It's only the second weekend of January, and already, I'm willing to bestow the "Interview of the Year" award to Chris Hayes for this interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian national of Algerian descent who was sent to Guantanamo for seven years without charge or trial, even after charges of alleged terrorism were dismissed by Bosnian officials.

As Dana Loesch is the face of the Ugly American, celebrating the desecration of corpses, we must also collectively own that Lakhdar Boumediene is the face of American Exceptionalism.

We. Must. Own. It.

All that rightly placed rage. The unfairness. The betrayal. It is all our fault.

This man did nothing, was guilty of nothing. And we took him away and TORTURED him for seven years without any justice. And even now released, his life is still hell. He can't get a job because no one will hire him when he tells them why there's a seven year gap in his C.V.

And Boumediene is one of the *fortunate* ones. He's been released, thanks to a case with his name on it. There are still 171 detainees there.

Despite President Obama's promise to close the camp, there it still stands, mocking America's claim to moral supremacy and acting as a powerful recruiting tool for the country's enemies. The numbers, pulled together by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), speak for themselves. Of 779 detainees imprisoned at Guantánamo over the past decade, only six have been convicted. That's one less than the number of military prosecutors who resigned over the system's unfairness. Some 600 have been released, most under President Bush, raising the question of why they were there in the first place.

The ACLU's Hina Shamsi said: "Guan­tánamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front: legally, ethically, and in terms of our security. There are 171 captives left in the camp, and of those, 89 have been cleared for release but are still stuck there in a Kafkaesque limbo. That comes at an annual cost to the US taxpayer of $800,000 per captive." With 17 soldiers guarding each inmate, Guantánamo isn't cheap.

A further 46 unidentified men were designated under last year's inter-agency review as being "too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution" – there isn't sufficient evidence to put them on trial, but nor will they be released.

"We must restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that made this country great." That statement could have been made by any one of the many Guantánamo critics still campaigning for its closure. In fact, the words were spoken by Obama on 22 January 2009, the day after his inauguration, as he signed an order to close the camp within one year. So what went wrong?

Pardiss Kebriaei of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who has acted as defence lawyer for four detainees, believes the rot set in at the very moment of the signing. At that point, she said, Obama could have told the American people the truth about Guantánamo detainees: that most of them are low-level operatives who are a far cry from the "worst of the worst", as they were described when the first 20 arrived exactly a decade ago.

In fact, according to the US government's own data, 92% of the men who have been brought to Guantánamo never fought for al-Qaida at all.

Three of the four men Kebriaei represented have been released, one of whom held the impressively senior rank of ­assistant cook. "This was a young man who was 17 when he was taken into custody. He was not remotely like the dangerous terrorists who would chew through the pipes of a plane to bring it down, in ­Donald Rumsfeld's famous phrase," Kebriaei said.

That first moment has set a pattern of missed opportunities. The Obama administration stalled on sending Muslim ethnic Uighurs to asylum in mainland US, even though they were deemed harmless back in 2005; five Uighurs are still trapped in Guantánamo to this day.

Then the administration bottled on its plans to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants accused of having masterminded 9/11 to federal trial in New York. The five will now be dealt with under Guantánamo's revived military commissions.

The U-turns have allowed the Republicans in Congress to erect looming hurdles in the path of closure. A year ago Congress barred the Pentagon from spending any of its budget on transferring detainees out of Guantánamo. Then, on 31 December, Congress framed another act that for the first time enshrines the right to indefinite detention without charge into US law. That was violation of habeas corpus even Bush lacked the temerity to introduce.

In both these cases Obama expressed his dismay about the new laws, held his nose, and signed on the dotted line.

Yes, it's easy (and partially correct) to curse Obama for failing to close Guantanamo, but it is also equally the fault of our elected congresspeople for making it impossible for Obama to carry through his promise, as Wikileaks revealed last year.

And that makes it everyone's fault.

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Today is the 10th anniversary of the prison opening at Guantanamo Bay. On a day where protesters are marching in Washington to protest the fact that it remains open (thanks to Congress), it might be fitting to see what Mitt Romney thinks about it, as clearly articulated in a 2007 GOP debate.

At about 26 seconds in:

Now you said the person's going to be in Guantanamo. I'm glad they're at Guantanamo. I don't want them on our soil, I want them on Guantanamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there.

Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo. We've got to make sure that the terrorists--

And there's no question that in a setting like that where you have the ticking bomb, that the President of the United States, not the CIA interrogator, the President of the United States has to make that call. Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used. Not torture. But enhanced interrogation techniques.

Sadly, too many Democrats and Republicans alike agree with him. To this day. Congress continues to block funding detainees' transfer from Guantanamo to prisons in the United States. One of the biggest outcries when Eric Holder announced trials of certain detainees would take place in Federal court was around the idea that they would be subject to the full due process of law. This continues to this day.

I'm certain that if Mitt Romney were asked about this, he wouldn't back down. As President, he would double the number of detainees at Guantanamo and re-institute waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Wonderful.

From the ACLU series, Justice Denied

And as if we haven't already destroyed this man's life, it just gets worse:

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that two prisoners had been released from Guantánamo. Abd al-Nisr Mohammed Khantumani, a 50-year old Syrian (also known as Abdul Nasir al-Tumani) was given a new home in Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony off the West African coast, while Abdul Aziz Naji, a 35-year old Algerian, was repatriated to Algeria.

(T)he focus must be on the legal maneuvering that led to the repatriation of Abdul Aziz Naji, because, for the first time in Guantánamo’s history, a prisoner has been sent home against his will, even though Doris Tennant, one of his lawyers, told the Washington Post two weeks ago that he was “adamantly opposed to going back.” At the weekend, another of his lawyers, Ellen Lubell, told the Miami Herald that Naji “fears extremists will try to recruit him — associating him with Guantánamo — and will torture or kill him if he resists.” She added, “He has nothing against the Algerian government, but he fears that the government will be unable to protect him from Algerian extremists.” In a press release, the Center for Constitutional Rights explained that Naji “fled various forms of persecution in Algeria many years ago, including having been attacked by an extremist.” CCR also sounded a note of caution about how the Algerian government will receive Naji, stating, “we are deeply concerned that he will disappear into secret detention.”

These are valid concerns, as Algeria has a poor human rights record. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations (PDF, pp. 108-9) regularly express concerns about the use of torture in Algeria, and in its 2009 report on human rights in Algeria, the US State Department noted, “Local human rights lawyers maintained that torture continued to occur in detention facilities, most often against those arrested on ‘security grounds.’”

In contrast, an Obama administration official, speaking anonymously, told the Washington Post two weeks ago, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.” This was a bold statement to make, in light of the allegations made by NGOs and the UN, and concerns about torture or other ill-treatment were not diminished by a response to the news of Naji’s repatriation in Monday’s Washington Post, in which it was noted that “The government said that Algeria has provided diplomatic assurances that Naji would not be mistreated, assurances that administration officials say are credible because 10 other detainees have been returned to Algeria without incident.” The problems with this statement concern the “diplomatic assurances,” and the claim that 10 men have been repatriated “without incident.” On the “diplomatic assurances,” Human Rights Watch explained in a press release that its own research “has shown that diplomatic assurances provided by receiving countries, which are legally unenforceable, do not provide an effective safeguard against torture and ill-treatment,” and, on the status of the 10 men returned, although there have been no allegations of torture, there has been very little information at all about the conditions in which they have been held, and what has emerged publicly is not reassuring, as it reveals both prolonged pre-trial detention, and calls for punitive sentences from the prosecutors.

As much as it hurts me to say this, the Bush administration was far more humane on the issue of repatriating Guantanamo detainees back to areas where they might be tortured--known as "non-refoulement", as evidenced by the care they took with the Uighurs. Ironic, considering the callousness with which they treated them while in detention.

The long history of the authorities grappling with the “non-refoulement” obligation at Guantánamo began with the Uighurs, 22 Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province, who were mostly seized in Pakistan in December 2001 after crossing from Afghanistan, where they had been living in a run-down settlement in the Tora Bora mountains, thwarted in their attempts to travel to Turkey or Europe in search of work, or nursing futile hopes of rising up against their only enemy, the Chinese government.

With the Uighurs, the Bush administration recognized its “non-refoulement” obligation, refusing to return them to China, and finding new homes for five of the men in Albania in 2006. When the Obama administration inherited the problem of the remaining 17 men, who had, in the meantime, won their habeas corpus petitions, it found new homes for 12 of them in Bermuda, Palau and Switzerland, although five still remain at Guantánamo, and, last spring, the administration turned down a plan by White House Counsel Greg Craig to bring some of the men to live in the US, which would have done more in the long run to defuse scaremongering about Guantánamo than any other gesture.

