If this is a duplicate, I apologize and will delete.
AP has just posted a horrible story about the treatement an American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was held in a military brig inside the US recieved during his interment. Hamdi is no longer held there, but the treatment received is in direct violation of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
The ACLU obtained documents regarding this prisoner and a few others, and the information is incredibly frightening.
Full article is here; more below the fold.
While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.
The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.
The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.
"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."
So the story of this prisoner as it turns out is not news per se, however these are new details about the the treatment the prisoners received. The fact that this even happened is what is dismaying me and I think very important.
I have been utterly dismayed by Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of prisoners there. This really brings this home and sheds new light on the Bush administration's anti-constitutional practices. No American citizen should be subjected to this treatment, no matter the alleged crime. Our Constitution includes the Bill of Rights and both must be respected and observed. These rights are "unalienable:" that means they cannot be challenged or taken away. EVER. For ANY reason. At this location, apparently, they were taken away.
The ACLU received the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The civil liberties group said the papers are evidence that the Bush administration violated the 5th amendment's protections against cruel treatment. The U.S. military was ordered to treat the American prisoners the same way prisoners at Guantanamo were treated, according to the documents.
However, the Guantanamo jail was created by the Bush administration specifically to avoid allowing detainees any constitutional rights. Administration lawyers contended the Constitution did not apply outside the country.
"These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we've suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States," Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project in New York said, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.
I am thoroughly appalled by this. I mean, I'm a 25 year old college dropout (going back no worries) who took civics in High School, I'm no constitutional law scholar...but still. Is it not completely obvious to anyone who has even heard of the Bill of Rights how wrong this is?
How many of these inhuman acts would a McCain/Palin administration bring? Get out there and canvas, phone bank, do everything you can to prevent these monsters from having another term in the White House. We MUST protect our Constitution, and our country, from another term of these policies.
Update: Oops. Fixed the reference to the first prisoner. My bad, my first diary.
Update 2: cleaned up a little. Thanks for the comments everyone!