Admiral Applauds Guantanamo Closure Order
All Things Considered, January 24, 2009 · Retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, a former judge advocate general, has been a vocal critic of prisoner abuse. He discusses President Obama's decision to suspend military commissions at Guantanamo Bay and ultimately to close the facility.
Essentially, he says some of the same things that I have been saying. One of the comments on the bit says it all:
A retired JAG says that trials in the US would work under our existing system for existing detainees. What's left to do? The general points at that "the 245 people left in Guantanamo are a drop in the bucket" compared to the thousands who may hate us even more if we continue to hold these prisoners. Is there a chance that some very bad people will walk free if we hold trials for all detainees? Certainly. Is keeping them detained worth the price of making a mockery of the Constitution and alienating people across the globe? Absolutetly not.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