The issue of closing Guantanamo, a promise which many liberals relied on Obama fulfilling shortly after taking office has been unquestionably a minefield of legal and ethical considerations. It's just another black mark on the Obama presidency.

George Galloway interviews Andy Worthington on UK knowledge of torture on Guantanamo detainees for Digital Radio.

I don't know that there is anyone on this planet who knows more about what went on at Guantanamo than independent journalist Andy Worthington, and that includes those inside the administration. Through incredibly hard work, diligence and a mountain of FOIA information, Andy has been chronicling this deepest, darkest chapter of American history.

Andy has written a book, The Guantanamo Files, that I am reading now and on which I will be hosting a book chat in the very near future. I can't lie, it's taking me longer to read it than it should, because I have to keep putting it down. There's not a chapter I've read that I haven't wanted to scream, "This should never have happened! This is not what a democratic country does! NOT IN MY NAME!" It is a detailed and unblinking look at not only a strange mixture of fear and incompetence, but of real evil as well. Indeed, Andy Worthington has been instrumental in documenting just what a legal black hole Guantanamo is:

My life as a full-time chronicler and analyst of Guantánamo and the “War on Terror” began with the 14 months I spent researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files, which (with additional chapters published online) tells the stories of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo throughout its eight-year history. I then began writing articles following developments at Guantánamo, helping to spread the word through various websites, and am delighted to report that my website now receives an average of 150,000 page views a month.

My thanks to all who have discovered my work, and especially to those who follow it on a regular basis. Three months ago, despite stalling and compromises on the part of the Obama administration, I thought that we were at least still proceeding in the right direction, but the last few months have proved me wrong, and have demonstrated that a huge amount of work still needs to be done. This is where your help — reading my work, helping to get it out to other people and providing financial support to enable me to keep spreading the word — is so important.

The one-year deadline that President Obama set for the closure of Guantánamo has passed, those who oppose the prison’s closure appear to have gained the upper hand in an ongoing propaganda war, and the administration has made numerous fundamental mistakes: failing to provide new homes on the US mainland for cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture, reviving the Bush administration’s reviled Military Commission trial system, and insisting that it has the right to hold some prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.

With widespread indifference in the mainstream media, my mission — to educate people about the terrible mistakes that have been made, and the human cost of those mistakes — continues, not just with regard to Guantánamo, but also in researching the “ghost prisoners” of the CIA’s secret detention program (whose whereabouts are largely unaccounted for), exposing the baleful history of the prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, calling for accountability for those who made America a “Torture Nation,” and exposing British complicity in torture and the injustice of my home country’s own anti-terror laws.

In the last three months, I have updated my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, produced an annotated version of the first ever Bagram prisoner list, and published five articles listing all my work in chronological order, as well as reporting the stories of the prisoners released from Guantánamo, reporting on their habeas corpus petitions in the US courts, exposing right-wing lies and misinformation, and the spinelessness of many Democrats, and criticizing the administration for its inability to place principles above pragmatism.

Andy is currently seeking donations to help continue his important work. Please donate if you can. But if that's not possible, I urge you to considering purchasing Andy's book, The Guantanamo Files, in advance of our book chat. It's an excellent read, if a bit harrowing and should make for a very lively book chat.

The bad terrorist men are coming to get you! Oooga booga booga! Isn't it funny how Republicans have continually intoned they are the only ones able to keep us safe from the scary men, but when the Obama administration actually decides to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five others for their terrorists acts, they turn--to a one--into the biggest WATBs at the thought of these Guantanamo detainees in a super-max prison standing trial through the American court systems. For all their jingoistic "We're #1" exceptionalism, these Republicans have remarkably little faith in our criminal justice system. And who better to represent these little p*ssified pseudo-toughs than Rudy "A Noun, A Verb and 911" Giuliani? He scored a trifecta of appearances, besting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who only will be on two shows. Meanwhile, the Republicans aren't done scaring Americans about health care reform, and you can bet the Pete Hoekstra on Face the Nation, Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press and Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday will be amping up the rhetoric.

