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In lieu of flowers, it is requested that donations be sent to the Commanding Officer at Gitmo, Navy Rear Adm. Thomas H. Copeman III, so that he can purchase a supply of 240 239 cyanide capsules to be handed out to the detainees like free condoms in a New York Middle school. After all, if they are going commit suicide anyway, we want to make sure they do it the right way.

German interior officials said that the inmates from the Guantánamo Bay detention center whom the United States wants Germany to accept could pose a major security risk because they had spent time in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The United States has asked Germany to take 12 Chinese Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority located mostly in western China. The Uighurs have been persecuted by the Chinese authorities, according to human rights organizations, and American officials say they cannot be returned to China because they might be mistreated. But Uwe Schünemann, the conservative interior minister of the state of Lower...

There’s an old saying among trial lawyers: “When you go into the woods and find a turtle high up on a tree stump, you know he didn’t get there by himself.” In other words, sometimes there is no innocent explanation for why someone is where they were when they were caught. That maxim certainly applies to the 17 Chinese Uighurs caught fleeing Afghanistan after 9/11, who are now detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The Uighurs (pronounced “wee-gers”) are a Turkic Muslim minority group from western China. They really dislike the government of China -- so much that, shortly before Sept. 11,...

An action by the US government is causing a flurry of not so complimentary comments across the internet. A group of 17 Uighur detainees who are on the road to release are being given laptops to train them for life outside Guantanamo. Army Lt. Col. Miguel Mendez oversees detainee classes, as well as the multilingual library and, now, the new virtual computer lab. “We’re getting them computer classes to prepare for their return.” Nury Turkel is a Uighur rights activist in Washington, D.C. He felt the computer training would “give hope to the men that their freedom is nearing” after...

As the nation watches in bemused disbelief, former Vice President Dick Cheney stridently defends the Bush administration's national security record, particularly as that record involves the euphemistic "harsh interrogation" of prisoners of war from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the question inevitably arises: Why does he feel compelled to do this? Isn't there an unwritten rule that former presidents and vice presidents keep their criticisms to themselves and let the new administration develop its own policies? They tend to stay out of politics after leaving office, using their time to write memoirs and build a financial cushion on...

The man's death is the fifth apparent suicide at the offshore US prison, which President Barack Obama hopes to close by January. The Joint Task Force that runs the US prison in Cuba said guards conducting a routine check found Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih unresponsive and not breathing in his cell on Monday night. In a statement issued from Miami, the US military said the detainee was pronounced dead by a doctor after "extensive life saving measures had been exhausted." The Yemeni prisoner, also known as Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al-Hanashi, had been held without charge at Guantanamo since February...

I've gotten a look inside the Gallup poll numbers showing that a majority of Americans oppose shutting down the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. The numbers are stunning. They show a strong and virtually across-the-board rejection of President Obama's proposal to close the prison. Overall, 65 percent of those surveyed oppose shutting Gitmo, versus 32 percent who say it should be closed. According to the poll's internal numbers, large majorities of men oppose closing the prison, large majorities of women oppose it, large majorities of white people oppose it, large majorities of non-white people oppose it, people with graduate...

For once, I am going to have to (shudder) agree with the American Civil Liberties Union. They are busting their britches to have pictures released of some of the 240 detainees at Guantanamo being waterboarded by the CIA. That is a great idea. I believe most rank-and-file Americans would take much comfort in knowing that our government cares more about getting the truth out of potential terrorists in order to prevent another 9/11 attack than they do about hurting the feelings of a bunch of people who would gleefully dance on our graves. I’m not sure that I approve of...

A Yemeni captive died in an apparent suicide at the detention center for foreign terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba, the U.S. military said on Tuesday. It was the sixth death overall and the fifth by suicide among captives at the prison camp that U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered shut down by January 2010. The camp, opened in 2002 under the Bush administration to hold suspects in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, has been a focus of international criticism for denying detainees legal rights. The Obama...

The left won't like this.

Meanwhile: Obama STILL has not released the memos Cheney claims show how waterboarding THREE terrorists saved American lives!Like other Democrats, Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently claimed that former Vice President Cheney is lying about proof that the waterboarding of the three worst terrorists, including the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, yielded information that saved American lives. Obama could the settle the matter and release those memos with a stroke of the pen. The methods and techniques have already been fully disclosed by Obama's prior release of similar classified memos. There is no valid...

