{"id":924,"date":"2004-11-08T08:57:23","date_gmt":"2004-11-08T16:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/11\/feeding_time_at_gitmo\/"},"modified":"2013-01-10T15:28:20","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T20:28:20","slug":"feeding_time_at_gitmo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/11\/feeding_time_at_gitmo.html","title":{"rendered":"FEEDING TIME AT GITMO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The big news at Guantanamo Bay is that a federal judge in Washington shut down the &#8220;military commissions,&#8221; otherwise known as tribunals, being held on the U.S. base in Cuba. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/americas\/3994183.stm\">Proceedings were halted<\/a> against a former driver for Osama Bin Laden, who denies he was a terrorist and disputes his prisoner status as an &#8220;enemy combatant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><IMG src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/images\/GITMO.jpg\" width=220 align=left> Reporters dispatched to cover the tribunals had been entertaining the local wildlife. One of the reporters, seen in the photo, is feeding a Gitmo lizard. The lizards, I&#8217;m told, are as animated as puppies and just as friendly. &#8220;They will eat out of your hand, but never bite.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s more than you can say for the U.S. Justice Department, which is appealing the judge&#8217;s ruling.<\/p>\n<p><B>Postscript:<\/B> &#8220;The order stunned military officials here&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/0,,SB109994337511667851,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_o\">The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> from Guantanamo on Tuesday. The judge &#8220;rejected the government&#8217;s position that the president, as commander in chief, inherently holds &#8216;untrammeled power to establish military tribunals&#8217; without specific authorization from Congress.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the report, &#8220;the judge also dismissed the administration&#8217;s claim that the Geneva Conventions had no force in the Afghan conflict because it was conducted against a terrorist organization and its allied militia, rather than a conventional army.&#8221; He ruled, too, that &#8220;the Bush administration&#8217;s military commission violated the convention, since it offers a lesser degree of rights to enemy prisoners than those that would be afforded to U.S. soldiers facing trial.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The big news at Guantanamo Bay is that a federal judge in Washington shut down the &#8220;military commissions,&#8221; otherwise known as tribunals, being held on the U.S. base in Cuba. Proceedings were halted against a former driver for Osama Bin Laden, who denies he was a terrorist and disputes his prisoner status as an &#8220;enemy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-eU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}