What Are We Hiding and Why?

The heady days of "hope" are long gone and we are now faced with the dilema of supporting a president most  of us only supported in theory.  He was unknown, untested and now, it seems, untruthful.  A man of the law who runs for president must completely comprehend and accept his campaign promises of transparency in governance and justice for ALL (not JUST US).  What is Obama protecting by messing around with linguistics in policy?  What have we done to maintain our security?  Why are lies and obstructions more pallatable to some citizens than truth and setting things straight?

The question that's haunting me is what could a person possibly do to make them "untriable?"  The answer keeps coming back that it isn't the prisoner who is untriable, but the legal system which "dissappeared" law abiding citizens.  Which brings us back to the question of what our president is  doing to protect and maintain our democracy, because democracy HAS to be for all, or it just ain't democracy.

I hope you have sufficiently digested and recovered from yesterday's food fest to stomach this.  And get ready when the news breaks out of our new Afghani Gitmo in Bagram.

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t;
Adapted: christophe dune / Flickr)

Obama's Fifth Category: The "Untriable" 

Tuesday 24 November 2009

[...]  According to The Washington Post, quoting an unnamed official, there are some 75 prisoners in this "fifth category." And the administration's position is that these people are untriable because the evidence against them was obtained through torture or because public trials would involve and potentially expose an unacceptable volume of classified material.

[...]  The Obama administration gave the human rights community apoplexy when it referred to "preventive detention." Now, it is simply saying that it's not going to seek any additional authority from Congress for such preventive detention. Which perhaps gives us a clue to the approach the administration has in mind. In a study by the Obama-friendly Center for American Progress, analyst Ken Gude suggests that the Obama administration "incarcerate detainees convicted in US criminal courts in maximum-security US prisons and transfer those who will remain in military custody to Bagram prison in Afghanistan." (Emphasis mine.)

That latter group would presumably include the untriable. Which appears to create a neo-GITMO at Bagram in Afghanistan.

http://www.truthout.org/1124094