Mr President,

For a while, I felt that Glenn Greenwald's criticisms of your administration's policy with respect to detainees in Guantanamo, and a number of other related civil liberty and rule-of-law issues, seemed shrill. Why criticize a president so early and so vocally, before we have a firm understanding of how he's going to handle these issues? But as time goes on, and your policies start becoming clear, I am gradually coming around to his point of view. The idea that we can detain prisoners even after they've been exonerated in a court of law, and the idea that we can scale the rigorousness of court proceedings to match the quality of the evidence, are just the latest examples of some profoundly troubling directions your administration has taken

I know you know better that to do these things, and I suspect that these policies are being enacted, like many evil things, for the most banal of reasons.

I really like what you're doing in several other policy areas, but I regret that for this one glaring reason, I cannot count myself among your supporters right now. I hope that you'll reflect on the core constitutional values which you've been entrusted to uphold, and recommit to upholding them for all people. We are a nation of laws, and that idea should animate your behavior, not just your rhetoric.

Regretfully,

Chris

But the root cause of all this is racism and xenophobia. The people "over there" look, talk and act differently than most americans, which means most americans do not, in their heart of hearts, consider them human. Sure, they will say they do, they might even think they do, but they see pictures of these people and can not relate to their plight. It is just something that is happening somewhere and doesn't really concern us.

The ability for people to differentiate and revert to tribalism is how atrocities like this happen. If these people were caucasian wearing blue jeans and t-shirts and baseball caps and praying to Jesus Christ, there would be outrage to spare.

I also got that email. I suspected it as up to know good and deleted it.

I am saying some have unrealistic expectations about their release, and trials and some never acknowledge that many countries will not allow the detainees to be released in their countries.

"unrealistic expectations" my ass. We have been holding people for years who have done nothing. We have been holding people for years who have done something, but we cannot prove it. They have to be let go, in the US if nowhere else, as BrianS wrote earlier.

Glenn offers a good article from McClatchy; you offer unsubstantiated criticism. When are you going to offer some evidence to back up what you write?

Let's not forget the Obama administration was not responsible for seizing them either.

Please list the ways in which this should affect how the Obama administration should treat them.

Thanks.

While I believe that detainees must be treated humanely, I do not agree with the Supreme Court's decision that these individuals should be granted the same rights as American citizens. The strength of America depends on the preservation of our values.

The non-sequitur embodied by the clash of those two sentences is simply staggering. Further, the United States suspended all of its immigration laws to bring Cubans like Melquiades Martinez to the United States, while it prevented millions of others from other countries from coming to the US--this includes people who really were escaping oppression, such as Haitian refugees. Despite the fact that Martinez wasn't a US citizen, HE WAS treated as one as soon as he got to the US. The idea of this man claiming now that prisoners whose lives we've shattered can't be treated with the dignity and due process we afford citizens, or that they can't be integrated into society the way Martinez was, is simply beyond belief. In Spanish they call it huevos but the name would imply that those organs functioned in some capacity other than shit-eating.

The fact that is real name is Melquiades Rafael, but he stood by while his fellow Republicans had a field day with "Hussein" Obama, is another notch on his hypocrisy belt.

"There is not any doubt about the fact that US Senators are "Washington officials"

True enough.. and all Senators are US Citizens so Glenn could have said "US Citizens say that in Gitmo we house the worst of the worst".. in fact to be even more accurate we could just use the term Human Beings.. since I think all Senators are Human Beings (come to think about it, that might be a stretch)

"Speaking to or down to an audience who is not aware of that fact is generally not what goes on around here."

What are you talking about with that statement? It doesn't make sense to me. My only response is I and I'm pretty sure Glenn wasn't talking down to anyone.. It was just a critique..

This is more relating to yesterday's post, but I figured it would be more likely to be read here. The argument that something is "torture" only when it is used as punishment is absurd for two immediately-obvious reasons: The first is that throughout history, things that NPR would consider "torture" - the acts of the Inquisition spring immediately to mind, or the KGB's interrogations - were not ostensibly given as punishment, but rather as a "tactic" to obtain information. Second of all, it is perfectly arguable that torture-as-punishment is itself a "tactic" - the reason countries that torture criminals do so is because they believe it is a valid tactic to deter those same crimes, i.e. that by torturing those they know to be guilty, they are saving their country and their citizens.

McClatchy is not known for great journalism either.

Where've you been the past, oh, eight years?

Right, reading the NYTimes, sipping your morning coffee and lovingly stroking the pages of that fine publication.

You go to the head of the class for happily demonstrating your willingness for obeying the Party Line as Determined by the Status Quo.

Kudos.