Click the image to watch a 30-second slide show about Guantanamo Bay
No less than the New York Times reports:
A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concludes that the prison complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva conventions, but it makes many recommendations for increasing human contact among the prisoners, according to two government officials who have read portions of it.
The review, requested by President Obama [emphasis added mine] on the second day of his administration, is due to be delivered to the White House this weekend.
Unsurprisingly, the Times editorialized in its news report and accused the current administration of ordering a report, with a predictable outcome, to further its political agenda:
The request, made as part of a plan to close the center within a year, was widely seen as an effort by the new administration to defuse the power of allegations during the Bush administration that there were widespread abuses at Guantánamo, and that many detainees were suffering severe psychological effects after years of isolation.
“Widely seen” by whom? The obvious answer is widely seen by the editors at the Times and al Qaeda’s lawyers. Yet the hilarious part the Times saved for the end, one of those lawyers slamming President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:
“This is really running the risk that the review is just a big whitewash,” [a lawyer for Guantánamo detainees at the Center for Constitutional Rights Gitanjali] Gutierrez added, “and we expect more of the new administration.”
In law offices big and small across the nation, 500 lawyers must be hyperventilating into small brown paper bags.
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