for the torture to which prisoners were subjected from Abu Ghraib to Bagram to Guantánamo and the “black sites” that littered the world.

Alarmingly, while Cheney has been largely successful in claiming that the use of torture was helpful, despite a lack of evidence that this was the case, what strikes me as even more alarming is that many Americans are still unaware of the extent to which the torture for which Cheney was such a cheerleader did not keep them safe from terrorist attacks, but actually provided a lie that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Read the rest of this entry »

POSTSCRIPT: My article, “When America changed forever: Human rights ten years after 9/11,” is online on Overland‘s website here.

Back in April, just after WikiLeaks released the classified military documents relating to the Guantánamo prisoners on which I worked as a media partner, and which have consumed most of my time since, I received a welcome email out of the blue from Jacinda Woodhead, the associate editor of Overland magazine.

Overland was founded in 1954, and Jacinda described it accurately as “one of the oldest, most esteemed and most radical of Australia’s literary magazines.” Writing on behalf of the editor Jeff Sparrow, she asked if I would be interested in a commission to write a 3,000-word essay on what the 9/11 attacks, whose tenth anniversary falls in just two weeks, did to civil liberties and the rule of law in America.

Needless to say, I leapt at the opportunity, and the article, “When America changed forever: Human rights ten years after 9/11,” has just been published in the latest issue of Overland, issue 204. In it, I revisit the baleful history of America’s flight from decency and the rule of law under George W. Bush, and President Obama’s failure to throughly repudiate it, or to hold anyone accountable for the torture and lies that defined his predecessor’s administration. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, the Pentagon issued a press release announcing that prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions at Guantánamo had sworn charges against five prisoners: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid Bin Attash, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

Accusing the five men of being “responsible for the planning and execution” of the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon added that the eight charges are “conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft, and terrorism.”

As the Pentagon proceeded to explain, subject to approval by the Commissions’ Convening Authority, Retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, prosecutors recommended that the charges “be referred as capital.”

Anyone paying attention will realise that we have been here before, on February 11, 2008, when the Pentagon announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the the four others named above (plus a sixth man, Mohammed al-Qahtani, against whom the charges were later dropped) were charged with “conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism” — and four of them were, in addition, charged with “hijacking or hazarding a vessel.” Read the rest of this entry »