It's no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we'll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we'll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

After 9/11, our government turned to torture, seeking information about the terrorists who committed the atrocity and others who might follow after them. Senior officials ordered the torture of men at military bases and detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe, and in other countries – including Libya and Egypt -- where abusive regimes were asked to do Washington’s dirty work.

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Apologists for the tarnished military commissions, like Attorney General Eric Holder and the sixth and current chief prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins, acknowledge that our regular federal courts are best suited for terrorism trials. Holder told an audience at Northwestern University in March:

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The euphemism tradition remains alive and well in the Obama administration.  The slogan “fairness, transparency, justice” is featured prominently throughout the military commissions’ new half-million-dollar website.  The slogan even shows up when case document links lead to a notice saying the “document you are trying to access is currently undergoing a security review” and might be posted later if the government decides it is “publicly releasable.”

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Yet this week, behind thick bulletproof glass in a secure hangar-like courtroom at Guantanamo, I saw vast differences between the two systems. One notices first the physical – the few observers permitted to visit the isolated island base reach the courthouse through a maze of walkways secured by high dark-mesh fences, guards and double barbed wire on both sides. Instead of sitting in the courtroom, observers sit in an adjoining room, behind glass, and hear voices on 40-second delay to allow court security officers to cut off the audio should any classified information be uttered. In the dock this week was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent accused of planning and participating in the bombing of the destroyer, the USS Cole, on October 12, 2000. The attack killed 17 US servicemen and injured many more. With US service members killed a federal court clearly would have jurisdiction over the case, so the government must have some other reason for choosing a military commission.

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The Obama administration has suggested that it's open to a veto of the bill -- a move that would appear consistent with his opposition to indefinite detentions when he was running for president. The only problem -- as Jon Stewart pointed out on "The Daily Show" last night -- is that the President Obama would veto the bill not because it runs counter our conception of liberty ... but because it doesn't go far enough.

Part 1

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The Bush system of indefinite detention established at Guantanamo and elsewhere attempted to stand outside and circumvent the rule of law. This system has failed to prosecute more than a handful of terrorist suspects, while wrongfully detaining hundreds more. Yet Congress is now poised to make this system a permanent feature of U.S. law.

The National Defense Authorization Act, scheduled to be voted on by the Senate this week, contains several provisions that, if passed, would have the military police the streets, expand Guantanamo and indefinite detention elsewhere, and force certain terrorism suspects into military custody instead of charging them with crimes in civilian courts.

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The records from this lawsuit between two sub-contractors involved in the renditions will eventually be taught in an undergrad history course titled "America: Where It All Went Wrong." Detainees were transported by the same companies that fly billionaires on private jets to their resort vacations. (The CIA doesn't have an air force, so they relied on massive government contractor DynCorp, which... just rented some private planes.)

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"These are not American citizens. We just found with the Caylee Anthony case how difficult it is to get a conviction in a U.S. court," McConnell told "Fox News Sunday." "I don't think a foreigner is entitled to all the protection in the Bill of Rights. They should not be in U.S. courts and before military commissions."

Thanks to the minority leader for demonstrating exactly why so many people couldn't figure out that my jokes about Republicans responding to the Casey Anthony verdict were meant to be... jokes. I should know by now that there is no joking when it comes to the shamelessness and venality of these guys.

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Yet you wouldn't know it in Washington where, if anything, the Obama administration and Congress have interpreted the killing of al-Qaida's leader as a virtual license to double down on every "front" in the war on terror. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was no less blunt than Bergen, but with quite a different endpoint in mind. "Even as we mark this milestone," she said on the day Bergen's comments were published, "we should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden. Indeed, we must take this opportunity to renew our resolve and redouble our efforts."

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Morrell, Pentagon press secretary since 2007, seems very disgruntled indeed about having to do his job in light of some truly disturbing findings in the leaked military dossiers:

“Thx to Wikileaks we spent Easter weekend dealing w/NYT & other news orgs publishing leaked classified GTMO docs http://1.usa.gov/fWbGED,” Morrell tweeted Monday, linking to a news release from the Department of Defense condemning the release of classified documents.

When will the insensitive media stop thinking about oppressive detention systems and start worrying about federal employees’ precious holiday weekends?

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Looking at Obama's shifting rhetoric on the issue, we can trace the shrinking likelihood that promises to close the controversial detention center will be fulfilled.

August 2007:

"As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists," says then-Sen. Obama.