ABC's "This Week" - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Clinton; Education Secretary Arne Duncan; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; the Rev. Al Sharpton.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Katty Kay, Peggy Noonan, Michael Duffy. Topics: Will Obama Suffer Longterm Damage For Afghanistan and Health Care Delays? Will Sarah Palin's Book Tour Convert Her From Republican Rogue to Frontrunner? Meter Questions: Will President Obama Sign a Health Care Reform Bill This Year? YES: 5

NO: 7; Will Delays Over Afghanistan and Health Care Hurt Obama's Image Longterm? YES: 5 No: 7.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Giuliani; White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D-Mont.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Fareed gives you a sneak peak into the HBO film he narrated entitled Terror in Mumbai. Plus, an incisive panel discussion on President Obama's first trip to China and the most important relationship in the world - between Beijing and Washington.

CNN's "Amanpour" - Amira Hass, Ha'aretz "Occupied Lands" correspondent, and Aaron David Miller, former diplomat who served six U.S. Secretaries of State discuss peace prospects in the Middle East.

"Fox News Sunday" - Giuliani; Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

We can certainly come to our own conclusions, since we're not hearing any official explanation. But it would be nice to know why the last administration (you remember, from the Party of Personal Responsibility?) covered this up - and why the Obama administration isn't doing anything about it:

WASHINGTON—The military lawyer that represents an Afghan youth who spent roughly seven years in U.S. custody says the Defense Department has repeatedly ignored his requests for a war crimes investigation into the detainee’s treatment.

Air Force Maj. David Frakt, the attorney for former detainee Mohammed Jawad, says over the past 16 months he sent multiple memos to Defense Department and military leaders asking them to account for what a military judge called “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment” of his client. Jawad, who was arrested when he says he was 12 years old for allegedly tossing a grenade at U.S. military, was moved from cell to cell 112 times during a 14-day period to disrupt his sleep patterns, according to military documents. Frakt said he believes the treatment constituted torture, violated the Geneva Convention, war crime laws and Defense Department regulations.

“Why has no one – no one has been held remotely accountable for this,” Frakt said in an interview with Raw Story. “This is a mandatory investigation. It’s not optional, you can’t just sweep it under the rug… but they did as far as I can tell.”

As first reported in The Washington Independent, Frakt wrote in memos to Defense Department officials: “Accordingly, I believe I have an affirmative obligation to report the incident to my chain of command,” listing military rules that mandate reporting possible war crimes to a superior.

Both a federal district court judge and a U.S. military commission judge have questioned the use of sleep deprivation, also called the “frequent flyer” program, on Jawad.

When military officials changed Jawad’s cell 112 times between May 7 and May 20, 2004, roughly once every three hours, military Judge Stephen Henley, a U.S. Army colonel ruled “the scheme was calculated to profoundly disrupt his mental senses.” Although officials were allowed to use such tactics during interrogation, Jawad’s attorney Frakt said he was not interrogated months before or months after the sleep deprivation occurred.

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(h/t David at VideoCafe.)

On This Week with George Stephanopoulus:

The Obama Administration is trying to engineer a soft-landing for the President's promise to close Guantanamo by January 22, 2010.

Friday morning White House officials told me that some detainees would still be in Gitmo after the deadline after this story broke in the Washington Post. And in our 'This Week' interview, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that "it's going to take a little longer" than promised to close the prison.

Here’s our full exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: A major story in "The Washington Post" suggesting that the president's deadline of January 22nd for closing Guantanamo will not be met. And White House officials tell me that at least some prisoners will still be in Guantanamo on January 22nd and beyond. How big a setback is that and how long will it take to finally close Guantanamo?

GATES: When the president elect met with his new national security team in Chicago on December 7th...

STEPHANOPOULOS: 2009.

GATES: ...last year, this issue was discussed, about closing Guantanamo and executive orders to do that and so on. And the question was, should we set a deadline? Should we pin ourselves down? I actually was one of those who said we should because I know enough from being around this town that if you don't put a deadline on something, you'll never move the bureaucracy. But I also said and then if we find we can't get it done by that time but we have a good plan, then you're in a position to say it's going to take us a little longer but we are moving in the direction of implementing the policy that the president set. And I think that's the position that we're in.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's where we are. So the deadline of January 22nd will not be met?

