The Generals Recommit to Closing Gitmo
I’ve been waiting for some time for the uniformed military to ratchet up the pressure to close Gitmo. After all, Gitmo remains a symbol of abuses committed against Muslims which puts service men and women at risk.
Today, VoteVets, former Congressman Tom Andrews, and a number of Generals have launched that campaign–with this TV ad and grassroots mobilization.
I’m particularly happy with the way this campaign is targeting those responsible for fear-mongering on Gitmo. Andrews must have said “fear-mongering” about 20 times on a conference call introducing this campaign. And he focused squarely on Dick “PapaDick” and Liz “BabyDick” Cheney for leading that fear-mongering–not to mention those Republicans fear-mongering in Congress. And, as General Johns pointed out, “The people who are [fearmongering] are the people who oppose the ban on torture.”
I’ll have more on this campaign going forward. But it’s good to see someone pushing back against the Cheneys and their friends on torture and Gitmo.
I don’t find an open letter to sign.
Try http://www.closegitmonow.org
(the address appears at the end of the video)
Ohio has about 20 supermax cells available for lease to the Feds. If congress would stop fear mongering, we could have that
prisongulag emptied in a month. Ohio isn’t the only state with supermax cels available.For that matter, I doubt that most of the terrorists require supermax. That’s mainly to cover the fearmongering. Regular maximum security works quite well and is much cheaper.
Besides, we’d only have to hold them until their trial. /snark
Boxturtle (Or until they’re declared POW’s)
Thanks for covering this, EW.
Related? The Supremes will consider the Uighur case. Whatever they decide, the opinions both majority and minority will be very interesting. It will be interesting also to follow this case as it develops before the Court.
Bob in AZ
Biggest problem is, what happens when SCOTUS says “you’ve got to let them go”?
SCOTUS doesn’t exactly have the police force to enforce such a decision.
I don’t think ObamaCo would outright defy the ruling. I still think their final card is to declare the dangerous ones POWs. Then we can keep them until AQ and America are at peace.
But if they do choose to defy the ruling, the normal thing would be for congress to impeach. That’s not gonna happen over a bunch of scary brown Muslims. So I’m thinking they can defy with impunity.
Boxturtle (Or they might load all the detainees in the same plane and arrange an accident)
OT – I don’t know if anyone will be available to liveblog this:
Maybe on CSPAN? No indication as of now.
When I asked the committee whether there’d be a feed a few hours ago, they were still waiting to hear back from CSPAN.
Thanks for the post EW. This is a great ad. I am particular pleased that they called torture by its name rather than PapaDick’s favorite euphemism. I really hope this helps to shine a light on not just Gitmo but the Black Hole of Bagram as well…
Fear-mongering, fear-mongering, fear-mongering.
Good ad, good effort.
damn
i am so happy, and proud, to see americans with clout have the guts to use that clout
to begin a two-sided discussion on torture,
rather the one-sided propaganda cum cover-up discussion we have heard for years from bush administration officials and their media allies –
with a boost continuing that one-sided discussion from the obama admin.
boxturtle @7
on the other hand,
it might be well to keep in mind obama’s comment early on to progressive: “make me do it”.
it may be that the prez has said to himself, and i’d be with him if he had,
“i ain’t doin’ these suckers work for them. if they want something to happen on gitmo, they’re going to half to go out and fight to change public opinion (just as the right-wing has done for decades),
not just write letters to the editor and tisk-tisk with like-minded folk.
Good point.
I was heartened to see a segment on Morning Meeting on this topic; Lt Gen Robert Gard explains that Gitmo is a powerful tool for recruiting terrorists. It’s heartening to see the military leadership.
(Another segment on this show today covers strategy of the Taliban against the US in Afghanistan; get US troops hooked on heroin. After all, it was an effective strategy against the Soviets in the 1980s…)
Good ad, btw.
ROTL,
I’m glad to see another Firepup who watches Morning Meeting. Dylan Ratigan is good on a number of topics, especially the bank bailouts and related topics. He asks tough questions.
Bob in AZ
I swear, I must be the biggest fan of that new MSNBC program. A man with brains who can’t stand bullshit – especially economic bullshit and lies. (Swooning…. ;-))))
perris @ 15; yeah, I know…. s Was his next war going to be a ‘War on Anger’? or a ‘War on Bliss’? Sheesh…!
the strategy of bin laden against the soviets, that strategy which bankrupted them, that strategy was being used against bush and is now being used against obama
they LOVE our “war on terrorism” since there is no such thing as a war on a strategy, there is no way we can win, when we exhaust resources trying to win against a strategy rather then an enemy, they win, we lose…simple stuff
conucting a “war on terrorism” is the same thing as conducting a “war on retreat”, “a war on attack”, “a war on defense” “a war on offence”, “a war on deception”
can’t happen, can’t win but you can (and will) lose
“i ain’t doin’ these suckers work for them. if they want something to happen on gitmo, they’re going to half to go out and fight to change public opinion (just as the right-wing has done for decades), not just write letters to the editor and tisk-tisk with like-minded folk.
Right. Because all anti-torture activists have ever done is tsk-tsk with like-minded folk. With all due respect, GFY.
will “the liberal media” run with this?
of course not, will anyone challenge dick and dickless “you’ve always claimed you want to listen to the generals”
I can’t wait to see where this goes but it probably goes nowhere, just like the generals who said cheney’s programs of torture created more harm then good, hardly a word from the press
@orionATL:
Because God knows, the Obama administration hasn’t done anything to stoke fear-mongering by accepting the Cheney framing and putting it out to the public in his first television interview as president.
Look, I accept the political responsibility to go out and make anti-torture and anti-indefinite-detention arguments and win the battle of political opinion (which is what letters to the editor are all about, by the way). But it’s not all on us; when someone runs on an anti-torture platform, and makes closing Guantanamo and ending torture among his first official declarations, it’s not unreasonable to expect him to do a little bit of the lifting. Or, at a minimum, not to use his powerful platform to start immediately undermining his apparent commitments by reinforcing the fiction that virtually all the prisoners in Guantanamo are too dangerous to release.
neil @18 and 19
what the generals are doing is making a public fuss, and their “clout” (due to their status) is crucial here.
i did not say anti-torture activists have not done anything.
what i said was that folks with clout regarding the “gitmo issue” are demonstrating the courage to publicly use their clout on that issue (as opposed to our “liberal” democratic senators, for example).
an analogy would be,
what are folks with clout who oppose the bush admin’s politically expedient position on torture (the more the better) doing to counter that position?
well, actually, a group of generals, again generals, recently spoke out against torture.
there are going to have to be highly visible public campaigns, mini-wars actually, before the public mindset is sufficiently unsettled about torture.
anti-torture activists, to the best of my knowledge have not managed to bring the issue strongly before the public, i.e., why haven’t i heard about it from the media?
when that latter does happen, we will have switched from tsk-tsking to effective activism, aka, driving the agenda.
Ay, yi, yiiiiiii!!
If anyone comes back here today…
Crooks&Liars just put up a clip ofJudy-Judy Miller lecturing the Pentagon and Obama about how the news organizations are now being ‘frozen out’ of reporting on Guantanamo.
(Scroll down the C&L page for a report from Sy Hersh on the Pentagon putting the squeeze on BO, which would also mean by association Biden, Kerry, and the Senate).
Interesting that some Generals have a new ad out regarding the urgency of closing Guantanamo for larger, strategic reasons and Judy-Judy shows up on FauxNews to lecture the Obama administration on its underhandedness.
Yeesh.