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Afghanistan

Bagram rivals Gitmo according to NYT

2006-02-27

Take your blood pressure medicine first. Another piece of slimy half-accusations and whining.

While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

Pentagon officials have often described the detention site at Bagram, a cavernous former machine shop on an American air base 40 miles north of Kabul, as a screening center. They said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

But some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

Because it's an Afghan prison on Afghan soil, and the Afghan government finds it convenient to keep these hoods, and we find it convenient not to argue with them.

Privately, some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.

Posted by:Steve White

#15 .com, Nimble Spemble, I have here sat at the feet of masters. ;-)

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-27 17:26

#14 I suspect it's not so much an evolution as the careful shedding of reticence, revealing mor of what was always there but hidden. I dated girls like that.

Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-27 17:08

#13 Lol, tw - your evolution into SnarkMeister is dizzying! *applause*

Posted by: .com 2006-02-27 17:05

#12 BA, I know it was rhetorical, but I just couldn't stand it. The next-but-one in my tottering to-read pile is a book by a Wall Street Journal reporter who's done 5 rotations in Iraq with one of the Marine units -- a girlfriend of mine was a college friend of his, and he pops round occasionally... Anyway, it was the photo on the back cover I was channelling, but not the stripped down version of a real reporter (local fleas and all), but the glamourpuss version Mr. Rather and the parachuting journalists like the author of this little ignorance-filled diatribe favour.

/no TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT do not meet my standards, why do you ask?

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-27 16:59

#11 Furgot the picture.

Posted by: 6 2006-02-27 16:28

#10 get kitted out in full "journalist in the wilds" regalia, in Afghan Sand

AKA the Gunga Dan look.

Posted by: 6 2006-02-27 16:24

#9 Somebody needs to get to Punch Shulzberger. Somebody needs to tell him he's making an awful lot of Marines VERY unhappy - unhappy enough to take up a collection for the NY Mafia to do a hit on him. Unhappy enough to take out his two-bit propaganda rag like Saddam's "elite" Republican Guard. Unhappy enough to make him drink 40 consecutive bottles of Carlsberg light beer - then wait 24 hours before using the latrine. Unhappy enough to pierce his ears - with a sniper rifle. It's not wise to make Marines unhappy. Unhappy Marines are not nice folks. Punch needs to learn that, first-hand. I'd volunteer to help, but only if I can bring my axehandle.

Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-02-27 14:36

#8 Depressing, I bet they don't have Room Service or vallet parking.

Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-02-27 12:01

#7 Better stated than I could, TW. As I said...I know I'm answering my own question...(short answer is MSM=BDS, but I like your version better, lol).

Posted by: BA 2006-02-27 11:36

#6 why the heck run this now, when their own story says that they blocked transfers starting in Sept. 2004, almost a year and a half ago?

Because their guy had to write something to justify the expensive travel fees (after all, he had to get kitted out in full "journalist in the wilds" regalia, in Afghan Sand with matching coordinates, for his new staff photo... not to mention his travel costs, and the goat he thought he needed to purchase because you can't just buy a source drinks over there to get him talking). And besides, if they couldn't find a reason to manufacture outrage, they'd have to acknowledge the real improvements over there, and they'd just rather die!

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-27 11:21

#5 Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.

Sounds like a nice camping weekend in Alaska to me. This isn't "harsh" at all, especially if you consider the day-to-day life of Afghans themselves. He!!, if you've read Tommy Franks book, you realize that even the ruling class's digs didn't have indoor plumbing. Great story there of him visiting Karzai, asking for the restroom (for his wife) and finding out in this palatial estate, that the bathroom was a back room where you "did your business" on the floor. I imagine there's hardly ANY indoor plumbing in Afghanistan if even the ruling class's digs don't have it!

And, I know I'm answering my own question, but why the heck run this now, when their own story says that they blocked transfers starting in Sept. 2004, almost a year and a half ago?

Posted by: BA 2006-02-27 09:44

#4 I sure hope there's a prison on Diego Garcia I don't know about that is housing all the really bad guys. Where else can jack Bauer interrogate people properly?

Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-27 08:17

#3 So, let's compare either one to Abu Ghraib during Saddam's reign.

Oh, wait, that's right. Not a single goddamn US paper bothered to print pics from that period. And CNN admitted to covering up the nature of Saddam's reign in exchange for "access".

Is there a course specifically dealing with treason in journalism school, or, like getting your units straight in engineering, is it an underlying theme in all the courses?

Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-02-27 07:30

#2 So we should send them all to Gitmo?

Y'know, life is tough. The NYT aspires to lofty goals - shangra-la on earth. I wish we didn't have to detain terrorists, or criminals in Attica (in New York) and I bet most of those in Attica protest that they are detained incorrectly, improperly, and without the proper facilities - especiially if the NYT would ask them.

Life is tougher if you're stupid, or blindly, hopelessly idealistic.

Posted by: Bobby 2006-02-27 07:24

#1 NYT rivals Pravda according to informed bloggers.

Posted by: .com 2006-02-27 01:17

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