GATES: It's going to be tough.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And -- and how many prisoners will be there on January 22nd, do you know?

GATES: I don't know the answer to that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it -- but, as you said, it's going to be tough and likely will not be met.

GATES: We'll see.

And let's give credit to the Dems who put the "bi" in bipartisan on this issue! Yes, let's hear it for those Dems who live and die by the prevailing winds of public opinion - who would never dream of actually educating the voters instead of knuckling under to their uninformed emotions. You go, Weathervane Dems! Woo hoo!

The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.

Four Uighur detainees, Chinese Muslims who were incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for more than seven years, arrived early yesterday in Bermuda, where they will become foreign guest workers. An administration official said the United States is engaged in negotiations with other countries, including Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, to find places for the remaining 13 Uighurs held at Guantanamo.

The Uighurs, who were ordered released by a federal judge last year, never counted America as an enemy, according to the men's lawyers and human rights groups, giving the administration grounds to argue that they should live in the United States. Picked up in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002, the Uighurs were later cleared of the "enemy combatant" label but remained in minimum-security confinement at Guantanamo.

Attempting to settle non-Uighur detainees in the United States would generate even greater congressional opposition, and the administration has decided not to pursue it broadly, an administration official said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. But he said there may yet be "a few" candidates for settlement in the United States among the dozens of Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared for release.

Congressional Democrats yesterday reached agreement on a war-funding bill that would allow detainees to be sent to the United States for trial. The draft bill included no provision for prolonged detention without trial, a step that President Obama has said will be necessary to incarcerate detainees who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be prosecuted.

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President Obama displayed this morning exactly why he won the confidence of voters last year:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama forcefully defended his plans to close the Guantanamo detention camp Thursday and said some of the terror suspects held there would be brought to top-security prisons in the United States despite fierce opposition in Congress.

Obama spoke one day after the Senate voted resoundingly to deny him money to close the prison, and he decried "fear-mongering" that he said had led to such opposition.

He insisted the transfer would not endanger Americans and promised to work with lawmakers to develop a system for holding detainees who can't be tried and can't be turned loose from the Navy-run prison in Cuba.

"There are no neat or easy answers here," Obama said in a speech in which he pledged anew to clean up what he said was "quite simply a mess, a misguided experiment" at Guantanamo that he had inherited from the Bush administration.

Partial transcript here:

I stand here, today, as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn their truths when I lived as a child in a foreign land. My own American journey was paved by generations of citizens who gave meaning to those simple words – "to form a more perfect union." I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief. And as a citizen, I know that we must never – ever – turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.

I make this claim not simply as a matter of idealism. We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset – in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.

Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world.

It is the reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle, knowing they’d receive better treatment from America’s armed forces than from their own government.

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Republicans have been all over the teevee telling us what a swell place that Guantanamo Bay can be. Club Gitmo! And if we close it down, we'll be getting terrorists in our neighborhoods!

So of course, Senate Democrats quickly caved on funding the prison's closure:

WASHINGTON - In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison.

The 90-6 Senate vote — paired with similar House action last week — was a clear sign to Obama that he faces a tough fight getting the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention center and move the 240 detainees.

But listen to the Republican arguments and you just have to scratch your head.

There was John Ensign saying the health care was better than most Americans get. Then Sen. James Ihofe of Oklahoma went on Fox yesterday with Neil Cavuto and declared that "there's no place like it, the treatment is good."

But Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby really took the cake this morning on with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC:

Shelby: The Democrats saw the vote coming, should have, and saw that nobody in America wants a terrorist in their neighborhood. That's the bottom line.

Scarborough: Well, the Democrats were so sure six months ago they were going to shut down Gitmo. What happened?

Shelby: Well, they might shut it down. But I don't know why they would want to shut it down and bring terrorists into the United States of America, even into some of our neighborhoods, if they deem them not to be terrorists anymore. That's a dangerous road to go down, Joe.

Evidently, Shelby doesn't believe that when it turns out that some of these suspects are innocent that we should permit them to go free.

And, as Glenn Greenwald says,: "Is there anything the right wing isn't afraid of these days?" (His column on this is a must-read, as always.)

Moreover, Republicans (including Cavuto) are claiming that no one in the USA wants the prisoners. But that's not true. Already, folks in Hardin, Montana, are lining up:

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