After the NYT piece blaming the Obama admin for the deportaion of a Gitmo detainee to Algeria, against his wishes, and calling it "inexplicably cruel," today's Washington Post Op Ed (titled Gitmo Gambling) also wags its fingers to Congress and...to who else but the White House for the two opposing federal court rulings, one ordering the release and the other claiming of overwhelming evidence of guilt, involving the fate of another Gitmo detainee. The failing of the Congress and the White House in this matter, according to the WP? They "have been shamefully inactive [lazy?]in filling in the gaps" and thus have left the determination of the detainees' fates to the "roulette" played by the judges and the courts.
link to the WP piece
I will not go into the details of the NYT piece on the release and the deportation of the Gitmo detainee, Mr. Naji, to avoid the repeating of the info in today's rec list diary involving the very issue.
The WP piece starts with a brief introduction of the story behind Mohammed Al-Adahi, another Gitmo detainee, of how he came to be detained in Guatanamo to begin with. According to the story, Mr. Adahi left his wife and children in Yemen and travele to Afghanistan during the summer of 2001 where he twice met OBL, stayed at an al-Qaeda guesthouse, and attended the al-Farouq training camp where the september 11th hijackers received military training. He was eventually picked up by the Pakistani authorities and turned in to US, and ended up in being detained in Gitmo for eight years.
Fast forward to the recent times, to Mr. Adahi's defense in which he claims innocence. Here are the main points of Adahi's defense as stated in the WP piece.
-My sister was getting married to a close associate of OBL
-OBL hosted a male only feast celebrating of the arranged marriage
-I got time off from my job
-After attending the marriage ceremony, I had some idle time left
- Having plenty of time in my hand and not knowing what to do with it, I decided to explore the region and to try something new which happened to be training at the al-Qaeda camp to satisfy my curiosity about 'jihad.'
That's it, folks. And you guessed it right. It is not a rocket science to figure out that Mr. Adahi appears ( to say the least) guilty. WP wisely concludes that with this kind of defense and the rest of the existing intelligence against him Adahi should spend the rest of his idle days behind the bars, lest he could get curious about 'jihad,' again.
But wait. We find out that Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided to "evaluate each of Mr. Adahi's acts in isolation" in opposition to connecting the dots and orders his release, as the result. The judge concluded Mr. Adahi's "admission that he trained at al-Farouq is not sufficient to carry the Government's burden of showing that he was a part, or substantial supporter, of enemy forces," informs WP.
Hmmm...WP is obviously correct (no snark here) in pointing out the apparent juidicial failing in this case that it "illustrates the perils of allowing trial judges to assess intelligence information through the lens of conventional rules of evidence" which means connect the f*cking dots!!! And that's not all. We are informed about another court's, "A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit," decision refudiating (I couldn't help myself here)Judge Kessler's which according to the WP, went too far in the other direction "to conclude that a stay at a guesthouse or training camp -- no matter the length of stay or context -- offered "overwhelming" evidence of membership in al-Qaeda."
WP reasons that these two hare brained juidicial rules prove the urgent need for the clarification of the rules and the laws when it comes to dealing with the detainees and that the congress and thus the White House to be blamed for not helping the courts to connect the dots without going over the deep end.
I am not so sure. It is true that, and from the looks of it, both courts created a clusterf*ck situation with their twilight zone rulings, one to release order of an obviously "involved" man, and the other to put a blanket guilt verdict for all that has found himself anywhere in the vicinity of an al-Qaeda camp, context be damned, but I am not sure if the problem is the lack of proper laws or the "shameful inactivity in filling in the gaps" by the White House.
To me, the problem is rather with the dumb dust that has been sprinkled all over the United States from an alien-terrorist- enemy ship, instead. No? Well how else can you explain the imbecility behind both court rulings and say that they need a "gap filler"? No. I think what they need is to go back to the law school (no snark here, either)and take some concentrated courses in the arts of critical thinking, while studying the already existing laws in the books. It wouldn't hurt if they also join the gamblers anonimous for detox.
To conclude, I like to state something here to ponder further. This weekend, we had two op eds written in both of the major news sources, one in NYT on Saturday, the other in WP, today, blaming the White House with either "inexplicable cruelty" (NYT) or "shamefull inactivity" (WP)for two recent cases involving two Guantanamo detainees. In Mr. Naji's case, he was proven innocent and deported ("involuntarily" says the NYT) to Algeria and in Mr. Adahi's case the courts turned the obviously-guilty-and-what-the-f*ck-more-do-you-need situation into a total clusterf*ck. Whose fault is it in both cases, again, more or less, in both NYT and WP pieces?
You are right. Obama's. Now I am not going to claim some silly conspiracy theory here that the U.S. media is insidiously targeting the president and thus maybe these twin subject op eds are not coincidental.
Would you?
Have a clusterf*ck free week...I hope