Jan. 22, 2009:

Just two days after taking office, Obama signs the executive order directing the military to close Guantanamo Bay by January 2010. Says Obama:

"This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct, not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard."

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The documents reveal vast new information about these detainees and, in particular, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the “evidence” used (both before and now) to justify their due-process-free detentions. There are several points worth noting about all this:

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These dossiers, penned between 2002 and 2009, contain prisoner assessments (by the U.S. Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay) and recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released, or transferred to their home governments or to other governments.

The military memos, obtained by the New York Times, the Guardian, NPR and other outlets, reveal many captives were held at Gitmo for years on very weak grounds, or on evidence extracted through torture and maltreatment, alongside prisoners considered "high risk."

Media outlets will be sifting the information trove for days to come. As of Monday morning, a number of important stories have already emerged from the documents, allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning.

The Guardian, which offers an easy-to-navigate interface for readers to browse the documents themselves, as well as a live blog on the leaks throughout the day, highlights the following discoveries:

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The military detainee assessments were made public Sunday night by U.S. and European newspapers after the WikiLeaks website obtained the files. The records contain details of the more than 700 detainee interrogations and evidence the U.S. had collected against these suspected terrorists, according to the media outlets.

It's not clear if the media outlets published the documents with the consent of WikiLeaks.

The files -- know as Detainee Assessment Briefs or DABs -- describe the intelligence value of the detainees and whether they would be a threat to the U.S. if released. To date, 604 detainees have been transferred out of Guantanamo while 172 remain locked up.

The disclosures are likely to provide human right activists with additional ammunition that some cases against inmates appear to be based on flawed evidence. However, the DABs show certain inmates were more dangerous than previously known to the public and could complicate efforts by the U.S. to transfer detainees out of the controversial prison that President Barack Obama has failed to close.

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The decision by the Obama administration is an about-face from earlier plans to have the five go on trial in civilian federal court in New York.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity about the switch, which Attorney General Eric Holder was expected to announce at an afternoon news conference.

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Just in case you thought that "political correctness" had been thoroughly discredited in the culture wars of the 1990s, it's back -- and this time it's being treated as a stalking horse for terrorism and getting pummeled all over again.

You only had to listen to the recent hearings convened by New York Republican Congressman Peter King on radicalization and the Muslim religion to know that, if the ascending right in Washington (and elsewhere) has its way, the age of tolerance in America is over. In the name of putting political correctness in its grave, a surprisingly sizeable contingent of politicians, judges, and other influential figures are now calling for transforming draconian behavior -- that once would have made Americans blanche -- into the order of the day.

Blaming Political Correctness for Terrorism

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In an effort to make sense of yesterday's announcement that Guantanamo trials would resume, Stewart questions Obama's ability to keep his promises versus his tendency to cave to political pressure -- or simply to be hypocritical. After decrying the practice of holding prisoners without a trial due to lack of evidence, Obama announced that some prisoners might need to be kept at Guantanamo indefinity. His reason? There's a lack of evidence needed to take the cases to trial.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the fictitious excuse being offered to justify why Obama is continuing the indefinite detentions and military commissions which defined the Bush/Cheney Guantanamo detention scheme:  it's Congress' fault.  Today we have a new excuse:  it's Bush's fault.  Because Bush tortured some of the detainees, this reasoning goes, Obama is incapable of prosecuting them, yet because many of those detainees are Terrorists and/or Too Dangerous to Release (even though they can't be convicted of anything), he has no real choice but to keep imprisoning them without charges.  Here are the NYT Editors -- even as they criticize Obama's indefinite detention policy -- making this case, one frequently heard from Obama supporters offering excuses for his policy of indefinite detention:

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President Obama yesterday signed an Executive Order which, as The Washington Post described it, "will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay" and "all but cements Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy." The Order -- which codifies a system of charge-free indefinite detention and military commissions once ostensibly scorned by Democrats -- was captured perfectly by this headline from Time: None of this is the slightest bit unexpected. The new Executive Order has been previewed for months and merely codifies what has long been Obama's policy: "long" in the sense of "since he's inaugurated"  -- not, of course, "when he was a Senator and presidential candidate." I'm writing about this merely to address the excuse from the White House and its loyalists that the fault for this policy, this inability to "close Guantanamo," lies with Congress, which forced the President to abandon his oft-stated campaign pledge. That excuse is pure fiction.

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