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And Then There is the Underwear Story
When people ask me about Guantanamo I try to describe the surreal experience of having a Starbucks a few short miles from a soviet style gulag. I talk about my client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, who has never been charged with anything and never will be, dying of hepatitis B and not being treated. He and the other men sit in their tiny cells never seeing or talking to anyone, day after day, with no end in sight. I explain how there is no such thing as the attorney client privilege, that I have to turn my notes from my client meetings over to the government for scrutiny and that the search going in and out of the base involves reading my legal documents. Each time I go to Guantanamo the rules are different and just when you think things can't get any sicker, they take it up a notch... in this context the "underwear story" not only makes perfect sense but somehow seems overdue.
A few weeks back one of the habeas counsel, Clive Stafford Smith of the organization "Reprieve" received a letter from a military lawyer at the base. Seems that there was a major security breach at the base and an investigation is under way:
"Your client, Shaker Aamer, detainee ISN 239, was recently discovered to be wearing Under Armor briefs and a Speedo bathing suit. Neither item was issued to the detainee by JTF-Guantánamo personnel, nor did they enter the camp through regular mail. Coincidentally, Muhammed al-Qareni, detainee ISN 269, who is represented by Mr. Katznelson of Reprieve, was also recently discovered to be wearing Under Armor briefs. As with detainee ISN 239, the briefs were not issued by JTF-Guantánamo personnel, nor did they enter the camp through regular mail.We are investigating this matter to determine the origins of the above
contraband and ensure that parties who may have been involved understand the seriousness of this transgression...."
Clive doesn't know who smuggled in the Under Armour briefs, in fact, as Clive explained in his response to the military, Clive had never heard of that particular brand of underwear until the letter arrived. Clive suggested that the military investigate its own people, as we attorneys are searched entering and leaving (albeit they don't check to see if we have underwear on and whether or not it is still on when we are leaving...yet) and there is a camera's on us during the entire visit with our clients. As to the Speedo, Clive wrote back:
"I cannot imagine who would want to give my client Speedos, or why. Mr. Aamer is hardly in a position to go swimming, since the only available water is the toilet in his cell.I should say that your letter brought to mind a sign in the changing room of a local swimming pool, which showed someone diving into a lavatory, with the caption, "We don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in our pool". I presume that nobody thinks that Mr. Aamer wears Speedos while paddling in his privy."
I don't know how much time and energy will go into the military's investigation of the contraband underwear and Speedo. If it is anything like the investigations that led to most of the men being held at Guantanamo then we can expect many years of interrogations, finger pointing and then silence. I do know that there are several men at Guantanamo (my client included) who are dying from medical neglect under our military's careful eye. One can only hope that this investigation is completed quickly, that the military rounds up the sinister underwear smugglers and brings them to justice. Maybe after that investigation is completed the military can find a minute or two to check out the health of the men that have been wrongly held for more than five years without any charges against them. Or better yet, investigate why the hell most of these men were ever brought to Guantanamo in the first place.
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Next they'll be water boarding lawyers to find out who brought the "panties" in!
Funny how they get their knickers in a knot over this, but you hear hardly a peep of outrage about the billions of dollars and thousands of weapons that have gone missing in Iraq.
I can't lie. That someone would get their draws in a bunch because of unissued undies is hilarious. What's worse, we may (hopefully not) have a president who says he wants to double Gitmo! Next time, the security breach may involve socks and t-shirts, too!
Then again, I have the sickest sense of humor of anyone I know, so I'll be serious. This is a sad, sad time for the US. And being black, I though America couldn't get any lower after than it got during slavery. It's one thing to have a for the president to do this stuff. It's totally another thing when so many fall in line.
Under Armor is made with high tech microfibers that wick perspiration much better than cotton.
Like the cold weather microfiber fleece that insulates and is light, warm weather microfibers that wick and don't get soaked with sweat are very popular with athletes.
Yet more confirmation of the pathologies at the heart of the "war on terror." Letting cretins who spend their adult lives on revenge for teenage slights they might've experienced be in charge of anything, let alone other human beings, is a disturbing phenomenon. Of course, coming as it does from the shining city on the hill, it's intended to reflect our monopoly on virtue.
Armoured underwear? Boggles the mind.
He needs the speed o's for the waterboarding room.
So these prisnors are tunneling out into Cuba and bringing back armoured underwear and speed o's, I guess. I mean with such tight security that is the only answer.
The camps at Guantanamo are for training, among other things. They are learning how to manage large masses of people, who have no rights whatsoever. They started with people who were accused of commiting a crime, since then they have gotten a little lazy, and many of the detainees have not been charged, because their only crime was looking suspicious, and being nearby. If even one human being can be held without charges, by our government, then each of us is vulnerable.
You're right. Truly demented. And it's done in the name of our country, our "safety", and with our tax money. That place needs to be closed yesterday and some people sent to the Hague tomorrow.
UnderArmor. Sounds like something a soldier would wear. I know it's athletic gear but I'm fairly certain that the NFL doesn't have a franchise in Cuba so I'm sticking with the military theory.
I wonder how he came to be wearing those particular items of clothing. I wonder if the problem for the military isn't that he was wearing UnderArmor, but that he was wearing anything at all. Could it be that this man was being forced to remain naked to humiliate him for punishment or torture on orders from on high? If this was the case, it gives me a hint of a glimmer of hope to think that one of the guards showed some humanity and gave him something to wear. It has to start somewhere.
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations
of obedience . . . Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic
laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring"
Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal (1950).
Gitmo makes Kafka's fiction look tame. Send the members of US forces now serving at Gitmo to Iraq to strengthen W's surge. Officers who are so concerned about a prisoner's underwear that an officer writes the prisoner's lawyer expressing concern about the prisoner's underwear not being prison issue being a sign of a breach in prison security are under employed. The officer's bungled fishing expedition marks the officer as an Intelligence Officer, not an intelligent officer. Send the officer to Iraq at once, if not sooner or have the officer cashiered. Hold the officer in a military prison on a diet of Ex-Lax & water till the officer is discharged or sent to Iraq.
This is just too over-the-top!
Fer Christs sake we need to get these people off that damned island and get them the same treatment we're giving to any normal prisoner in our legal system.
That includes the right to a private attorney relationship and Habeas Corpus, and medical treatment and....
Jesus, where is the humanity here?
Don't we have any sense at all?
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