In arguing that the Uighurs must be kept out, the Justice Department speaks very generally about how the detainees do not qualify for entry under “the federal immigration laws.” The Supreme Court is informed that those laws are “comprehensive and reticulated,” but the DOJ is careful not to specify any of them except for Section 1182(f). That’s the statute in which Congress reposed sweeping discretionary powers in “the President” to bar “any aliens or ... class of aliens” whose entry the president believes “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That’s fine as far as it goes....

A painted marker in a recreation yard points the direction to Mecca at Camp Delta where detainees are held at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, January 18, 2006. REUTERS/Joe Skipper While Dick Cheney is not backing down from his claims regarding enhanced interrogations conducted in the early days of the war on terror, a recent poll, for whatever these are worth, has it that most Americans are in agreement with Dick Cheney's belief that Guantanamo should remain open for business, the least bad option. USA Today: WASHINGTON — Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to closing the detention center...

  The central argument put forth in defense of the 17 Uighurs detained at Gitmo is that their principal enemy is China, not the U.S.This defense ignores a host of troubling facts including that: (a) all of the Uighur detainees are members or associates of the ETIM/TIP (a U.S. and UN designated al Qaeda-affiliate), (b) at least 8 current Uighur detainees have admitted their relationship with Abdul Haq (a member of al Qaeda’s elite Shura Council), who oversaw their training (c) most of the Uighurs were trained at a terrorist camp in Tora Bora – a stronghold for al Qaeda...

On his second day in office, President Obama issued an executive order to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within one year--without any plan for how to dispose of the 241 detainees held there. With the clock ticking, the president is discovering that closing Guantanamo is more easily said than done, especially now that his own party in Congress has deserted him. Recently, the Senate, including the Democratic leadership and nearly all of its members, refused to grant the president the $80 million he asked for to close the facility, voting 90 to 6 to strip the requested funds from...

A former Guantanamo “terrorism” detainee who walked away a free man in 2005 will shoot his way out of the U.S. prison in a new Xbox 360 video game based on the camp. Moazzam Begg, who spent nearly two years in the U.S. detention camp without charges, will play himself in the game, which could rake in £3 million ($5 million). Rendition: Guantanamo lets players control a detainee trying to shoot his way out, meaning the game's creators needed to know the layout of the prison. Begg has been consulting on the project, under development for more than a year...

Cheney "wrong" on facts: Obama Mon Jun 1, 2009 7:39pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday struck back at one of his toughest critics, saying former Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong when he criticized White House plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. "He also happens to be wrong. Last time, immediately after his speech, I think there was a fact check on his speech that didn't get a very good grade," Obama told NPR News. Cheney has emerged as one of the toughest critics of Obama's handling of terrorism, as well as the...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – A Canadian detainee rejected his U.S. military attorneys Monday at the first session of the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals called under President Barack Obama, complicating his high-profile case and the administration's timeline for closing the prison. The judge set another hearing next month in a long-running drama that suggests Obama's plan to close the offshore prison by January is overly optimistic. Obama has pledged to keep the military tribunals for at least some Guantanamo detainees, but the turmoil in a case that was once days away from trial shows how even small issues can...

US NAVAL BASE AT GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (AFP) – Military officials at Guantanamo Bay on Monday are to hold the first open hearing of the Obama administration, in the case of a Canadian charged with killing a US soldier. The session was likely to highlight the many challenges President Barack Obama faces in changing the military commissions system and closing Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base in southern Cuba where 240 "war on terror" detainees are still held. Judge Patrick Parish, a US Army colonel, has decided to publicly examine the arguments of the parties in the case of Toronto-born...

REPORTS that Kevin Rudd is considering a request from US President Barack Obama to resettle in Australia 17 Muslim Uighurs from China held in Guantanamo Bay raises some interesting questions all round. Whenever John Howard agreed to a request made by George W Bush, the Left went apoplectic, complaining that the then Australian Prime Minister was behaving like a lap dog for the then US President. Remember the cartoons? Remember the protestors depicting Howard as a dog with its nose up the backside of Bush? Recall the accusations of Howard, the deputy sheriff, diminishing Australia’s national interest? It was cheap...