Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Economist on Guantánamo The Economist wrote an opinion piece on Camp X-Ray, the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba: This claim that America is free do whatever it wishes with the Guantanamo prisoners is unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very birth, and represents a more extreme approach than it has taken even during periods of all-out war. It has alienated many other governments at a time when the effort to defeat terrorism requires more international co-operation in law enforcement than ever before. America's casual brushing aside of the Geneva Conventions, which require at least a review of each prisoner's status by an independent tribunal, made America's invocation of these same conventions on behalf of its own soldiers during the recent Iraq conflict sound hypocritical. [pseudorandom] 8:23:26 AM

Pollution as an Act of War In The Chicago Tribune (free registration required): "The federal government is America's biggest polluter and the Department of Defense is the government's worst offender. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, unexploded ordnance waste can be found on 16,000 military ranges across the U.S. and more than half may contain biological or chemical weapons. In total, the Pentagon is responsible for more than 21,000 potentially contaminated sites... [birdhouse.org] 8:20:24 AM

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