Letters to the Editor
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@mattwa and mizmoon
I am glad I am not the only one whose BS detector went off. Something struck me as very weird about this story and even more so when I read about how she had reported just a month ago that he was infected with HIV while in Guantanamo and yet that appears nowhere in this article. One would think, if he had been infected by HIV, that would also be worthy of reporting here. And if he wasn't, then it looks like he lied to her about that. My question about that would have to be resolved before I take this article seriously.
Believe me I have no problem believing this sort of thing might be occuring in Guantanamo. Probably much worse things happen there and it is a permanent stain on our country. But that doesn't mean we get to abandon journalistic integrity. It scares me how many people are willing to accept things at "face value" as long as it supports what they already believe. A good percentage of the country accepted claims about Saddam and WMD at face value too. It's not a standard to hold yourself to.
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No one deserves the health care the military provides
No one deserves the health care the military provides even for its own soldiers. You wind up either with doctors who couldn't make it in private practice, only know surgery, or are just recent graduates. Worse even you may wind up being treated by a corpman who doesn't even having nursing credentials or skills but instead more authority than knowledge. I can't imagine how much worse it gets in military detention.
I was a military dependent for over 20 years, so I know what I am saying. In addition I blame the VA for the premature death of both of my parents. In my father's case he died of a heart attack at 62, six weeks before his first cardiology clinic appointment at the VA. What he needed was a pacemaker implanted judging from the autopsy, yet he hadn't received the standard care and diagnostics for a man of his age. He was a full colonel, so how much less is the care for the lower ranks.
My mother had a stroke and was sent by ambulance to the nearest hospital which was quite good, effective and compassionate while still being one of the lowest cost providers in the Denver Metro area. Because she was s VA qualified patient she was involuntarily transferred by federal law, according to the hospital, to a VA hospital where their idea of physical therapy was to tough it out through pain instead of treating for pain. She never recovered from that care.
The regular military just gives you a medical discharge if you get too sick and then they send you to the VA after a long wait for eligibility determination, where you can die outside of public view. A friend of my sons got even worse from the National Guard, which discharged him and didn't even pay to treat the training injury that resulted in his discharge as not fit enough in the ankles.
It may be that the military has merely given your client the same low standard of non-surgical care it provides its own soldiers. The real question should be whether it provided worse care than the man could have reasonably expected in his own country with his previous economic circumstances.
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Call your Senator
I just called both Barbara Boxer's and Dianne Feinstein's Washington offices. Just Google your Senator's name and the number's a click away.
If the story's not true then they can find that out. But if it is true (and I think we all know, given the heartlessness of this Administration, that it's most likely true, and true thousands of times over) then maybe if we all called our Senators it would make it big enough for Congress to start to address. As I told Senator Boxer's office, this is how we are creating generations who are going to hate us for completely legitimate reasons. Ghizzawi has a six year-old daughter. You think she's going to see the US as anything but evil incarnate as she grows up if we don't stop this? You think her kids are going to hate us too?
That being said, I enthusiastically agree with the comment that, if at all possible, his legal team should get video of the daughter and wife. The media don't care much about anything, but they might be cynical enough to see a story once they have video of a cute little six year-old girl -- whose Daddy is dying because of US neglect and false imprisonment.
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To Kinda Confused
Did you try reading the blog again?
http://gtmoblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/al-ghizzawi-and-personal-call-for.html
Makes clear that the goverment's dithering about his diagnosis resulted in some confusion. Ms. Gorman reported the Government's contradictory and confusing reports about her client's health. That's where the confusion originates and NOT from Gorman herself.
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regarding Al-Ghizzawi's AIDS diagnosis
For those of you who want to know the whole story about my client being told he has AIDS feel free to read this document on my blog (if link problems it is the reply brief on first page):
http://gtmodocuments.blogspot.com/2008/02/reply-brief-on-medical-care-and-records.html
The short version is that when my client wrote me a letter saying that a doctor at the base told him he had AIDS I asked the justice department to confirm or deny. They refused. I filed an emergency motion with the Judge and the Judge ordered the justice department to give him an update on my clients health and to tell us if he had AIDS. Only then did they admit that he does not have AIDS (it was clearly a hoax) but they also admitted that they have known since November 2006 that his liver condition was worsening. They have never treated him.
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To be fair to Moore...
I suspect he was proposing that IF we are giving good care to the "Bad Guys(tm)" at GT, THEN we should also be giving it to the "Good Guys(tm)".
I doubt it was considered a given. In fact, given his penchant for mixing over-the-top with subtlety, I suspect he was hoping that would be noticed. "Wait, so we're not giving good care to *either* GT or our heroes? What else are you wrong about?"