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Published on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 by the Inter Press Service


U.S. Moral Authority in 'Free Fall', Senators Warn
by William Fisher

NEW YORK - As Amnesty International urged the George W. Bush administration to "close Guantánamo and disclose the situation in the USA's shadowy network of detention centers around the globe", a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services group once led by U.S. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, won a 30-million-dollar contract to help build a new permanent prison for terror suspects at the U.S. Navy's controversial detention center in Cuba.

Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law
The Pentagon said that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root would be building a two-story jail with air conditioning and exercise and medical facilities.

The plan is seen as a sign that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld plans to keep the jail in operation, despite a growing chorus of criticism and mixed signals from the White House.

Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy group, drew world attention to the Guantanamo facility in its recently released annual report, which referred to the detention facility as "the gulag of our times".

The organization said keeping the prison open was the "wrong decision and will fuel worldwide concern over the stories of torture and ill-treatment, religious humiliation and arbitrary detention that are seeping from the facility."

Amnesty said the Bush administration "plans to memorialize in bricks and mortar its decision to operate outside of the law," according to Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director.

The group called for "an independent investigation into U.S. policies and practices on detention and interrogation, including torture and ill-treatment, (which) would reassure the world that the U.S. administration has nothing to hide."

Key lawmakers have said they will press Congress to intervene in detainee policies despite the administration's claim that running the detention camp is the province of the executive branch and the military.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has proposed that an independent 9/11-type commission investigate Guantánamo Bay and make recommendations.

Former president Jimmy Carter has also added his voice to those urging the U.S. to close the camp. "The U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation... because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," Carter said.

Last week, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, some Republicans agreed that Congress has been too passive in allowing detainees to be held for years without trials or consultations with lawyers.

Some senators objected when an administration official said detainees could be held at the prison forever. But others said criticisms of the prison camp might endanger U.S. military morale.

The U.S. Constitution "explicitly confers upon Congress" the power to define appropriate treatments for captured foreign suspects, said Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina and former military judge, suggested that Congress develop "some statutory provisions defining enemy combatant status and standardizing intelligence-gathering techniques and detention policies."

Pentagon and Justice Department officials have defended the administration, saying the approximately 520 detainees are not covered by legal protections afforded criminal defendants or prisoners of war. Most of the detainees at Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan, although some were apprehended in Bosnia, the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Pressure has mounted on Congress in recent weeks to address allegations of detainee abuse at the prison, opened in January 2002 at a Navy base in Cuba leased by the U.S.

Some detainees have complained about physical abuse and religious humiliation, though many claims are unverified. Rights groups have assailed the government for holding some prisoners for more than three years without trial.

Pres. Bush has left open the possibility of closing the facility, but he and Rumsfeld also have defended treatment of Guantanamo Bay captives and said the government must have a facility where it can hold terrorism suspects.

Several senators said U.S. detention policies are undermining the nation's moral authority and inflaming the Islamic world. The situation "is an international embarrassment to our nation and to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said abuses at Guantanamo Bay "have shamed the nation in the eyes of the world and made the war on terror harder to win. Our moral authority went into a free fall."

Several prominent Republicans -- among them Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, a former Bush cabinet member -- also have publicly argued that the damage to Washington's image caused by the prison now outweighs any practical benefits it might have.

And Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has warned that Guantanamo is "going to end in disaster - if we don't wake up and smell the coffee."

Other observers think closing the base would not go nearly far enough. Beau Grosscup, professor of international relations at the University of California, told IPS, "Closing Gitmo is the easy thing to do but has only symbolic value if the torture is not ended."

And Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told IPS, "At this stage, closing Gitmo would be an empty gesture unless the abhorrent policies of torture, rendition and imprisoning people without appropriate evidentiary hearings to determine guilt or innocence are changed."

"Otherwise it's just a shell game, and these activities will simply be offshored elsewhere," he said.

Like Guantanamo, Halliburton has become a magnet for critics of the Iraq war. It is among a small group of U.S. companies awarded no-bid contracts, and its work has been criticized for massive cost overruns and inflated billing.

Edward Herman, emeritus professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told IPS, "The combination of looting and conflict-of-interest makes the selection of Halliburton for construction of the new Guantanamo prison something you might expect to see in Doonesbury, not in a real world supposedly democratic state.''

© Copyright 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service

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Wow, couldn't be more surprised if a naked Cheney popped out of a giant birthday cake in front of me right....now!!...nope didn't happen...

What was Sinatra singing about...."bring in da clowns, opps there already heeeere", I used to think he was talking metaphorically about a relationship woe, but now I see he was speaking about the american gov't...one big circus.

I'm guessing a conflict of interest these days is a myth....but hey, wouldn't anyone be as proud as a new parent each time a bomb dropped from one of the companies you helped create and control? I mean, I certainly would be proud as a peach if I owned the bullet manufacturer that supplied a new Lee Harvey with the round that struck a certain someone....

