'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)

How has the world's leading democracy, a model for the ideal that power and decency reinforce one another, become the place where torture is debated rather than outlawed? How is it that a religiously devout president has justified torture by American hands?

-- Karen J. Greenberg (above), Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law and co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (2005), in "Scars and stripes," a Financial Times review of Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law (2008) by Philippe Sands QC, law professor at University College London.

Close Gitmo redux

Check out the essay on bringing a proper end to detention at Guantánamo (subject of an earlier post) by Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of NYU's Center on Law & Security and co-editor of The Torture Papers. "What," she asks, "are we going to do with individuals the Bush administration doesn't pretend to have sufficient evidence to try (even under its own limited military commission process), but who, officials claim, are too full of potentially useful information to release?" Greenberg outlines a few of the answers floating around, then sets out her own ideas, capsulized in this sentence: "Shut Guantanamo and create a new detention policy based on the rule of law."