Lithwick: How Guantanamo Policies Spread to the US | Newsweek Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues

AMERICA AND ITS IMAGE
How to Save Democracy
Larry Diamond 12/31/2008 12:00:00 AM
The new U.S. President will face more than one kind of global recession. In addition to the economic downturn, the world is suffering a democratic contraction. In Russia, awash with oil money, Vladimir Putin and his KGB cronies have sharply restricted freedom. In Latin America, authoritarian (and anti-American) populism is on the rise. In Nigeria, the Philippines and once again in Pakistan, democracy is foundering amid massive corruption, weak government and a loss of public faith. In Thailand, the government is paralyzed by mass protests. In Africa, more than a dozen fragile democracies must face the economic storm unprepared. And in the Middle East—the Bush administration's great democratic showcase—the push for freedom lies in ruins.
LEGAL AFFAIRS
The Noose Tightens
Jonathan Tepperman 12/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.
JUSTICE
Life After Gitmo
Dan Ephron 11/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
With the economy commanding most of his attention, President-elect Barack Obama has probably had little time to work on his campaign pledge to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But he's benefited from two Guantánamo-related developments lately that are not of his own making. This week the Pentagon sent home Yemeni national Salim Hamdan, who had been convicted by a military tribunal earlier this year of acting as Osama bin Laden's driver. Hamdan was close to serving out his sentence but the Pentagon had been insisting it could hold him indefinitely as an enemy combatant. Separately, a Washington federal court ruled last week there was insufficient evidence to continue imprisoning five Bosnians and ordered the Bush administration to set them free. About 250 people remain locked up at Gitmo.
JUSTICE
Obama’s 250 Tough Calls
Stuart Taylor Jr. 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
What should Barack Obama do with the 250 men who are still locked up in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp? Of the many problems the new president will face, this is one of the most difficult, and one he must get right. Along with it, he must answer equally tough questions about how his administration will deal with suspected terrorists in the future: Where will they be held and what legal rights will they have? Which interrogation methods will President Obama allow—and which will he forbid?
THE ROAD TO THE INAUGURATION
Holding Pattern
John Barry 11/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
American elections are a powerful drug: they bring delusions of omnipotence. All that talk of "change" and "hope" brings demands for swift action: "Do it now," "first six months," "hundred days." The economic crisis may indeed demand speed, but in foreign policy the reality is that, on the afternoon of Jan. 20, President Obama will face the same challenges that President Bush did that morning. And none presents much opportunity for bold new initiatives.
THE ROAD TO THE INAUGURATION
The Gitmo Dilemma
Dan Ephron 11/7/2008 12:00:00 AM
The detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the flawed justice system created to try terrorist suspects held there are among the most complicated legacies of the Bush administration. They're Obama's problem now. The president elect has said he will shutter Gitmo and put some of the detainees on trial in American criminal courts or military courts martial (his campaign did not return calls seeking comment.) But the prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up. Here are four reasons the controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.