Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Not with a bang but a whimper …


Office Working to Close Guantánamo Is Shuttered
FORT MEADE, Md. — The State Department on Monday reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him, according to an internal personnel announcement. Mr. Fried’s office is being closed, and his former responsibilities will be “assumed” by the office of the department’s legal adviser, the notice said.

The announcement that no senior official in President Obama’s second term will succeed Mr. Fried in working primarily on diplomatic issues pertaining to repatriating or resettling detainees appeared to signal that the administration does not currently see the closing of the prison as a realistic priority, despite repeated statements that it still intends to do so.

Charles Savage, NYT, 1/29/2013

Well that's over … unless you are one of the United States' "war on terror" prisoners -- mostly now cleared for release -- who gets to rot in our "legal black hole" for the the rest of their lives.

Over, except that the shame of our law-free rendition site, set up for the purpose of being beyond the reach of the US courts, will continue to undermine our pretensions to being a state ruled by law.

Thanks David Addington, thanks Dick Cheney, thanks George W. Bush, for cowardice in the face of a novel challenge that has permanently humiliated your country.

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