The villagers who rushed to the road, cutting through rocky fields in central Yemen, found the dead strewn around a burning sport utility vehicle. The bodies were dusted with white powder -- flour and sugar, the witnesses said -- that the victims were bringing home from market when the aircraft attacked. A torched woman clutched her daughter in a lifeless embrace. Four severed heads littered the pavement.
Late last year, Congress passed and the president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2012. The NDAA codified, for the first time since a never-used McCarthy era law, indefinite detention without charge or trial.
Second terms are when presidents start to think about their legacy. And with a first term that earned President Barack Obama strong national security bona fides, he has the opportunity to pursue a robust foreign policy that more closely aligns U.S. values and interests.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States imprisoned hundreds without trial at Guantánamo and created a new military-commission system there to try terrorism suspects. The system lacked fundamental protections required for fair trials.
The ambiguous authority in the Guantanamo courtroom is not surprising given the scant trial record of the post 9/11 military commissions, which have been refashioned in various forms since 2004.
On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order banning the use of torture and closing the CIA “black sites” that were the locus of so much abuse. Standing behind him as he signed the order were retired admirals and generals, highly decorated officers who had dedicated their lives to keeping the United States safe.
The death of Adnan Latif should serve as a wake-up call for the United States to change its tarnished response to 9/11 by closing Guantanamo, even as it grapples with the horrifying attacks on its missions in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
In the course of three days in late August, I travelled from Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, Germany, where an international military tribunal tried 21 top Nazi leaders in 1945-46, to Courtroom 2 at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Courtroom 2 is the site of proceedings against Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the four others accused of masterminding the attacks on 11 September 2001. The contrast could not be more stark.
I had not planned on paying a visit to Camp X-Ray on this trip to Guantánamo. The remains of the old facility, originally set up to house Haitian refugees and later used as the first detention center for prisoners captured in the "war on terror," are not much to look at: pieces of wood and razor wire, cobbled together at the bottom of a green hill. It held detainees in what were essentially small fenced-in cages, exposed to the elements. It's been closed for a long time, though it is still standing, the military escorts tell me, under a court order.
Late last year, Congress passed and the president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2012. The NDAA codified, for the first time since a never-used McCarthy era law, indefinite detention without charge or trial.
In the course of three days in late August, I travelled from Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, Germany, where an international military tribunal tried 21 top Nazi leaders in 1945-46, to Courtroom 2 at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Courtroom 2 is the site of proceedings against Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the four others accused of masterminding the attacks on 11 September 2001. The contrast could not be more stark.
I had not planned on paying a visit to Camp X-Ray on this trip to Guantánamo. The remains of the old facility, originally set up to house Haitian refugees and later used as the first detention center for prisoners captured in the "war on terror," are not much to look at: pieces of wood and razor wire, cobbled together at the bottom of a green hill. It held detainees in what were essentially small fenced-in cages, exposed to the elements. It's been closed for a long time, though it is still standing, the military escorts tell me, under a court order.