Meanwhile, Back on the Island

As we celebrate the baby step House Democrats have taken toward defying His Chimperator Catastrophe, take a moment to remember the still-suffering, still-dying
actual human innocent victims of this maladministration's monstrous policies.

... Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, who has been held inside America's legal black hole since March 2002. The U.S. government has never charged him with any wrongdoing. Military officials claim he has been given proper healthcare. But Al-Ghizzawi appears to have acute liver disease, among other ailments, and the military is allowing his condition to deteriorate without proper diagnosis or treatment, according to a doctor with the International Committee of the Red Cross who has observed Al-Ghizzawi and his medical records at the prison.

Even if you believe that all the Guantanamo prisoners that the United States has charged with terrorist acts are guilty, how can you justify this treatment of someone who, after five years in prison, has not been charged with any wrongdoing?

And don't console yourself that such injustice can happen only to foreigners and only at Guantanamo. Remember that the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that officially killed the Great Writ, removed habeas corpus protections from everyone, including U.S. citizens.

The same MCA that retroactively allows us to torture to death a Libyan farmer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time allows us to lock up an anti-torture protester who pisses off the wrong sheriff's deputy.

Whatever we allow to happen to Al-Ghizzawi, we make possible to happen to ourselves.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.