Here's a whopper too that I can't get my jowls around....lets see, it costs only 30 million to build a state of the art detention center, (with a/c, medical facilities and gym,) to house thousands...yet they are allocating how many hundreds of millions to build a simple embassy in Iraq? I guess paper and desks cost far more than steel bars and barb wire these days.

I wonder what the price tag is so far on the war -- cost of dead soldiers and civilians sold seperately.....anyone know the tally so far? Here's a far fetched scenario...imagine if the billions they've spent on war went to developing a safe, cheap, alternative, mass useable, renewable power source....changing of the fuel source guards....in fact if they did such a thing, and made money off of it to subdue their greed, I'm sure the average Joe wouldn't care a fraction as much as sending neighbors over to get splattered on a foriegn country's streets by a toyota packed with crude explosives.....Imagine...instead of the deadly hum of a polluting giant such as a power plant....a green field of windmills, or solar panelling on top of everyhouse...or quiet, effecient, hybrid cars.....that's what could of been instead of thousands dead, a war that won't end, rising body count, wounds that will never heal and new enemies made. Anyways, I'm getting a little off topic which usually means my rant has got the best of me again...great post Zlatko, thanks for keeping us all up-to-date on these issues.

Trevor:


Thanks for your comments and for contributing to this discussion.

Here's the best place to watch your dollars flying away in the smoke of battle.

The answer to your first question is 178 billion dollars.

So far.

But you'll have to get used to the acceleration on this site. It blasts those old "Bringing Freedom" ( While "They Hate Our Freedom", don't forget) dollars right past your nose.

http://costofwar.com/


Be sure to click on some of the links to see where the money MIGHT have gone.

I think every American with a computer should bookmark this site and take a look at it every few days . . .



--Z

Hi Zlat,

Wow, great site you posted...I bookmarked it....F'ing disgusting isn't it? That's why I can never take politicians seriously when they talk of the educational or health care epidemics in society. How can i take someone seriously when they talk of world hunger and world poverty when they spent the GNP of twenty countries in a year on bombing one country....here's the irony....lets see, they estimate Sadaam over the course of his dictatorship killed about 20 000 people....some were guerillas, some were army officials, some were criminals, and most unfortunately some were civillians....(I won't talk about the sanctions and starvation...whole other weaved basket)....however, not to belittle those numbers -- that's been over a couple decades...but 178 billion dollars could have saved a thousand times the amount of people Sadaam killed, but instead the money is used to add to the body count, not end it....unrest is pretty much guaranteed now in the middle east for a very long time....Bush and Co. really fucked things up for the states big time....think people hated the states a couple years ago? Well double that and add a growing number of countries to the list. And the shittiest thing about it, like in all nasty politics, its the "joe schmo" who suffers....Did any "major players" die in the 9/11 attack? None that I can remember, but sure as shit thousands of "no-namers" did....I guess they are expendable crew members aboard the S.S. Bushaprise. A big bullseye has been painted. And how many american or Iraqi senior officials have died in comparison to the soldiers and police officers of both sides....and what in comparison to them has civillian population suffered? The great thing about being a civillian, especially in the middle to poor class, is that we get to carry the burden of everything.....we're the ones who get the great honor of dying for our country bestowed upon us....the rich can buy their way in and out of most things, can afford most things and pretty much are disconnected with the reality of how most people live. I will never go to war, save for one thing, if I can be stationed in the foxhole of the leader of my country....if he/she goes to the frontlines, I will gladly join them, pick up a gun and kill for my country because only then I know its probably a cause worth fighting and dying for.

But I have one thing going for me, I'm Canadian. That's not meant as a slam against the states, I truly and greatly appreciate and respect my neighbors to the south. I've met so many wonderful people from the states, I'm all for the people of the states, however, the politics is just so messed up there right now....and unfortunately, what affects one neighborhood, such as N.A., affects everyone within it. I have nothing but contempt for American politics and policies....shit, I can barely stand my own country's politicians and we aren't even at war. Are there no decent leaders left? Is the old adage of, "absolute power corrupts absolutely" true?

Anyways, I'm going of my rocker here, one thought spins into another and I don't want to start sounding like a lunatic...again, thanks for all the updates and site postings, interesting is an understatement. Thanks,

Trev

deleting a double post.

Problem: Abuse exposed at Abu Ghraib.

Response: Blame the liberal media.

Proposed solution: Build a new prison.




Problem: Abuse exposed abuse at Gitmo.

Response: Blame the liberal media.

Proposed solution: Build a new prison.



What an amazing, surreal government we have.
I keep thinking I'm going to awaken from this apocalyptic dream.
It must all be an extended hallucination of some sort....

also...

Did Halliburton actually "win" this contract? Or was it another one of those no-bid gigs?.... And if so, will Bushco justify it with that same "they-are-the-only-ones-qualified-to-do-it" argument?