[Previous entry: "Judge's anger at US torture"] [Next entry: "White House Ordered to Release Spy Documents"]

02/17/2006:

"White House Rejects U.N. Report Calling for Guantanamo Closure"

The White House today rejected a United Nations report saying that the Guantanamo Bay detention center should be closed and that treatment of detainees in some cases amounted to torture, calling it a "rehash" of old allegations.

The U.N. report — officially released today but reported in Monday's Los Angeles Times — concludes that the U.S. treatment of detainees violated their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constituted torture.

It also urged the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington's justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.

The report, compiled by five U.N. envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees' lawyers and families, and U.S. officials, followed an 18-month investigation ordered by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Nonetheless, its findings — notably a conclusion that the violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques "must be assessed as amounting to torture" — are likely to stoke U.S. and international criticism of the prison.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended the treatment of detainees held at the prison at a news conference today.

"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about that are there," he said. "We know that Al Qaeda terrorists are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."
latimes.com

Now there's some rebuttal: you're just saying what you've always said, can't you come up with anything new? If there are 'dangerous terrorists' there, put 'em on trial.


Chertoff evokes 9-11 in his Katrina Defense
WASHINGTON — Embattled Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testified Wednesday that he did not take charge of his department's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina because his personal experience during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had convinced him that micromanaging by senior officials could make matters worse.

This is their 'defense' for every atrocity.