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Weekend Open Thread and Book Club Info

By Alexa

Hola, mis amigos. Are you lovin' the change of seasons as much as I am? (We don't really have seasons per se in Florida, but the slightly cooler weather and the autumn and Halloween decorations are rockin' in my 'hood.)

I want to start a new feature here at NION, the Monday Night Book Club. Anyone can propose a book and please know I welcome your input on this. Any book is fine - old, new, classic, not, fiction, nonfiction. If you have a book you'd like to discuss, please mention it and give the rest of us a little time to read if we haven't yet. I'll put up a graphic of the book cover and maybe 2-3 weeks would be enough time to schedule a thread for discussion of a particular book?

We don't need a structure, though, unless y'all want one. I think we can share reading lists, reviews of a favorite book or two, and talk about what we're reading -- what do you say? Monday nights are best for me, since my online fun time is severely restricted right now while I'm training at work. You could say a certain former manager with mad attitude walked out, leaving yours truly a new title and a whole lotta love in the form of new things to do. Pandemonium? 80 hour weeks? I'm dancing as fast as I can, honeys, but on Monday nights, I'm gonna find time for some Loquitos del Libros (crazy book club) with you.
In the news today . . . .

Camp Bucca: Iraq's Guantanamo (The Nation): What will the United States do with the thousands of Iraqis it is holding in legal limbo?

It is just after 4 a.m., and hundreds of Iraqis are lining up to visit their relatives outside Camp Bucca, which in August held about 18,000 detainees.

The total number of those officially in U.S. custody in Iraq has fluctuated between a low of 7,200 and a high of more than 26,000 since 2005.

Orale. This is a city of detainees. Article confirms that most of the detained (men, women, children) were arrested during street sweeps and is indeed another Bush torture gulag.

"I don't think that there is a law that covers what we're trying to do -- that is, to detain people indefinitely. There have been terrorist acts throughout history, so this war is never going to end," said retired Adm. John Hutson, a military law expert.

"The 250 guys at Guantanamo can have habeas corpus, but the thousands of detainees elsewhere don't have any rights. I think we have focused like lasers on Guantanamo because it's iconic and it's 90 miles off our shore. But you can't make legal, diplomatic or moral distinctions based on the locale of the detainee. We've worried about Guantanamo, but there are more detainees elsewhere. Whatever rules we come up with have to apply across the board."

Retired Col. Janis Karpinski (si, you remember the name from Abu Ghraib?) counters:

"There has never been a situation, a war, nation-building anywhere, where military police units were called to run a country's prison operation," Karpinski said. "Why? Because they call in United Nations forces once an area has been cleared."

From The Progressive Voter Guide to the Iraq War and Beyond, a comparison of the presidential candidates' stances on the occupation of Iraq.

Obama: An early opponent to the invasion of Iraq, Barack Obama has nevertheless voted to fund the war since reaching the Senate. His current plan seeks a phased withdrawal that would last until 2010 -- although he has said he will revise his strategy depending on the facts on the ground. Beyond 2010, Obama says he will leave a "residual force" in place "to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel." He also intends to retain control of Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone, and keep the U.S. embassy in place.

McCain famously declared that the United States will remain in Iraq until "victory" is achieved -- even if it takes another 100 years. He has long refused to name target dates for troop withdrawals, claiming that it would be tantamount to giving terrorists a timeline for defeat. More recently on the campaign trail, however, he has claimed Iraq can be "won" by 2013. Still, he has said he reserves the right to reassess the situation upon taking office.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm. Neither solution is anything close to ideal, especially when we consider the mission creep and escalation of hostilities in Aghanistan:

Obama: In his calls for an end to the Iraq War, Obama has repeatedly said that, in waging war against Saddam Hussein, the U.S. "dropped the ball" on the mission of combating terrorism after 9/11. "I think one of the biggest mistakes we've made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job (in Afghanistan)," he said this summer during his visit to Kabul. "We got distracted by Iraq."

Obama has vowed to redeploy soldiers to Afghanistan, saying he would send up to 10,000 additional troops. "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there," he wrote in his New York Times op-ed piece titled "My Plan for Iraq." Congressional Democrats have rallied around his position -- and President Bush has adopted it, something Obama has taken credit for on the campaign trail.

McCain has been widely criticized for his apparent lack of concern for the war in Afghanistan, most recently after the distribution of video footage in which he was shown telling the Council on Foreign Relations in 2003 that the United States could "muddle through in Afghanistan." After a long period of insisting that NATO troops should bear the brunt of the mission in Afghanistan, McCain has adopted Obama's position on Afghanistan in time for the election, vowing this summer to send "at least three additional brigades" to the country.

Neither candidate has much to say about the refugee crisis in Iraq. Nor the years-long refugee crisis in Afghanistan.

On Iraqi prisoners, it's down to this.

Though Obama has put forth no formal plan to address the problem of Iraqis being held without charge in Iraq, he has shown support for the rights of prisoners in the so-called War on Terror, as displayed by his applauding of the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which granted habeas corpus rights to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

McCain called the decision in Boumediene "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," echoing President Bush's line that it would provide special rights for terrorists. He has not addressed the problem of Iraqi prisoners.

In trying to be objective but having already voted, the human rights situation in Iraq isn't a big priority to either candidate. "Sad" is a woefully inadequate term. I understand that the incoming prez is walking into one hellacious mess of failed policies, domestic and foreign, but the Iraqi detainees and refugees need some urgent consideration.

What do y'all think? Are the Camp Bucca prisoners destined for one way travel to Bagram Express? Certainly, there are indications that this is a likely scenario. It's a lazy way out and desperate last resort, though. Bagram AFB has been expanded structurally over the years and construction of new prisons is ongoing. These new facilities aren't to replace the old, unheated torture chambers currently in use at Bagram. They're being built to accommodate (thousands of) new prisoners.

Thoughts?

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on October 18, 2008 (boomark / email).