While Obama has ordered Guantanamo closed...in terms of the actual impact of this decision on prisoners, there remains ongoing concerns regarding deteriorating treatment and the open question as to what manner of judicial process lies ahead. Put most succinctly, they remain prisoners. Obama's Executive Order makes Americans feel good, but it's not clear whether, and to what extent, the prisoners will benefit.

Conditions at Gitmo appear to be deteriorating -- prisoners being openly beaten, many close to death from hunger strikes:

http://www.antiwar.com/worthington/?articleid=14227

According to the article, there's a battle going on between the new Administration and burrowed in Bushies, which may be contributing to the worsening conditions for the prisoners. The guy who is at the center of the "state secrets" controversy is apparently near death. No one is covering this, except for antiwar.com, so I don't know what anyone can do to get some pressure going to clean up the place while the Admin tries to figure out how to deal with the Bush-era mess. Call the White House? Try to get coverage somewhere, either in the blogosphere or the MSM (hah!).

Glenn posted a film yesterday from Jon Snow, Channel 4 News in London about that.

Yes, of course, it's being covered outside the U.S. Lots of stuff's being covered outside the U.S.

See anything about it at HuffPo, or Fox, or CNN?

peeling grapes and dropping them sensually into my mouth and their other duties

Oooh, I've never had grapes dropped into my "other duties" -- is it fun?

:)

Either way I'd say you've just demonstrated yet again, the willful ignorance if a certain nationality. -- shooter242

I knew shooter was a thick-headed horse's ass, but didn't know that he was a racist.

Boehner was right, the largest appropriation bill ever was just passed and not one person read it.

No one read the Patriot Act either. And the Iraq war was a bigger "appropriation" than this measly 800B. Billions for war, not a penny for bridges (in the U.S.,anyway) seems to be the Repub rallying cry.

I stand on my assertion that people who prefer to kill their neighbors, rather than pursue peace and prosperity for their children, are simply stupid.

I thought you supported the Israelis, shooter.

An old story, but a lovely one. Ondelette's posts about the disappeared made me think of it.

After a terrible tidal storm, two old men go down to the seashore where hundreds of starfish are stranded above the tide line. Already many of them have died and their bodies have started stinking in the sun. One of the men starts picking up starfish one at a time, walking down to the water and throwing the starfish in. The other man watches for a while and then asks his friend: "Why are you doing this? There are hundreds of starfish, you'll never save them all. It's a waste of time." The other man answers: "Maybe, but not for the starfish I've saved."

Bush said we had to abide by the anti-torture treaties, so why can't Obama do the same?

Well, Bush SAYING that he would abide by the treaties didn't mean diddly, unless you don't consider anal rape with a night stick to be torture...

A friend of mine is a broker on Wall Street, an employee of one of the firms getting TARP money. He also got his bonus this year. He explained to me that HE has an MBA, that HE worked hard for his money and he NEEDS that bonus money, and that as part of the intellectual elite in the country, that he DESERVES the money. Then he said that it was outrageous that the Big 3 might get bailed out, and that the workers there had basically been on the dole for years and deserved to get screwed.

He's actually a pretty nice guy, believe it or not, and an old line Democrat.

Try to balance your assessment of the beleaguered democracy with an assessment of those who send their children to blow up other children.

Now there's a fair and balanced starting point.

Years of frustration leads them to concoct all sorts of "logical" justifications to explain their rage.

Who you talking about, Win?

There are *always* other options.

Israel seems to consider the "other" option to be bombing the crap out of a trapped population. But at least they don't deny the right of the Palestinians to have a state -- that would be really mean.

About the same time the articles above mentioned, with the information about Mohamed's hunger strike and the lawyer witnessing beatings for the first time (this was about 2-3 weeks ago), there was another article that mentioned the number of Bush people embedded in the Gitmo hierarchy both at DoD and at Gitmo itself. I remember thinking at the time that it was very odd that Obama had ordered Geneva to be abided by and that abuse and chaos had escalated at the camp. Pretty sure the articles were all at antiwar.com.

The implication at the time (2-3 weeks ago) was that some generals and other Bush-era folks were doing their best to thwart Obama's plans regarding Iraq...and I wondered whether that was true of Gitmo, as well.

Too tired to go look up the articles.

Not trying to excuse Obama, but do wonder if he gave orders that weren't followed very well...and God knows he's had other stuff on his mind.