When the average American thinks of military spending on religion, they probably think only of the money spent on chaplains and chapels. And, yes, the Department of Defense (DoD) does spend a hell of a lot of money on these basic religious accommodations to provide our troops with the opportunity to exercise their religion while [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a new report Tuesday. As they stated in the press release announcing the 107-page report, “Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees” (HTML, PDF), there is “overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration.” As a result, President Barack Obama is obliged “to order a criminal [...]
A National Research Council (NRC) 2008 report on a conference on Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies examined briefly what it characterized as a “contemporary problem,” the possibility of doing research on “war on terror” detainees, removed by the U.S. government from Geneva protections against experiments done on prisoners of war. In a section of [...]
Jason Leopold, TPR’s editor-at-large and currently deputy managing editor at Truthout, and psychologist and blogger Jeffrey Kaye discuss their groundbreaking report about a little-known directive issued by Paul Wolfowitz in March 2002 that paved loosened rules on human subject protections and how this document was used during the “war on terror.” Their discussion took place [...]
According to the transcript (PDF) of a February 19, 2002 meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB), “[a] number of the detainees have died of the wounds that they arrived with” at Guantanamo. This statement came from Captain Alan “Jeff” Yund, a preventive medicine doctor and the Navy’s liaison officer to the AFEB, as [...]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tapped his chief legal adviser and a four-star Army general to lead a landmark study on how the U.S. military would lift its ban on openly gay service members.
Human rights activists and legal experts reacted swiftly today to disclosures that the U.S. Government is planning to introduce new measures they claim would give inmates at Afghanistan’s notorious Bagram prison more opportunities to challenge their detention. Their views range from cautious optimism to total condemnation. There are some 600-plus prisoners being held at the [...]
President Obama can’t be expected to personally vet every military officer who is up for promotion, and, for all but those in the highest ranks, would obviously just rely on the recommendations of the superiors of officers on the promotions lists, but I have to wonder how the president would feel about having rubber stamped the promotion of an officer who said that blacks were better off as slaves.
The American Civil Liberties Union called upon the U.S. Supreme Court this week to deny a petition the Obama administration filed in August that urged justices to review and reverse a lower court’s decision ordering the government to release more than four-dozen photos depicting U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan abusing prisoners.
As 13 prisoners held at the U.S. naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appeared set to finally win their freedom, others are asking their release to be deferred. The problem is that some of those cleared for release fear they will be tortured if they are transferred to other countries, in some cases their home countries.
