Numerous media outlets — including McClatchy, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times and NPR — are now releasing information from classified files originally obtained via WikiLeaks on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees.
LOGAN PRICE, logan — at — bradleymanning.org, @kstrel, bradleymanning.org
Late last week, Price questioned President Obama at a fundraiser about the detention of Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, including the documents on Guantanamo now being released. See Glenn Greenwald: “President Obama speaks on Manning and the rule of law”
Obama told Price: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He [Manning] broke the law.” Wrote Greenwald: “How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt? … But even more fascinating is Obama’s invocation of America’s status as a ‘nation of laws’ to justify why Manning must be punished. That would be a very moving homage to the sanctity of the rule of law — if not for the fact that the person invoking it is the same one who has repeatedly engaged in the most extraordinary efforts to shield Bush officials from judicial scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution of every kind for their war crimes and surveillance felonies.” Price asked if what Manning did wasn’t comparable to what Daniel Ellsberg did in leaking the Pentagon Papers. Greenwald added: “Obama’s claim that ‘Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way’ is true — what Ellsberg released was TOP SECRET [while the WikiLeaks material is merely secret].”
ANDY WORTHINGTON, andy — at — andyworthington.co.uk
Worthington is author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. He is co-director of the film “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.” youtube.com
Worthington was on Democracy Now this morning about the most recent revelations.
PRATAP CHATTERJEE, pchatterjee — at — igc.org
Chatterjee is a regular columnist for the British Guardian, and just wrote the piece “How Guantanamo Bay became Kafkas’s trial.”
MATTHEW DALOISIO, daloisio — at — riseup.net
Daloisio is with Witness Against Torture. He said today: “What we have suspected for a long time now has been confirmed by the latest WikLleaks documents released today. Guantanamo represents a full systems failure that spans two administrations, and indicts every branch of government. If there is any hope, it must be found in a time-tested system of law instead of fear-fueled politics that has led the Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to imprison innocent men, justify cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and fail at holding anyone accountable.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167