When does the military’s compliance with international law qualify as bad news? When you’re a new president desperate for excuses to follow through on a dopey campaign promise that’ll please your nutroots base and no one else.
Oh well. Back to the “it just looks bad” argument.
A Pentagon review of conditions in the Guantanamo Bay
military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the
requirements of the Geneva Convention but that prisoners in the
highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social
interaction with each other, according to a government official who has
read the 85-page document.
The report, which was ordered by President Obama, was prepared by
Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been
delivered to the White House. Obama requested the review as part of an
executive order on the planned closure of the prison at the Guantanamo
Bay U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba…
Walsh concluded that … force-feeding, which involves strapping
prisoners to feeding chairs and forcing tubes down one nostril and into
their stomachs, is in compliance the Geneva Convention’s mandate that
the lives of prisoners must be preserved, the government official said.
Actually, insofar as this gives The One a handy alternative to expanding our renditions program,
it does mean good news for him — or rather, it would if the left still
cared about renditions, which they haven’t since January 20th. Exit
question: With opposition to closing Gitmo already near majority levels, the media had better keep this as quiet as possible, huh?
Update: Right out of the chute, cover from Maverick and his crony-in-chief.
“We support President Obama’s decision to close the
prison at Guantanamo, reaffirm America’s adherence to the Geneva
Conventions, and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the
resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees,” McCain and Graham
said in a statement…
“Present at Guantanamo are a number of detainees who have been
cleared for release but have found no foreign country willing to accept
them,” the senators said. “Other detainees have been deemed too
dangerous for release, but the sensitive nature of the evidence makes
prosecution difficult. The military’s proper role in processing
detainees held on the battlefield at Bagram, Afghanistan, and other
military prisons around the world must be defended, but that is left
unresolved. Also unresolved is the type of judicial process that would
replace the military commissions. We believe the military commissions
should have been allowed to continue their work.”