The Moderate Voice applauds the efforts by some bloggers to offer original reporting on their sites. Blogs have an incredible potential to act as citizen journalism — versus the citizen op-ed pages which the bulk of them have become. There’s nothing wrong with that…except blogs have the potential of offering more than just opinion.
Once again the always unique The Talking Dog is offering an original interview. It’s another in a series of TTD’s interviews dealing with legal aspects of the war on terror. Because TTD is an attorney his questions are quite specific and the interview should be of interest of people of all political persuations. Here’s his set up:
Michael Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group based in New York City that has spearheaded and coordinated the representation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and been at the forefront of Guantanamo related litigation. C.C.R. has also handled matters pertaining to extraordinary rendition and handled numerous litigations related to the war on terror, and handled its “usual” extensive caseload in the constitutional and civil rights areas in general. Mr. Ratner is the co-author (with Ellen Ray) of “Guantanamo: What the World Should Know.” On July 20, 2006, I had the privilege of speaking to Mr. Ratner by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. Ratner.
It’s a long, fascinating interview but here’s a tiny taste:
The Talking Dog: Do you see an “end game” or “exit strategy” with respect to Guantanamo, and for that matter, to the other detention facilities such as Bagram, Diego Garcia and others, particularly in light of the Geneva Conventions apparently applying to all prisoners from the Afghan conflict (and presumably the war on terror)?
Michael Ratner: The government is in pretty deep trouble with all this; right now, I don’t think it sees a way out. Their problem with conventional trials or even court-martials, is that they don’t have any usable evidence that isn’t illegal or coerced… they’ve got a problem as far as trying detainees.
And they’ve got a problem with detention. They’re building a more permanent prison at Guantanamo, but are you going to hold everyone forever? Where do you send them? The judge in the Uighur case said the government can’t be compelled to admit them in the United States, so what then? In many cases, their home countries would jail them, torture them, or worse… in the case of the Uighurs, the Administration sent them to Albania. So… what if the government can’t find other countries to take them?
It’s a problem– both for the government, and especially for our clients.
There’s much more so read this original interview in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.